Icons I
“In the eyes of many people both Native and non, the image of Thunderbird has been of a monumental figure that towers over the people and brings in the storm clouds and with it, lightning and thunder. His eyes gleaming with light and his very breath like a bolt of lightening itself. Known this way by the Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Central Coast Salish peoples the massive creature said to have caught whales and devoured them as his food source.
However, on readings where interviews took place with the Puget Sound peoples anthropologists and missionaries alike found the people of the Lushootseed peoples in many cases, speaking of a very different Thunderbird. This bird was not of enormous size but strength and that power was seen often in the small beings overlooked by man. Here in this piece salmon is used as a size reference to gauge what some interviews said Thunderbird was in scale to a human being for it was not his massiveness that made him colossal, but his very power harnessed within of a storm, and lightening and that his open mouth would light up like harnessed static energy.”
-Shaun Peterson / Qwalsius