Long after the woolly dog’s extinction, Coast Salish kin carry on the canine’s legacy

  Debra Sparrow working on her weaving (MOA Collection ) in the Museum of Anthropology on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.( Photo by Alina Ilyasova) By Kayla MacInnis  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Debra qasen Sparrow recalls talking and learning about Coast Salish woolly dogs with her grandfather, Ed Sparrow, in her early days as a weaver. Born in 1898, Ed remembered seeing the now-extinct canines around their village, and watching the women weaving with the companion animal’s woolly hairs. The x?m??k??y??m (Musqueam Indian Band) artist’s grandfather told her that “every village had wool dogs, that they were like gold because, of course, their fibers were mixed with the mountain goat and then rove  made into a roving for spinning  and spun,” she shared. Known in some…

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