Non-Colonial Indigenous Public Art

Following final reports from The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019), and ongoing revelations of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential School sites, Canada blooms with Indigenous memorials and public art. Too often, however, these works, and the committees that select them, reproduce colonial habits. They present Aboriginal appearance rather than embody Indigenous engagement. Methodologies to assist folks develop Indigenous public art as a form of conciliation exist. For example, Dawn Saunders Dahl and Candice Hopkins’ generative labour with the Edmonton Arts Council that resulted in the Indigenous Art Park ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ (2016)¹https://www.edmontonarts.ca/public-art/about-public-art Also see Dawn Saunders Dahl’s work with the Ottawa Public Library and other Indigenous public art projects. https://www.dawnsaundersdahl.ca/biography-cv
https://www.studiomagazine.ca/articles/2020/1/edmonton-indigenous-art-park and protocols which continue to inform that city’s policies. However, these concepts and practices are not well known or universally applied. Devising non-colonial Indigenous public art and policy is as much a challenge for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis artists as it is for the organizations who commission them.

Colonial public art amplifies Settler colonial ideology and reinforces the status of its preferred members. Military memorials, statues of political leaders and heroes, murals with hints of the favoured religion, public art about victory, capital and progress abound. In Canada, these stone, metal, and painted faces are mostly white. Non-Euro-Canadian folks are included as foils of whiteness or if they represent the ideals of their dominant culture commissioners. Modernist public art, on the other hand, expresses a distaste for the political, preferring to celebrate individual creativity. Modernist public art works are often enlarged versions of studio art—inflated Moores, Oldenbergs, Picassos, etc.—or anti-social, non-objective refusals in polished, painted, or rusting steel: Calder, Caro, Serra, etc. Typically chosen by studio artists, curators and patrons, rather than by committees trained in the public art genre, they may be fine works of art but less successful as works of public art.

Canada is slowly shifting from colonial and modernist public art to non-colonial and Indigenous public art. In cities with diverse populations, with 1% programs and arms-length arts councils, civic art is increasingly a collaboration of artists and citizens. Rather than install international art star trophies that claim universal qualities (or at least have brand recognition), these projects value site specificity and community engagement. While ‘art by committee’ can result in inoffensive placeholders (rather than place makers), technovelties, design team art, and populist pleasures that could come from anywhere and be placed anywhere else, with deep community engagement and leadership, we can nurture art that expresses meanings dear to a specific region. Such art does not impose a ‘universal’, nationalist, or colonial aesthetics and ideology on locals. Locals generate the work with artists to express meanings unique to them and their site. This strategy requires special and on-going training in advancements in civic art and community building. Public art in this vein emerges from the land, from the people who live there. While informed by academics, the art world, and Indigenous communities, these gatherings and works include but exceed their sources.

I distinguish customary/traditional cultural production from Aboriginal art and from Indigenous art. Customary creative work is rooted in a specific traditional culture and that community regulates its production, circulation, and meanings. Aboriginal art is art made by Native people primarily for the non-Native art world and that market regulates its production, circulation, and meanings. Indigenous art is a relatively new category. It emerges from, and circulates among, traditional cultures and the mainstream art world, but it also has its own international web of curation, scholarship, criticism, and publics that include and exceed its sources.
Many folks who make customary creative work are uncomfortable calling themselves ‘artists.’ Not out of modesty, but because the word implies Euro-Canadian traditions of display and disuse that are antithetical to their traditional modes. First Nations languages have words for individual creative practices but not for the meta-concept ‘art’. Many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people comfortable with the title ‘artist’ have adopted and adapted Western art traditions. They use European tools and techniques and participate in mainstream art economies. They make Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art is post-contact creative work made by Natives for the non-Native market. The form, subject matter, and/or content of Aboriginal art may derive from the artist’s nation, or not. Unregulated by their home community, they often ‘borrow’ form and content from other First Peoples’ cultures. Because they swim in the mainstream art world, they are subject to Settler control and criticism.

Indigenous art exists in a third space among and apart from customary culture and mainstream art worlds. Indigenous artists belong to traditional communities but are also cosmopolitan. They strive to access their home community, language, customary creative practices, mediums, and knowledge. However, they also connect with other Indigenous folks within the state that colonized them and with Indigenous people around the world. While most train in non-Indigenous institutions, a growing number go to First Nations art schools or cobble together an Indigenous art education within dominant culture institutions. The Indigenous art world is a local, national and inter-National web of artists, curators, writers, professors, galleries, publications, and virtual spaces. Though Indigenous cultural workers often work with dominant culture institutions, they are committed to their transformation. Others prioritize sovereign Indigenous display territories. All strive to manage the means of production, display, and critique of their art (Indigenous creative sovereignty). Indigenous public art, then, is not just public art made by Indigenous artists. Indigenous art is inseparable from the maker’s networks of traditional and Indigenous thought, experience, communities, teachings, materials, and methods.

The colonial modernist art world encouraged Native artists to free themselves from the material specificity of their nation. They were to be world citizens, free-floating signifiers, picking and choosing images of Indianess from their own and from other cultures and weaving them into a personal style (Pan-Indianism). Following Euro-Canadian training, they granted themselves ‘artistic licence’, the (imperial/colonial) authority to ‘borrow’ and adapt imagery from other Peoples without permission or protocol. The assumption was that because they are Aboriginal, they have licence to every cultural property under that category. This is the quantification fallacy. A logical error that assumes that a part possesses the qualities of the whole or another part. What looked to some like creative liberation was inauthentic, cliché, even assimilation for others. Settler public art committees perpetuate this habit when they commission an Aboriginal artist rather than an artist from a specific First Nation, or when they engage an Indigenous artist but not the network of Indigenous cultural managers needed to support them. As Indigenous folks increasingly engage the academy, art galleries, heritage museums, public art committees, and other cultural management spaces, they rethink and remake these institutions. They also look inward and homeward to challenge Native art production. While customary cultures promote conservation and reproduction, Indigenous art promotes innovation and experimentation while in relation to tradition and community.

Inuitness is a birthright. Indigeneity, however, is an (ad)option. Membership requires conscious choice, abiding by collective agreements, and providing and receiving critical care. For example, Indigenous protocols prohibit cultural misappropriation—taking without permission from cultures not your own.²Most appropriations of mainstream culture by Indigenous folks is sanctioned if the artist is bi-cultural, raised in their culture and in the dominant culture.
Garneau, David. “Apropos Appropriate Appropriations: After the Apologies.” Art Monthly Australia. #229, Dec. 2009. 27-9.
Garneau, David. “Thoughts on Inappropriate Appropriations.” Contemporary Visual Art and
Culture: Broadsheet. Parkside, South Australia. Volume 38:2. June-Aug. 2009. 132. Indigenous protocols honour the pro-democracy and disability activist slogan “nothing about us without us.”³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_about_us_without_us Accessed Nov. 10, 2023. ⁴The Canadian Artist’s Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC) recently published, Indigenous Protocols for the Visual Arts, a guidebook on this subject https://www.indigenousprotocols.art/ Accessed Nov. 10, 2023. These agreements apply to Indigenous artists and the Settlers who wish to engage them. Prior to these guidelines, Settler somebodies would invite Aboriginal any bodies to install art on territory belonging to neither. The classic case is totem poles planted beyond their homelands. As a centennial project (1967), British Columbia gifted totem poles to cities in every province and territory. What looked like Haida cultural imperialism was actually Settler co-option of Haida symbols for their own nationalist purposes. When totem poles waned in popularity, inukshuks took over. They sprouted across Northern Turtle Island like mushrooms following the Vancouver Olympic rain. Canada routinely deploys traditional Native art as its visual brand, as markers of Settler, not Native, sovereignty. In the non-colonial Indigenous period, it is unthinkable to install a Haida sculpture in, say Toronto, without the permission and cooperation of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Selecting a work of First Nations, Inuit, or Métis art for a civic space is only easy when you choose not to comprehend its extra-aesthetic meanings.

The surge in demand for Indigenous public art is not an aesthetic drive. It is political. Cities, libraries, universities, and other civic institutions race to install Indigenous art as a self-conscious form of (re)conciliation. It is a broad social movement supported by private individuals and corporations, numerous public institutions, the Canada Council for the Arts, and every level of government.⁵Examples abound. For example: https://canadacouncil.ca/initiatives/reconciliation Accessed
Nov. 1, 2023. In a deep sense, any Native presence in public space is always already political. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis public objects and bodies are land claims reminding everyone who the original keepers of these territories are. We are the unturned pages of Canada’s “dark chapters.” From a Settler point of view, almost any Native authored artwork could fill the reconciliation bill. Organizations wanting only to (virtue) signal ‘Native’ rather than more deeply engage First Nations, Inuit, and Métis ways of knowing, being, and doing often choose customary art. Customary/traditional art works have meaning for its makers and nations; however, when removed from their context, they may only signify, for example, Deneness, Haudenosauneeness, or Mi'kmaqness to non-Indigenous people. Customary work is an excellent way to flag whose territory you are on, but, on their own, they are muted warriors. They need extensive display cards, websites, curatorial programs, and visiting, to release their deeper meanings, to activate their agency. Customary art is a safe strategy for Settlers because they rarely raise difficult contemporary issues. It is a means for Settlers to ‘make space’ for Native display without disturbing either the source culture or their own.

Most of us are bicultural and as distorted by non-Indigenous culture as Settlers are. Great effort is required to decolonize our imaginaries, learn our traditional knowledge, and develop Indigenous contemporary art. Artists cannot do it alone. If our work is to be more than red washing, if there is a genuine desire for conciliation and to include First Peoples and sensibilities in the public visual vocabulary of these territories, then First Nations, Inuit, and Métis artists, communities, Settlers, and public art committees, need resources, mentorship, and time.

Dawn Saunders Dahl and Candice Hopkins’ work with the Edmonton Arts Council was so successful because they slowed the process and funded it generously. They took years rather than months to nurture the Indigenous Art Park ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞, and directed half the budget to artist and community development. They understood that the expanded field of Indigenous public art includes communities. It is about capacity building and not just about building the next big thing. Rather than have the usual open call, sift through proposals and pick a winner, Saunders Dahl, Hopkins and the Edmonton Arts Council brought prospective artists from across Canada to meet with each other, Elders, and other community partners. I attended. We heard stories and histories on the land where the sculptures would abide. Even though I was born and raised there, and my family’s river lot (#7) was nearby, most of what I heard was new. Many of the artists described the process as transformative. One explained that they came with an idea in mind similar to what they had made elsewhere. After two days of listening, however, many more and site-appropriate concepts arose. A few years later, I won the public art commission for the nearby Tawatina Bridge. Visits with Elders, knowledge keepers, and other community members fueled the 543 paintings my team and I made for the Bridge. The community connections I made during the Art Park visits made these visits easier. Because of their experience with Hopkins, the Edmonton Arts Council folks, and visiting artists from across Canada, local Cree, Métis, and Settlers felt listened to, respected and useful. They also had confidence because they understood something about contemporary public art, and the special challenges of Indigenous public art. They were eager to assist a new project.

The foundation of public art in the non-colonial Indigenous era is the understanding that Indigenous public art commissions are not favours granted to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis artists and communities by a benevolent Settler society. This era appreciates that First Peoples are members of the public. Underserved and misrepresented members who deserve to publically represent their history and culture according to means, methods, and materials that best express those ways of knowing and being. I am advocating for Indigenous public art that if durable is neither a work of customary tribal culture nor western modernist art by an Aboriginal artist, but hybrids that resist easy categorization and capture. Following the TRC’s 83^rd Call to Action,⁶Garneau, David. “The 83rd Call to Action: Indigenous/Settler Art Collaborations explored.” Rungh magazine, Vol. 9, # 3, 2022. https://rungh.org/the-83rd-call-to-action/ I advocate for collaborations between Indigenous people of diverse nations, and between Natives and non-Natives, especially other-than-European folks who can perhaps better help us see our way through to non-colonial futures. I am especially suggesting that we need to rethink permanence, and embrace Plains traditions of the temporary and renewable, of performance and ritual, visiting and revisiting, and to see public art as a relationship between people and special things.

Note: This essay is excerpted from a chapter commissioned for a forthcoming book (publication date: November 2024) on Evergreen's public art program, published by Art Metropole and edited by Kari Cwynar.