Museum Of Anthropology (MOA) 2005-001-393c
1905 - 1988
George Clutesi of the Tseshaht Nation was a writer, artist, actor, and teacher. Throughout his life, he sought to portray the depth of Tseshaht values and teachings in contrast to the existing literature that, in his view, focused only on “the sometimes romantic aspects of a nearly forgotten culture” (Clutesi 9). He was born in 1905 in the village of maaktii (Port Alberni) to Charlie and Katherine Clutesi. His mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his father and aunts until he was taken away to school. He later recalled the trauma of his father crying and throwing rocks toward him as he was forced to leave (Tseshaht). Clutesi attended the Alberni Indian Residential School for eleven years. A shy, quiet child who was often in poor health and confined within an institution designed to separate children from their culture, he found solace in his art, even after the principal told him that artists were “terrible, sinful people [and] he must forget it” (“Get Your Bannock and Tea” 22:48). He refused then, and continued to refuse to forget it for the rest of his life.
After leaving school, Clutesi worked for many years as a commercial fisherman. He married Margaret Lauder, and together they raised six children and many foster children. In 1943, while employed as a pile driver on Vancouver Island, he broke his back in a construction accident. During his seven-year convalescence, unable to work, he returned to his art and developed a distinct visual style. He also began to write. During this time, he met Ira Dilworth, a senior executive at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and agreed to present a series of radio programs narrating traditional Tseshaht stories for young listeners. Through Dilworth, he met Emily Carr; although their friendship was brief, he and his wife visited Carr several times at her home, and when she died in 1945, she left him her unused canvases and oil paints. Around this time, Clutesi was invited to lecture in several courses at the University of British Columbia and to teach a few summer classes as well.
In 1947, Clutesi began writing for the newly founded newspaper The Native Voice, contributing inspirational essays that recounted Tseshaht stories passed down from generation to generation. In 1949, he hitchhiked to Victoria to address the Royal Commission on the National Development of Arts, Letters and Sciences, chaired by Vincent Massey, and asked permission to practice traditional singing and dancing—ceremonies that were, at the time, illegal under the Indian Act. Massey told him to “go home and sing,” a phrase some sources render as “go home and dance.” [1] (Tseshaht). Clutesi was then employed as a janitor at the Alberni Indian Residential School, and he began teaching Tseshaht songs and dances to the students. Initially, there was resistance, as the school had long portrayed these traditions as “primitive and undesirable” (Tseshaht), but he persisted. He formed a dance group that was eventually invited to perform for Princess Elizabeth during her 1951 visit to Victoria. For Clutesi, these efforts were part of a desire to ensure that what his people had lived for would be revived and remembered.
In the mid-1960s, Clutesi was approached by publisher Gray Campbell of Sidney, who proposed a book as a centennial project. Campbell later recounted that when he first arrived at the house, Clutesi was on the roof making repairs and, wary of white men because of his residential school experience, refused to come down (Aboriginality 60). Campbell was not deterred and climbed up to speak to him. About a year later, Clutesi contacted him and they agreed to publish his first book, Son of Raven, Son of Deer (1967), a collection of Tseshaht short stories that Clutesi also illustrated. He hoped the book would reach “the more sympathetic, more reasoning segment of the non-Indians, who may have some willingness to [understand] the culture of the true Indian, whose mind was imaginative, romantic and resourceful” (Clutesi 9). The book received significant attention and commercial success. Clutesi followed it with Potlatch (1969), a work that brings to life the potlatch ceremony, a term derived from the Nootka verb pachitle, often translated as “to give,” which, along with other ceremonies, had been banned from 1885 to 1951.
In 1967, Clutesi was commissioned to create a large mural for the Indian pavilion at Expo ‘67 in Montreal. This earned him widespread recognition as an artist. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Victoria in 1971. In 1973, he received the Order of Canada for his contributions to writing, art and the preservation of Indigenous culture.
Clutesi added acting to his repertoire in the 1970s, appearing in several television programs, documentaries, and dramatic series, and later in films. He won an ACTRA award for his performance in Dreamspeaker (1977).
George Clutesi died in Victoria on 27 February 1988 at the age of 83. His final book, Stand Tall, My Son, a story of West Coast First Nations society and its transformations after the arrival of Europeans, was published posthumously in 1990, according to his wishes.
In his early publishing years, some Tseshaht community members felt that he was selling out their culture. His nephew Randy Fred later wrote in a memorial, “I remember Uncle George was so very gentle. His voice had a bit of a rasp due to tuberculosis from his younger years.” Reflecting on the reception of Son of Raven, Son of Deer, Fred recalled that “when Son of Raven, Son of Deer was first published, he was far from being a hero on our reserve. Slowly, the feelings of Tseshaht people changed to a point of pride for his accomplishments. Now it is well understood he was instrumental in preserving and promoting Tseshaht culture” (ABC BookWorld).
Selected Readings:
George Clutesi. Son of Raven, Son of Deer: Fables of the Tse-Shaht People. Gray’s Publishing, 1967.
---. Potlatch. Gray’s Publishing, 1969.
---. Stand Tall, My Son. Newport Bay Publishing, 1990.
Works Cited:
“Aboriginal Authors Art Essentials.” ABC BookWorld, https://abcbookworld.com/scripter/scripter-7046/.
Clutesi, George. Son of Raven, Son of Deer: Fables of the Tse-Shaht People. Illus. George Clutesi. Gray’s Publishing, 1967.
“George Clutesi Royal Commission testimony re-discovered.” Ha-Shilth-Sa, 28 Mar. 2017, https://www.hashilthsa.com/news/2012-03-15/george-clutesi-royal-commission-testimony-re-discovered.
“George Clutesi.” Tseshaht First Nation, http://www.tseshaht.com/history-
culture/influential-figures/george-clutesi.
“Get your bannock and tea - CBC Archives.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 9 Mar. 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/get-your-bannock-and-tea.
Obituary: Noted Painter, Actor.” Toronto Star, 3 Mar. 1988, p. A19.
Additional Resources:
For a discussion of Clutesi as an author performing at Expo 67, see:
Herder, Scott. Literature as a technology of commemoration at Expo 67. University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 1, 2023, pp.1–26.
https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.92.1.01
This study highlights the significance of literature to Expo 67 and the tradition of world exhibitions. Like the world’s fairs before it, the Montreal exhibition promoted literature as a technology of national progress. Yet Expo 67 reflected simultaneously the contemporary anxieties about technology and nationhood expounded by George Grant in the 1960s in contrast with the celebration of nationalism and technological progress bound together in the tradition of world’s fairs. Though world’s fairs had depicted the educational utility of literature throughout their tradition, Expo 67 emphasized literature more than any world exhibition had to that point. Its theme, Terre des hommes, drawn from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s autobiographical narrative, its literature conferences and poetry performances, and the broader textuality of Expo 67 as a “total environment” were intended to deploy texts in promotion of the ideals of universal humanism. However, I find that poetry performances by Michèle Lalonde, George Clutesi, and Duke Redbird contradicted the event’s stated ideals by spotlighting the negative effects of technology and ongoing colonial violence. I argue further that large-scale literature exhibits at Expo 67 resisted the humanist ideals of the event by continuing the world exhibition convention of treating literary works as an educative technology of national progress. As a result, I find that Canadian literature at Expo 67 complicates the Canadian collective memory of the event and
the 1967 Centennial Year.
For quotations by Clutesi, who advocates for fair compensation for Indigenous artists:
Roth, Solen. “Can Capitalism be Decolonized? Recentering Indigenous Peoples, Values, and Ways of Life in the Canadian Art Market.” American Indian Quarterly, vol 43, no. 3, 2019, p.306.
https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.43.3.0306
For a biography of Clutesi in the context of the Canadian Indigenous art market, see:
Carocci, Max., and Stephanie Pratt, Eds. & Pratt, S. (Eds.). (2024). Art, Observation, and an Anthropology of Illustration. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022.
Endnotes:
1. Also recorded as “go home and dance” in some articles.
George Clutesi's entry by Kimberley John, September 2018. Updated April 2019. Kimberley is an alumnus of SFU, graduating with a Double Major in Health Sciences and Indigenous Studies. She worked as a research assistant for The People and the Text from 2016 to 2020.
Additional Resources collected by Eli Davidovici in April 2024. Eli is an alumnus of McGill University, graduating with an M.Mus. in Jazz Performance in Summer 2024.
Entry edits by Margery Fee, April 2024. Margery Fee is Professor Emerita at UBC in the Department of English.
Updated by Kayla MacInnis in November 2025. Kayla is an MA student in English Literature at Simon Fraser University and a research assistant with The People and the Text.
Please contact Deanna Reder at dhr@sfu.ca with any comments or corrections.