Author Archives: Brett Williams

Module #4 – Post #5: The Role of the Arts in Decolonization

Last month I wrote a post on the Urban Thunderbirds/Ravens in a Material World exhibit at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. The exhibit, which continues until January 12, 2014, features work by four contemporary indigenous artists from the Northwest, and as the title of the exhibit indicates, many of the works exhibited wrestle with notions of Aboriginal identity in a modern context. One of the events sponsored by the gallery as part of the exhibit that I did not discuss was a panel discussion with three artists (one of whom helped to curate the exhibit), about the factors that influence their work. Xenaleken: First Nations Artist Forum, took place at the gallery on November 9, and discussion centred on the topic of decolonization and the arts.

A search through the Web would indicate that the topic of this particular forum did not emerge out of isolation. The concept of decolonization – and specifically the role of the arts as part of this discourse – seems to have picked up a great deal of traction in the past few years. In 2011, The Ottawa Art Gallery curated an exhibit titled “Decolonize Me,” featuring six Aboriginal artists “whose works challenge, interrogate and reveal Canada’s long history of colonization in daring and innovative ways.” The artists in the exhibit hoped to shed light on how colonization came to affect both Aboriginal and settler identity and how this discourse continues to shape how both continue to view themselves and each other.

In 2012, FUSE magazine began a series of issues focusing on the States of Postcoloniality, with many of the articles focusing on the theoretical and aesthetic principles that informed decolonial thought and art. The series was published in collaboration with e_fagia, an organization of artists and writers based in Toronto, that sponsored the Symposium on Decolonial Aesthetics from the Americas in Toronto this past October. As the title of the symposium suggests, artists and works were featured from North, Central and South America. The diversity of works, approaches and perspectives provided a unique opportunity to consider the plurality of decolonial thought and discourse as represented in the arts. This concept is something that I presume the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society hopes to develop in an upcoming issue, which is currently accepting submissions for papers (the deadline is December 6, 2014). The questions that the journal hopes its contributors will consider provide insight into how the dialogue surrounding decolonization and the role of the arts might unfold:

– What are the connections and relationships between art, activism, resurgence, and resistance?

– What is the role of cultural production in decolonization? (**and/or How might art contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous nationhood?)

– How can art be used to disrupt normative orders and political status quo?

– How is Indigenous artistic creation connected to history, land, and community? How might art be seen as decolonization, particularly in light of the challenges brought forth by Tuck & Yang (2012) around decolonization and its incommensurable meaning/goals?

– How might art and aesthetics, born out of particular locations, Indigenous communities and nations, enable practices of solidarity and alliance to be forged in creative ways?

– What are the intersections between gender and decolonial or Indigenous art and aesthetics?

– How does art create, speak to, and emerge from alternative spaces that contest global capitalism, colonial violence, and imperial expansion?

– How is art used to challenge, unmake, or reconstruct borders?

– How can artistic production contribute to Indigenous and decolonial futures?

– In what ways does art occupy or create contested spaces of ambivalence, between aesthetic production and politically contentious creativity?

Module #4 – Post #4: Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace

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With a focus on storytelling and indigenous culture and values, AbTeC is a unique hub that provides academics, artists and technologists with a network in which to share ideas, developments in technology and digital art, as well as applications of technology for educational purposes. The projects supported by AbTeC are largely geared towards empowering indigenous youth to celebrate and enrich their cultural traditions through new media technologies that allow students to create their own video games and interactive web pages.

The website also provides a lengthy biography of artists, scholars and technicians who have worked with communities, schools and universities to assist in the development of new media projects and curricula, in addition to links to AbTeC related research and case studies that examine the impact of technology on education and Aboriginal youth.

Module #4 – Post #3: Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival

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The Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival (VIMAF) recently wrapped up its third annual event last week. This year’s festival ran from the 6 – 11 of November and hosted a number of events across downtown Vancouver, with venues ranging from the Central Library to SFU Woodwards to the NFB. The festival is an opportunity for indigenous artists working in the field to showcase their works, and perhaps even more importantly, for the public to engage with these artists in the issues surrounding indigeneity in a contemporary context.

While the works featured and the topics discussed at VIMAF may diverge from traditional indigenous artistic expression, the organizers of the festival stress the underlying element that ties together the variety of works showcased over the course of the week: storytelling. In this sense, new media technologies have provided indigenous artists with a new venue, a new voice in which to relate their histories, traditions, and contemporary issues with not just their own communities, but with the wider public.

The festival’s programming includes screenings, panel discussions, workshops and networking opportunities that help indigenous artists in the field to build personal and industry connections. Full details from this year’s festival can be found here.

Module #4 – Post #2: Beat Nation

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Beat Nation is a website that serves as a hub for several young, indigenous artists from across North America. The work of the artists featured on the site is extremely diverse – from music to graffiti, to video and photography to graphic design, poetry and multimedia. What unifies these artists’ works, if that can be said, is hip hop culture. The site’s producers, and many of the artists themselves, express a deep connection to hip hop culture, especially in terms of its origins within an oral, disenfranchised segment of the population, and the themes of resistance, survival and hope that are common in hip hop related works.

The works featured on the site certainly deviate from purely traditional forms of aboriginal art, primarily in their appropriation of materials, images, style – and most of all technology – that have non-Native origins. However, as Glenn Alteen, the produce of Beat Nation argues, “these artists are not turning away from the traditions as much as searching for new ways into them.” Indeed, as you peruse the various artists (categorized into music, visual/multimedia, prose/poetry), a strong sense of pride in Indigenous culture and tradition is quite evident, as is the struggle to establish a sense of contemporary Indigenous voice and identity.

As with the First Peoples’ Arts Map, Beat Nation provides a unique opportunity for Aboriginal artists from across the country and continent to connect with others with common artistic goals and to showcase their work to a large audience. The popularity of hip hop outside of Indigenous circles makes this particular movement and body of work even more appealing to those who might not otherwise take an interest in Indigenous issues.

Module #4 – Post #1: First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation

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The ‘About’ page on the First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation website provides a succinct description of their organization and mandate:

The First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable public organization that generates support and funding for Aboriginal and First Nations artists, First Nations communities, First Nations cultural organizations, and First Nations educational organizations. We support grassroots efforts to revitalize the Indigenous arts, languages and cultures unique to British Columbia, Canada.

In turn, the foundation has funded millions of dollars into BC First Nations arts and culture, providing the much needed resources to help revitalize and sustain indigenous culture in the province. This includes funding for projects in language revitalization and multi-generational cultural initiatives, in addition to funding grants for individual artists and organizations.

One of the site’s features that I found useful was the First Peoples Art Map, an interactive map that pinpoints the locations of contemporary First Nations artists, organizations and events across the province. Each pin provides a hyperlink to a biography and website for each artist or organization, as well as images and other related information. I feel that this particular tool allows indigenous artists in particular an opportunity to effectively network and showcase their work in a way that connects the artist to the wider arts community.

Module #3 – Post #5: A.I.R.S. Art Project

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As part of the Truth and Reconciliation Week in Vancouver this past September, survivors of the Alberni Indian Residential School were honoured in a ceremony that formally announced the return of an important link to their past: their art.

The former art teacher at the school had kept approximately 80 pieces of artwork created by students over 40 years ago, which were bequeathed to the University of Victoria upon his death. As part of the TRC initiative, the university set out to locate the surviving artists and their families to return the works to their rightful owners.

As Chief Councillor Jeff Cook acknowledges in his speech, the art classroom was, for many children, the only escape from the regimented schedule and demands of life in a residential school. Considering that many children upon first arriving at a residential school could not speak English (or French), art provided them with an opportunity to express themselves non-verbally. From the collection that the university acquired, several recurring themes and images appear, from depictions of their communities, the land and way of life, to expressing emotions surrounding life in the residential school.

The artwork not only provides us with a greater sense of how children perceived their experiences at residential schools, but as Cook points out, is valuable for the survivors to confront as a means of reconciling their pasts.

Watch the entire ceremony here. The presentation by the University of Victoria and Chief Councillor Jeff Cook begins around the 21:45 mark.

Module #3 – Post #4: Urban Thunderbirds/Ravens in a Material World

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An exhibit of contemporary west coast First Nations art kicked off at The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria on September 20 and runs until the 12th of January. The show features work by Salish artists LessLIE and Dylan Thomas, and Kwakwaka’wakw artists Rande Cook and Francis Dick.

Co-curated by LessLIE and Cook, the exhibit seeks to shed awareness of the urban landscape in which many contemporary First Nations artists inhabit. LessLIE hopes that the exhibit will have an impact on the oftentimes static perception of Aboriginal art and to encourage more critical discourse regarding the social and cultural commentary inherent in much of contemporary Aboriginal art.

Victoria’s Times Colonist ran an interview with the two curators that can be read here, and a few preview images from the exhibit can be seen here.

Module #3 – Post #3: Coastal Art Beat

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Coastal Art Beat is an online newsletter that has been published every month since its inception in 2007. The site and newsletter was conceived by Ann Cameron, who identified a need for a greater awareness of the indigenous arts scene in BC in particular. The site spotlights a number of different events each month, mostly in the visual arts. Taking a glance at this months spotlights, it’s easy to see that a demand and interest for Aboriginal art is perhaps greater than I had anticipated, and the range of works being exhibited, from traditional to contemporary, is quite diverse.

This month’s lead article spotlights the Charles Edenshaw exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery that just opened last week. Edenshaw was a tremendously influential Haida artist around the turn of the century, which for the Haida was a time of great distress due to the number of deaths from diseases and the extremely restrictive colonial policies that attempted to extinguish Haida and other indigenous cultures from the map. With that background context in mind, it will be interesting to see how the exhibit demonstrates the artist’s process, emotions and reactions to the issues that were directly affecting his life and people.

Module #3 – Post #2: Art and Wellness

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“Art and Wellness: The Importance of Art for Aboriginal Peoples’ Health and Healing” is a document prepared for the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health by Alice Muirhead and Sarah de Leeuw. The document outlines the benefits of art therapy as a means of improving mental and physical health in Aboriginal communities, in addition to its role in reviving traditional Aboriginal arts.

Muirhead and de Leeuw argue that art therapy methods help patients to relax and to gain enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence as a result of the creative process, which ranges from conception to the development of a final product that can be shared with others. The authors also point out that many traditional Aboriginal arts are collaborative in nature, which assists in building and strengthening relationships between individuals and the community.

An important benefit of art therapy in promoting wellness in Aboriginal populations in particular, is the opportunity for patients to express themselves in ways that might not be perceived as threatening. Some Aboriginal cultures view the doctor/patient model as an inequitable balance of power, and patients are reluctant to speak truly about their experiences. Art, therefore, provides a more accessible middle ground, where feelings can be expressed in non-verbal and potentially more indirect means.

Module #3 – Post #1 – Healing Through Creative Arts

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The document “Dancing, Singing, Painting and Speaking the Healing Story: Healing Through Creative Art” written by Linda Archibald with Jonathan Dewar, Carrie Reid, and Vanessa Stevens provides a summary of research conducted between 2009 and 2010. Commissioned by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the study emerged out of a desire to address the effects and legacy of the residential school system. The study was built upon the notion that research “points to evidence that cultural activities are legitimate and successful healing interventions,” perhaps even more so for a population that had for generations been largely robbed of its ability to maintain and connect with aspects of their cultural identity.

The core research question the authors posed was: “What happens when art, music, dance, storytelling, and other creative arts become apart of community-based Aboriginal healing programs?.” The research involved surveys and interviews with Aboriginal participants from across Canada, and also included an art-therapy workshop.

The premise of the research is also rooted in Western-based art therapy, with the notion that due to the impact of colonial practices on Aboriginal peoples in Canada, that they suffer from “historic trauma,” and a collective post traumatic stress disorder. By reconnecting Aboriginal groups with their language, traditions, spirituality and knowledge, the hope is that a process of healing can begin.

Check out the full details and findings of the research here.