- Briefly explain why you selected this as ‘raw material’ to search for how Indigeneity and Indigenous people are represented in texts that make up our knowledge about and understanding of the history of education in the locale you chose. Explain how this text might have impacted either educational history or Teacher Professional Development.
Although I currently work as an in-house educator within a provincial government organization, my undergrad degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University, and my interest in education stems from a special topic course I took that focused on art and education. The class was about significant schools in modern art education, such as the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, but also works of art and specific artists that concentrated on pedagogical themes or even pedagogy as a medium. From this course, and through anecdotal bits and pieces picked up throughout my time at Emily Carr, I gathered that the Vancouver art scene in the 1960s was an exciting and experimental time; and, that many of the key artists were associated with two (somewhat in competition) schools: The Vancouver School of Art (now known as Emily Carr University) and the University of British Columbia.
In a search for documents about this time in Vancouver and British Columbia’s art history, I came across this text by Marian Penner Bancroft (2009) on the archival website Vancouver Art in the Sixties titled, UBC in the Sixties: A Conversation with Audrey Capel Doray, Gathie Falk, Donald Gutstein, Karen Jamieson, Glenn Lewis, Jamie Reid and Abraham Rogatnick. As the title suggests, the text captures an informal conversation, and is perhaps a transcript of an audio recording.
I was curious as to whether the conversation discussed or referenced Northwest Coast Indigenous art works, artists, or their cultural influence as my understanding of how this art was perceived and recognized at this specific time is limited. It’s important to note, that the Vancouver Art in the Sixties site exhibits another essay by Marcia Crosby (2009) titled Making Indian Art “Modern”, that is specifically about Indigenous art in Vancouver in the 60s, but my interest was in gauging the prevalence of Indigenous art and culture by reviewing a casual (albeit lengthy) conversation about the general scene at that time.
- Identify a specific question you want to answer by selecting and searching this text. What is your search intended (or hoping) to illuminate?
As stated, my understanding of Indigenous art in Vancouver during the 60s is limited – but I remember learning there was a push for Indigenous art to be seen as contemporary art as opposed to artifact and I hoped that a shift in the perception of Indigenous art would be reflected in the conversation. As the 60s was a time of political and cultural revolution, I also thought there may be reference to influence or inspiration from the many Indigenous cultures that exist on the unceded land where British Columbia is located.
- Identify and explain the search terms you will use.
See below for the terms searched and the resulting hits:
- Indian – 1
“I also remember a West Indian steel drum band coming — do you remember that?” (Bancroft, p. 6, 2009).
- Indigenous – 2
“Two people that I wanted to mention in this context are Al Neil and bill bissett because there was this indigenous art movement — I call it indigenous because it was the people here who were doing it. It was of course influenced by all the trends from outside, but the art that came out of Vancouver and the West Coast has its own distinctive character” (Bancroft, p. 36, 2009).
- Aboriginal – 0
- First Nations – 0
- Native – 0
I decided to add two more terms to broaden my search. As there was much discussion of people from various places across North America, I included Métis, and because Inuit printmaking (particularly from Cape Dorset) was prevalent in the 1960s onward, I included Inuit.
- Métis – 0
- Inuit – 0
- Create a new question, and any additional search term/terms you think might be illuminating.
A major theme of this text is who’s who and from where: who was active at this time, and where did they come from or who they were connected to (such as other well-known artists, collectives or schools). There are mentions of connections to the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ties to other parts of eastern Canada, but the conversation largely focuses on ties to the Unites States (“America”) and specifically the West Coast (San Francisco). So, with no mention of the Indigenous art and culture of the region, what other places/cultures were most topical in this conversation?
- Vancouver – 36
- America – 27
- Canad* – 24
- New York – 12
- San Francisco – 10
- Toronto – 9
- West Coast – 4
- England – 4
- Orient/oriental – 4
- Venice – 3
- German* – 2
- Zen – 2
- Paris – 2
- Japan – 1
- Search and document what you find.
See above.
- Report the results (and limitations) of your search and your analysis of those results.
The retrospective conversational text of these artists does not make any direct reference to Indigenous art or culture in 1960s Vancouver. I searched the terms, Indian; Indigenous; Aboriginal; First Nations; and Native and added in Métis; and Inuit to broaden the search, but even with limited (yet irrelevant) hits, the results were negative. I also read the whole text and other than what is mentioned below, no additional contextual references to British Columbia’s Indigenous art and culture were apparent.
The term “Indian” has 1 result but references “a West Indian steel drum band,” (Bancroft, p. 6, 2009). otherwise known as the West Indies, not peoples indigenous to British Columbia. The term “Indigenous” has 2 results but at a closer look, does not appear to refer to indigeneity in the context sought:
“Two people that I wanted to mention in this context are Al Neil and bill bissett because there was this indigenous art movement — I call it indigenous because it was the people here who were doing it. It was of course influenced by all the trends from outside, but the art that came out of Vancouver and the West Coast has its own distinctive character.”
My rapid internet searching concluded that Vancouver-based poet, bill bissett (bill bissett, 2009) is not himself Indigenous, though perhaps inspired by Indigenous culture and aesthetics, and Al Neil (Al Neil, 2009), while apparently born in Vancouver, also does not appear to be genealogically connected to any Indigenous peoples of the Northwest. Unless my hurried research is incorrect, in this instance, and at the time of this text (2009) the term ‘indigenous’ is used in a troublesome way and could have been avoided.
It’s unfortunate that throughout the conversation there was no direct reference to indigenous culture in Vancouver in the 60s, but it isn’t surprising. This text read about a time when Vancouver was positioning itself within the global art world – connecting itself to major players: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, Andy Warhol, R. Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg – just some of the largely famous names dropped, names that are prevalent in art and cultural history courses throughout the world. Perhaps in the 1960s, Vancouver was focused on becoming its own distinct entity, explicitly separate and unique from domineering America, but in it an attempt to be noticed for something new, failed to fully acknowledge and embrace crucial parts of itself.
References
Al Neil. (2009, January 2). Vancouver Art in the Sixties. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from https://alneil.vancouverartinthesixties.com/
Bancroft, M. (2009). UBC in the Sixties: A conversation with Audrey Capel Doray, Gathie Falk, Donald Gustein, Karen Jamieson, Glenn Lewis, Jamie Reid, and Abraham Rogatnick. Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties.
Bill Bissett. (2009, June 1). Vancouver Art in the Sixties. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from http://vancouverartinthesixties.com/people/13
Crosby, M. (2009). Making Indian Art ‘Modern’. Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties.