Signs of the Time: Nlaka'pamux Resistance through Rock Art

Exploring the cultural significance of Indigenous rock art and its history.

Rock art—etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves—appears as a beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. But, the petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nlaka’pamux territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than ancient motifs. Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art. 

Archaeologist Chris Arnett draws on extensive research and decades of work with Nlaka’pamux people to document the variability and similarity of practices. Through a blend of Western records and Indigenous oral histories and tradition, rock art is revealed as communication between the spirit and physical worlds, information for later generations, and powerful protection against challenges to a people, land, and culture. Nlaka’pamux have used such cultural means to forestall threats to their lifeways from the sixteenth century through the twentieth. As this important work attests, rock art remains a signature of resilience.