Submitted to the 2019 Canadian Art Writing Prize and was selected as a runner-up
Read the announcement here
The late winter sun slowly fades behind the buildings as I make my way into Untitled Art Society in downtown Calgary. The smell of homemade stew drifts through the air along with the hum of quite conversations. Illuminated by the fading light of a chilly February evening, surrounded by friends—old and new—we gather to take part in ceremony and to give a gift.
Growing up, I was taught that the act of gifting—be it an object or knowledge—was one of the major structuring principles of nêhiyaw culture, as it is for many other Indigenous groups. We were gifted the Seven Teachings; we give tobacco to Mother Earth before we take anything from her as a gesture of respect and thanks; we give what we can after ceremony; and when we learn a new skill, we gift the first thing that is created with that skill. The act of gifting is more important that the gift itself, it is an act that pays respect to kinship bonds and honours the Creator’s gift of life.
“Mekinawewin, to give a gift” is a multi-layered, continuous project by Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal, with its first iteration taking place from January – March, 2019 at Untitled Art Society. The project, which is based in the artist’s nêhiyaw teachings of gifting, aims to dismantle and de-centre Eurocentric systems of knowledge while at the same time critiquing contemporary modes of exchange. Over the course of the three-month long project, Cardinal conducted a series of hand-pulled paper making workshops with various community groups and members. It was at one of these workshops that I was introduced to Cardinal’s project—one where members of Calgary’s small, but close, Indigenous arts community could share time and space. In alignment with nêhiyaw teachings of gift giving, the workshop participants were asked to gift the first paper they made back to the project.
Dog Days
Horse Days
Days of Industry
The smell of fresh pulp hangs in the air, while garden mulch, flowers, and chili flakes adorn the walls, embedded as hand-made offerings to history. These offerings, combined with hand-pulled paper made by previous workshop participants and Cardinal herself, were used to re-create a timeline for the land now known as Alberta that challenges Western conceptions of linear time. Cardinal combined Western and oral Indigenous histories to present a timeline of major moments of the Indigenous history of this land from creation to the present—no dates were included and moments are organized by the dominant technology. Cardinal’s re-orientation suggests a circular construction of time with “Dog Days” flowing into “Horse Days” and then into “Days of Industry”. Cardinal worked with Elders and Knowledge Keepers from Treaties 6, 7, and 8 First Nations in order to ground the project and to learn the oral histories of this land that are not included in the Western telling of history. “Mekinawewin” traces back to where we have come from and where we are going.
First Europeans appear in AB
Anti-Chinese riots
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada created
A piece of handmade paper with flower petals that bleed pink and purple stains like fireworks set ablaze in the night sky has Canada Centennial “celebrations” pinned to the top. In 1967, the Canadian nation state celebrated its centennial birthday with a yearlong observance. This celebration, like many other nationalist commemorative events, largely left out and ignored the fact that the history of this land runs far deeper and longer than 100 years. Since time immemorial, Indigenous people have been living here in so-called Canada, taking care of the land we live(d) on and share(d) with our non-human kin. Land that nourishes and sustains us. Land that we have been removed from, erased from, and often violently dispossessed.
Indigenous history has been re-written by colonizers and positioned within the dominant settler-colonial society as fact. Atrocities perpetrated by the Canadian State against Indigenous people living in this land that is now known as Canada have been hidden away and are nothing but footnotes in “Canada’s” history. Historical atrocities—such as the violent removal of Indigenous bodies from our ancestral territories—are mirrored and perpetuated to this day. These acts are not as anachronistic as history books would like people to believe. History is always written by the victor, or in this case, the oppressor. They decided what is and what is not important to write down, how to frame it, what to hide.
Why is the time consuming and laborious task to research and to speak about “Canada’s” colonial history and the effects that it has had on Indigenous people, historically and presently, is more often than not left to Indigenous people and Indigenous femmes in particular? This work can eat away at you, gnawing on your soul while your last bit of faith in the dominant society is chewed, spit out, and stepped on. This work should be done by settlers who hold privilege, those that have the resources (time, money, power, etc…), and institutions that have benefited and continue to benefit from the genocide of Indigenous people rather than Indigenous people who already have to do more labour in every aspect of their lives than their settler counterparts.
Cardinal’s re-telling and re-construction of the history of what is now known as Alberta in “Mekinawewin” is an act of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural reclamation. The research that Cardinal has done and continues to do for the project spans time and space. She has illuminated histories and stories that have long been ignored by the dominant settler-colonial society and have not been included in the prominent tale of “Alberta’s” history. Cardinal’s project gifts the history of this land—histories and stories that were gifted to her by Elders—to the participants of the workshops. Histories and stories that should not have had to be exhumed from the shame and trauma caused by colonization. Rather, these stories should have been passed down and embedded within us—Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike—to ground us to this land.
Cardinal handled these gifts with care, adorning the walls of the gallery with gifts given and received on hand-made offerings to the future, given freely and with tenderness.
Mekinawewin
Diyinogha dinisɁogha
Wakootsaayii
Dagu wîchakubi
Aittuusianik aitturlutin
To give a gift