Art Card - Sentinal (Eagle)

I love working in my studio in Comox! I can look out the window on any given day and see eagles flying overhead or resting on the shore or carrying fish in their talons. One of my favourites, though, is when I look up and see an eagle sitting in a tree. It looks far out to the horizon, scanning its territory. It sits perched like a sentinel, guarding the land.

My grandmother’s main crest was an eagle--a kwikw as we say it in Kwak̕wala. When I was 11, I remember her buying me a Harley Davidson shirt to wear to her potlatch simply because it featured an eagle splashed across its front. It didn’t matter to her that it represented a motorcycle company. No, she only saw her lineage on that shirt. Her dad was an eagle, she was an eagle and I would be an eagle, too.

Right now we’re renovating the Bighouse that she brought down to Comox as part of her dowry when she married my grandfather. After she passed away in 1997, we placed an eagle on the peak of the Bighouse to show off her lineage. It has stood there for the past 13 years, watching over her house where I work and the community to which she came to belong.

We recently took down the eagle from the Bighouse to clean it up as we progress in our work putting on a new roof. It sits waiting in my studio for the chance to once again act as sentinel and watch over our community.
-Andy Everson

8 3/4" x 6 1/4" Card
12" x 9" Matted Card