UW News

December 3, 2009

School days in Neah Bay: Help identify this week’s Lost and Found Film

Editor’s Note: The UW Audio Visual Services Materials Library has more than 1,200 reels of film from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, documenting life at the University through telecourses, commercial films and original productions. Some of the short films are easily identifiable, but many more remain mysteries. Who shot these films and why? Can you help answer those questions? Faculty and staff can use the comments field at the end of the story to send ideas. Those outside the University can e-mail filmarc@u.washington.edu.


A school bus rolls up to a school at the opening of this week’s film, Neah Bay, and what follows is a series of scenes depicting a day for the children at the school, which is located at — you guessed it — Neah Bay, on the Olympic Peninsula. We see the kids embroidering a pattern on a cloth, working with yarn, painting a papier mache balloon and doing jumping jacks, among other things. And sitting among the kids are at least two people who look as if they might be University students.

Other adults in the scene include native elders, who are seen beating drums, singing and telling stories. The film is just under two minutes and was made in about 1971. UW Film Archives Specialist Hannah Palin would like to know:


  • Was the UW involved with the schools in Neah Bay?
  • What is the pattern the children are embroidering?
  • Why was this film taken and how was it used?


Palin says she already knows that the elders in Neah Bay also appear in Tribe and the Professor, a film by Ruth and Louis Kirk about an archaeological dig at Neah Bay, but she doesn’t know their names. Do you? Please help her with her questions.


Palin got a couple of clues on last week’s film, Chapple. Two alums who played in concerts under Stanley Chapple’s direction recalled concerts being given at Jane Addams School after the old Meany Hall was damaged in an earthquake. They speculated that the photos might have been taken at a rehearsal for one of those concerts.