• Materials: Copper and Silver
• Artists: Francis Dick
• Totem Symbols: Thunderbird
• Styles: Canadian First Nations
• Categories: Pendants

Thunderbird

The Thunderbird represents protection, power, and strength. He is considered the strongest of the totem animals, possessing supernatural power and credited with creating storms. When he blinks, lighting comes out of his eyes, and when he flaps his wings, thunder roars. He hunts and eats whales by using the two lightning snakes kept under his wings.

Francis Dick

Francis was born into the musqamakw Dzawadaenutw Band (the four tribes of Kingcome Inlet). She is a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation. Most of her work contains images of Kawadelekala (the supernatural wolf who became the first ancestor of the Kingcome people), acknowledging her contemporary ties to her cultural past. Francis relies on hereditary knowledge for her strength and inspiration. Francis' work has been exhibited in various art galleries and museums. It has been included in a permanent exhibit in the Museum Fur VolkerKunde in Berlin. Her work was featured in two exhibits at the Ancestral Journey Gallery in Victoria, B.C. Although Francis' primary forms of artistic expression have been through her paintings, prints, and songs, she also designs and carves with gold and silver, and does some work with wood. Expanding into a new-found love for writing and performing, Francis wrote and produced a ceremony performance entitled Wiwoma: Honouring the Spirit of Women, at the Newcombe Theatre in Victoria in June, 1992. Upon request, Wiwoma was performed numerous times after its initial opening.