Joe David’s Whaler’s Dream translates the imagery found on ceremonial whaler’s hats into the two-dimensional language of printmaking. Like the hats themselves, objects central to the ritualized world of Nuu-chah-nulth whaling, the print is dense with symbolic reference. Its stylized depictions of whale flukes, harpoons, and canoes recall the scenes woven or painted onto the hats, while circular format mirror the hat’s shape.. By abstracting these elements, David references the layered meanings of the original objects, ancestral, ceremonial, and functional, while also asserting the validity of print as a medium for cultural expression and transformation.