After growing up in various military bases across Canada and Europe, Liz settled in British Columbia on Vancouver Island. Her career changed three times taking different directions but there was an underlying theme: helping to create new ways of supporting learning. The first ten years were in various positions in Community Education, helping establishing the department at Malaspina College. The next dozen years coincided with the rise of technology and especially the desktop computer andshe established the Office of Educational Technology at Malaspina University College. The last fourteen years were establishing and managing the Research and Scholarly Activity Office at Vancouver Island University, providing support to faculty. Each of these positions allowed Liz to work with wonderful teams in supporting faculty who were passionate about what they did. She sums it up “I was lucky to have been at the institution as it grew and to have great people around me who gave me the opportunities to create things.”
Liz holds a Master Spinners Certificate and completed a research project focusing on the Coast Salish spinning of traditional fibres into yarns. She has researched Coast Salish textiles in museum collections including the Royal British Columbia Museum, the UBC Museum of Anthropology, the Canadian Museum of History, the Perth Museum, the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Burke Museum in Seattle. She has given presentations at Coast Salish weaving workshops and for the Textile Society of America, and has written about spinning related topics especially Coast Salish spinning. Liz was also instrumental in identifying the only blanket in a Pacific Coast museum now known to be made of Salish woolly dog hair although it is suspected that the Ozette blanket, the oldest blanket found is also mostly wooly dog wool.
Liz is honoured and grateful to have had the privilege to paddle over 1,000 miles along the coast from Olympia to Bella Bella with First Nations on six Tribal Journeys. She is grateful for the knowledge shared with her by Indigenous weavers and spinners and cultural knowledge leaders and elders. She lives, spins and writes on Protection Island.
Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa 