September 12 - December 15, 2019
Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph, ON.
Glenna Cardinal & seth cardinal dodginghorse
Winner of the 2019 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators
Review by Juliee Raj for Peripheral Review
The connection that many Indigenous peoples and groups have with the land is more than property to be owned or a place to live: land is the root of Indigenous epistemologies. It is how we know what we know; we learn how to live from and within the land and the ecosystem. The teachings that are learned from the land permeate all aspects of life: from spirituality to social systems to governance to interpersonal relationships. The dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their traditional territories pre-empts Indigenous sovereignty and is tantamount to epistemicide.
The colonial conflict between the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples over land rights has been happening across Turtle Island since the advent of colonization. The highly publicized Oka crisis in 1990 and the current dispute on the Wet'suwet'en territory in central British Columbia illustrate the ongoing colonial violence and epistemicide of Indigenous peoples in exchange for capital gain.
On November 27, 2013 the Tsuut’ina Nation and Government of Alberta signed a land transfer agreement for the Southwest leg of the Calgary Ring Road project [1]. The agreement transferred 1058 acres of reserve land from the Tsuut’ina Nation to the Government of Alberta in exchange for 5018 acres of crown land and $340.7 million, which included $65.7 million to cover impacts the land transfer and development will have on the reserve, such as expenses incurred from replacing or moving Nation housing [2].
Tina Guyani | Deer Road is an exhibition of new work by Glenna Cardinal and seth cardinal dodginghorse, residents of Tsuut’ina Nation, and mother and son, whose works speak to the human impacts of land development on First Nations land. Although Cardinal is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, she traces her maternal lineage six generations back to the Tsuut’ina Nation. After the Land Transfer Agreement between the Tsuut’ina Nation and the Government of Alberta was implemented, Cardinal was given two weeks’ notice that her familial home, where her, her siblings, and her children grew up, was to be moved from their land and her family was to be displaced.
Through the use of mixed media installations, new media works, and performance, Cardinal and cardinal dodginghorse work through the psychological and emotional impacts of being forcibly removed from their land and seeing their home, both dwelling and land, sold and destroyed and replaced with an eight-lane highway. Tina Guyani | Deer Road addresses dispossession from an Indigenous perspective; such dispossession is not sequestered to Tsuut’ina, it is one example of the effects of colonialism across Canada. Yet, from these artists’ work, stories of loss can be a generative grounds upon which better futures for Indigenous people and better futures for the land and all its inhabitants can be imagined.
Notes
[1] Government of Alberta, Ministry of Transportation, Calgary Ring Road. https://www.transportation.alberta.ca/804.htm
[2] Government of Alberta, Ministry of Transportation, 2013 Agreement Tsuut’ina Nation – Alberta. http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/2480.htm and Government of Alberta, Ministry of Transportation, Final Agreement, November 27, 2013. http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/content/docType52/production/Agreement.pdf
Banner Image: Glenna Cardinal, Winnie & Elsie, Ina series (detail), 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.