Yahoo Sports Covers Mask That Inspired Seahawks Logo
Gretchen Faulkner, director of the University of Maine Hudson Museum, was heralded in a Yahoo Sports piece for her efforts in loaning the museum’s transformation mask that inspired the Seattle Seahawks logo to the Burke Museum at the University of Seattle. A Kwakwaka’wakw (kwock-KWOCKY-wowk) artist or artists carved the cedar mask in the late 19th or early 20th century. Kwakwaka’wakw is an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Faulkner, a New England Patriots fan, said that for years she showed off what she refers to as the Seahawks mask. “I wouldn’t get much response,” Faulkner said. “People were Patriot fans, so they were like, ‘Yeah, sure.’” Interest in the mask has increased considerably since it was unveiled Nov. 18 at a welcome ceremony at the Burke, which included Kwakwaka’wakw community members George Me’las Taylor and Andy Tanis Everson, as well as former Seahawks quarterback Jim Zorn. The Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks square off Sunday in Super Bowl XLIX. The Hudson Museum was also mentioned in a publisher’s note about the mask in Inlander, a Pacific Northwest weekly.