Ron Hamilton
Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) artist and historian Ron Hamilton was born in 1948 on the Ahaswinis Reserve near Port Alberni, British Columbia. Over the years, he has earned several names, including Hupquatchew, Ki-ke-in and Haa’yuups. As a teenager, Hamilton learned to carve and paint from family members. From 1971 to 1974, he apprenticed with Kwakwaka’wakw expert carver Henry Hunt at the Royal British Columbia Museum. He then returned to Ahaswinis, where he immersed himself in Nuu chah-nuth life and culture.
Hamilton has worked to preserve and promote Nuu-chah-nulth art and design. He drafted artifact descriptions for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s exhibition “Listening to Our Ancestors: The Art of Native Life Along the North Pacific Coast” (2004) and wrote a chapter for the exhibition catalogue. He also contributed a chapter to the publication Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas (2013). The American Museum of Natural History made him a co-curator for the major restoration of its Northwest Coast Hall, which reopened in May 2022.