Indigenous art and the

by Erin Morton

Decolonization is not a metaphor,” as scholars Eve Tuck “ and K Wayne Yang remind us. While Tuck and Yang here refer to overuse of the term “decolonization” in education systems, their statement might also be considered in relation to publishing and creative projects: if decolonization means the “repatriation of Indigenous land and life,” how might this be achieved through the specific work of art books?

Indigenous-led curatorial and creative practices that repatriate Indigenous art and writing are crucial for the resurgence of “land-based” and “embodied knowledges,” as art historians

Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton argue in their new edited book, The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the

United States and Canada.

Three recent art books that use such repatriation as a method of resurgence are Resilience: Honouring the Children of Residential

Schools, Wabanaki Modern | Wabanaki Kiskukewey | Wabanaki

Moderne, and TautukKonik | Looking Back.

Anishnaabe artist Jackie Traverse, from Lake St. Martin

First Nation, and Residential School Warrior Geraldine (Gramma) Shingoose, a Saulteaux woman, activist and Elder from Tootinaowaziibeeng First Nation, Treaty 4 Territory, have together produced a colouring book, Resilience, honouring the children of Residential Schools. In her foreword, Shingoose writes that “even in our suffering we were always playful, joyful, and happy children,” offering a story of resilience and love in the face of the cruellest forms of settler-colonial Canadian state violence against Indigenous children.

Traverse’s lovingly rendered drawings of children wrapped in tender care are offered alongside teachings such as “Lilybeans” (to whom the book is dedicated), Shingoose’s granddaughter, framed in a heart and a thunderbird that “tell her she’s loved by her mom and her kookoo.” Intergenerational and grandmother-led teachings are a gift to the reader of this beautiful book, which speaks first to Indigenous children.

In Wabanaki Modern, published in Mi’kmaw, French and English, curators and writers Emma Hassencahl-Perley (Wolastoqew) and John Leroux (white settler) include a foreword by esteemed Plains Cree art historian Gerald McMaster, which contextualizes the period of the 1960s as one of cultural resurgence for First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists in Canada. The

Opposite page: From Wabanaki Modern, The Legend of Kingfisher, Stephen Dedam, gouache on paper, 1965, 38 × 53 cm. New Brunswick Museum 1966.85 (courtesy of Goose Lane editions).

Left: (s tikijumut t) / (l to r): Maria Semigak Kairtok, Benigna (Boonie) Merkuratsuk, Boas Kairtok; photo by Candace Cochrane (courtesy of Memorial University Press).

book is divided into two essays by Leroux and Hassencahl-Perley, which together historicize and visually contextualize the history of the Micmac Indian Craftsmen or MIC from Elsipogtog, New Brunwick.

Leroux (who, in full disclosure, completed his PhD at the University of New Brunswick under my co-supervision) documents this group of “minimalist” printmakers and painters against the colonial and often bureaucratic struggle with settler governments to help fund their initiative, situating the MIC artists within a longer continuum of millennia-long Mi’kmaq cultural resiliency and resurgence. Individual stories from the MIC group, such as Michael Francis’s, document the oral traditions and life experiences that influenced his art, including a screening of the Disney movie Snow White at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School.

Wabanaki Modern’s inclusion of extended interviews with Francis complement and contextualize the visual and material documentation of his art. The beautifully reproduced images in the book display the materiality of each object: the paper transparency of a story leaflet; the torn edge of a printed note card and accompanying legend to the silkscreened burlap package in which these objects were sold; the texture of the handwoven wool tapestry portraying the Mi’kmaw story of the Wild Goose.

Hassencahl-Perley’s essay offers a personal story of encountering Francis’ granddaughter, Starlit Simon, by chance through research

Prolific story teller, Jude Avery, winner of the first Lt.-Governor’s Award of Excellence for l’Acadié & Francophonie (NS, 2021), brings you two stories of isolated Acadians, their resilience, and their vibrant culture despite adversity ... or perhaps because of it. The first, The Forgotten Acadians, sold out in 2 months in late 2019, & was replaced by a best-selling Updated Edition(987819894564127-

World also brings you Joie de Vivre/Love of Life (NEW: 2021; reprint 2022) 9781989564196 - $19.95) Based on isolated communities these are stories of resilience, support of neighbours more like family, hard work, religion & respect for tradition, reflecting Acadian communities everywhere!

MD. ISBN 9781989564158 – $22.50 Fascinating story of pandemics, quarantine processes & issues facing immigration to Canada; great photos. Fully indexed with two new postscript chapters on the worst pandemics of the last 2000 years, Covid-19 update, and an archaeology survey of Lawlor’s Island (in photos) prompted by the release of the original edition. Recent winner

for Eastern Canada! Read about viral mutation, influenza naming process; learn more about what most of us have lived through for over 2.5 years! Dr. Cameron, a family physician for over 30 years, his first love and studies was in history, with many articles /books to his credit; he is certainly one of the more knowledgeable writers on quarantine history and processes. A regional best-seller for a second time : 2008, 2021!

and an inspiring video. Covers 3 decades: of law courts, judges, prosecutors, witnesses, defense teams, evidence bags, all drawn from the artist’s perspective: the ‘good’ guys, the ‘bad’ guys, including the top 15 stories (at least 7 of national prominence): Alan Légère, Premier Hatfield, the Oland trials, a Columbian cartel, Bourque RCMP murders, crimes against children ... Carol Taylor’s sketches over 30+ years, are both factual and entertaining. NEW(2022): Hard Cover Limited

9761989564172 – $16.95 Who would believe the most formidable guerilla leader in Canadian history would be a ‘humble’ French missionary priest? Enter L’Abbe Jean-Louis Le Loutre, who covertly led Mi’kmaq warriors and a small band of Acadian rebels (Beausoleil) with backing from France, to contest the establishment of Nova Scotia as a British/Protestant colony, leaving the mostly pacifist Acadiens in the middle. A contributing factor for the Expulsion? - and a disservice to the indigenous peoples who originally had sought peace. Arguably, in the name of religion & to prevent further settlements, Père Le Loutre may well have purchased more Protestant scalps than Gov. Cornwallis collected via his ‘infamous’ proclamations. Story was inspired by the author’s research onFrom Columbus to Louisbourg: The Colonial Evolu-

Little Warriers, from Resilience (courtesy of Fernwood Publishing).

on the MIC collection held at the University of New Brunswick’s Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre. The essay goes on to contextualize the history of the MIC within the community history of Elsipogtog, which includes settler-colonial occupation and racism, and within the larger narratives of Indigenous art history by scholars such as McMaster, Jas M Morgan and Sherry Farrell Racette.

Hassencahl-Perley elucidates the importance of Mi’kmaw storytelling within the MIC’s visual and material iconography and in combination with textual stories printed on note cards, stitched into deerskin wall hangings and sewn into textiles; as she puts it: “MIC designers Michael Francis, Stephen Dedam, Michael Dedam, and Vincent Barlow ensured that future community members, Wabanaki citizens, would have access to the stories they used in their artistic depictions.”

The essay concludes with a reflection on Mi’kmaw women’s labour behind the scenes of the MIC, as Jane Dedam and Mi’kmaw women of the MIC “produced jewellery, regalia, and copperwork; pulled the silkscreen prints; and hand-made the packaging” that was crucial to the collective’s output and success. The book concludes with a full list of MIC members and contributors.

TautukKonik / Looking Back, published in Inuktitut and English, by Candace Cochrane, Andrea Procter and the Nunatsiavut Creative Group, is a photographic teaching on Nunatsiavut, with a foreword by Julius (Joe) Dicker, AngajukKâk (mayor) of Nain. The foreword establishes the family and community connections behind Cochrane’s historical photographs of northern life, from an Inuit perspective that uses language resurgence to share stories about the past.

Procter’s introductory essay details storytellers and Elders such as Levi Noah Nochasak, a collaborator on Cochrane’s photographs, who helps to document colonial and community histories around hunting, fishing and trapping dating back to the 1500s, to the establishment of the self-governing region of Nunatsiavut in 2005. Cochrane details the process of taking the photographs contained in the book, which she took as part of the International Grenfell Association, describing the resulting images as “a bouquet of all I saw in Inuit culture that I found unique, generous, courageous, caring, and at times difficult.”

The photographs are divided into thematic clusters around land, seasons and change, which are presented alongside Inuit stories offering knowledge on each theme, many by Nochasak. The blackand-white photos themselves are part portrait, part documentary, and each shows an interconnectedness between Inuit, land, water and non-human animal alongside a story and a teaching, such as “August is the best time to pick berries, maybe late August, maybe September, early September. That’s when the berries are good and big. We fatten them. We pick berries, even bakeapples, in the fall. We save them for winter or Easter or birthdays.”

Procter provides a curatorial essay on the process of exhibiting the photographs in Nain, which involved tremendous community involvement looking at images of families and places they lived. A full biography of each member of the Nunatsiavut Creative Group co-authors as well as bios on Cochrane and Procter closes the book.

As Igloliorte and Taunton note, there are Indigenous “nation-specific” practices that Indigenous art and languages can help share with a wide audience, in ways that re-generate longheld community knowledges for new generations. These three books offer such regenerating practices for entire families. ■ ERIN MORTON is professor of visual culture in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick and the author of Unsettling Canadian Art History (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022).