St-Henri's Indigenous Murals

Reflections on Unceded Voices

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Hoop Dance, Mural by Aura & Chief Lady Bird, Unceded Voices, 2017 Artist: Chief Lady Bird and Aura

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The hoops remind me of so-called Canada and how false an overarching understanding of it as a homogenous nation or “white community” is. Rather, much like the hoops of different colours, Canada is currently and has been comprised of many interconnecting communities. 

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This photo recalls Tania Willard’s essay “Reading Divergent Indigenous Art Through the Rive of my Own Blood Memory”  in the catalogue accompanying an exhibition by the same name: Insurgence/Resurgence.  Willard writes about the meaning of the figure of the thunderbird in Corlett’s Electricity Blanket– Crest Prototype 004, stating:

“The blanket design thus becomes a vehicle for the research and resurgence of this crest through a present-day understanding of the power of the Thunderbird in the spirit of electricity. This work both lies upon the body as a protection and conducts the culture, spirit, and family of the imagined dancer, and the symbolic current of the Thunderbird’s power—lightning and electricity—which can also be understood as self-similar branching structures.” (124)

I think this quote is quite remarkable in relation to this mural by Chief Lady Bird and Aura as it resonates with the affective sombreness yet deep power that is represented. The dynamism is palpable and though her body is covered in tags her face shows strength within.The branching structures are also utilized in the flowers on either side of the transforming hoop dancer reifying the motif of interconnectedness and self-growth. 

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The thunderbird not only represents that the body is cable of metamorphosis as it is a temporary housing for the essence of a being but also illuminates how Indigenous cultural knowledge is constantly informing a visual sovereignty. Joelene Rickard writes about several Indigenous artists in North America and how they have applied “artistic sovereignty to the decolonization of the landscape genre in their art.” (471) I bring this quotation in from Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors because it champions the importance of this mural on intervening on colonial architecture as a way to  “decolonize” through the sharing of cultural knowledge. 

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Untitled, Mural by Dayna Danger & Jessica Canard, Unceded Voices,  2017

Artist: Jessica Canard and Danya Danger

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A Poem for the Roaming

Buffalo Making them roam beside the cars taking highways instead of well-worn footpaths Blue, yellow, eyes clouded Humming of engines replace the trampling of hooves like a Philip Glass sound piece Visibility queered I’ve never seen a buffalo before

I speculate on what they are thinking, stuck to a wall Nowhere to run to, forming a local resistance Sitting between they were and what is A remembrance and retelling Looking through a mashup of signifiers Urban reality unravelling into the past

A feelings of paradoxical subject hood Between metal polluting hunks and painted codes of poverty Like two lovers not afraid to be seen

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I propose that this collaborative mural transforms from a parking lot to a liminal space. Danger and Canard intervene into this unassuming corner of a rundown road in St-Henri and confront people with what has been lost. This liminal space stands in-between settler architecture and Indigenous generational knowledge. It raises the question: Where did all the bison go? My thoughts resonate with Julie Nagam’s examination of the implications of Indigenous stories. Specifically in “Charting Indigenous Stories of Place” Nagam writes how stories “Are bound by particular histories of conquest, capitalism and colonialism. It is the connections between stories, place, landscape and nations that create the conditions of Native space.”  (179) With this in mind, this space no longer resides as neutral but rather as a site-specific gesture of Indigenous self-determination. 

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Mural on right: White Supremacy is Killing Me, Jessica Sabogal, Unceded Voices, 2017

Artist: Jessica Sabogal

Mural on left: Untitled, Shanna Strauss, Unceded Voices, 2017

Artist: Shanna Strauss

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“Historical images of Aboriginal people have kept us in a frame that renders us still and voiceless; this tradition of visual representation has had considerable long-term effects.” Quote from Julie Nagam, “Charting Indigenous Stories of Place” (191).

This photograph represents the duality of white-settler relations and Indigenous self-determination. The photo obscures what can be read on the mural behind the statue of Louis Cyr a historic French Canadian strongman. I made this choice intentionally because of the previous violent attacks on the mural where red paint was splashed across it. ln doing so, I do not aim to recreate this act but instead act as a token of remembrance to the precariousness of Indigenous voices and how easily it can be hidden.

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A Poem About Settler Responsibility

Addressing modes of genocide in the middle of gentrifying streets Supersaturated with tags and shopping carts A legacy of fantasy and pleasure A fictionalized nation Artists as curating politics Crafting an alternative to the sanctioned

Do you feel this white guilt too? Oh wait – that’s Eurocentric A history to the chosen Rising consciousness This is what I am aiming for Not an arbiter of negative solidarity

“White supremacy is killing us” “Fuck racism” A beacon of self-determination Chronicling civil rights Voices finally embraced by the cold air of the city Silence will not protect you

Representational justice Validating Community of care Making space Undermining the survival of insidious racism

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Ending my travels I turned around to take another look at the statue I’ve passed thousands of times. I started laughing, someone had made this muscular man a joke with a sparkly bow on his behind. Although there is no way of knowing who placed it there, its juxtaposition with the two murals from Unceded Voices continues to inform a sense of Indigenous space. Jaimie Isaac and Dr. Julie Nagam writes in “Reverberations, Vibrations, Echoes That Invigorate The Stone Fortress” from INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE about humour as an Indigenous methodology in Linus Woods’s painting, After the Next Ice Age in Long Plain Res stating: “Strong connections to land and place permeate this work, showing us how Indigenous people adapt to ever-changing environmental, cultural, social, and political landscapes. Woods asserts the survival of a resilient people with a sense of humour.” (19) I use this quote to aid my speculation of the ornamentation this canonical figure in Quebec history as a discursive critique either by Indigenous people/person or those who also desire a re-imagining of what is. 

Regardless, its site-specificity illuminates the resistance of the mural by Sabogal and Canard as not only something to be unsettled by but also as a place for more complex emotional labour that brings together a multiplicity of resiliency. 

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Settler Responsibility pt. 2

Reading Dot Tuer’s chapter “The Art of Nation-Building: Constructing a Cultural Indenity for Post-War Canada” in Mining the Media Archive I was struck at her use of Susan Crean’s writing regarding governmental policies. In particular, her assessment of Canada’s cultural policy is that it produces cultural “‘inferiority and dependence’.” (96) Having a minor in political science from my undergraduate degree, I was struck at how incongruent the Canadian political system was with Indigenous beliefs and practices. I attended a lecture by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for Indigenous Awareness Week in 2015 at McGill University. She stated that the government sanctioning Indigenous people to practice their cultural traditions is meaningless. At the time that sentiment sat uneasy with me. I believe in the power of arts to enact political change! However, reflecting on Tuer’s text helps me unpack Simpson’s position. Her stance is cushioned in the systematic appropriation and oppression of Indigenous cultural resurgences rather than a lack within the artworks themselves. 

With this dialectic in mind, I was still unsettled by the defacement of these murals. In particular, it seemed like only the Unceded Voices’ murals were graffitied. Others on business walls and in empty parking lot their creations were not defaced, so why these? I still do not have the answer although I like to suggest it has something to do with white supremacy but instead of feeling the waves of white guilt wash over me unproductively, I decided to act. Jaimie Isaac and Dr. Julie Nagam’s discussion of building relationships and the possibilities for “inciting settler responsibility, creating space for accomplices, refugees, and newcomers.” (14) By writing to my city counselor, I was aspiring to get some answers on the discrepancy I had found. I wrote it not expecting a reply but knew it was better than complacency. Maybe if people were trying to cover Unceded Voices I could help amplify them?

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Albeit surprised to receive a response I was still profoundly disturbed by the lack of care given to these gestures of visual sovereignty. Returrning to Rickard’s Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors, she highlights the “need to expand art criticism and visual theory to include a discourse read across Indigeneity, colonization, and sovereignty.” (471) I believe that the reply of my city counsellor, Craig Sauvé epitomizes why there is a profound need to expand how street art is appreciated. 

In the other post on this blog, I wrote about how impactful Unceded Voices murals are to countering the continued erasure of Indigeneity and the continuation of the legacy of violent colonization. I believe the the city needs to look past this idea of “illegal or guerilla” murals because it returns to the idea that value comes from institutional approval rather than its affective ability. Although my time for this project has come to an end, I will be pressing this further with my borough in efforts to educate them on the remarkability of the labour preformed by the members of Unceded Voices.  

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