The button blanket is eye-catching, prestigious and treasured -- one of the most spectacular embellishments to the Indian culture of the Northwest Coast and a unique form of graphic and narrative art. The traditional crest-style robe is the sister of the totem pole and, like the pole, proclaims hereditary rights, obligations and powers. Unlike the pole, about which countless books and papers have been written, the button blanket has had no chroniclers. This is not only the first major publication to focus on button blankets but also the first oral history about them and their place in the culture of the Northwest Coast. Those interviewed include speakers from six of the seven major Northwest Coast Indian groups. Elders, designers, blanket makers, and historians, each has a voice, but all do not conform to any one theory about the ceremonial robe. Rather, the book is a search for the truth about the historical and contemporary role and traditions of the blanket, as those relate to the past and present Indian way of life on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Robes is a book of global dimensions that offers a compelling look at the next century. By turns startling, comforting, enlightening, and unnerving, it takes a deep look at the coming changes in nations and governments, as well as the rise of business to power. It expands to examine everything from education and population, to wars, weather, food, and famine, including the emerging human potential embedded in the body/mind system. "The most important thing for you to remember as you look at these coming changes," said the little men in brown robes, "is that things could be so much easier if you understood why these things are happening, and if you worked with them instead of against them..."

Robes and Honor is a fascinating exploration of the possible common origin and subsequent developments of investiture across medieval Christianity and medieval Islam. The ceremony in all of its cultural variety was much more than the public adoption of a high-value textile as symbol of office; within a culture, robing established a personal link 'from the hand' of the giver - king, pope, head of a sect, ambassador - to the receiver - noble, general, official, nun, or acolyte. This volume challenges current thinking on religious and regional boundaries of 'cultures,' raises semiotic issues about imagined communities, and addresses problems of kingship.