Art and Reconciliation

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Detail of Lana Whiskeyjack’s acrylic painting, “I Love You," 2014

(still image from Beth Wishart MacKenzie’s film, “Lana Gets Her Talk,” 2017)

The highest-profile Indigenous art project to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary is undoubtedly Kent Monkman’s nationally touring painting exhibition, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience. His canvases angrily confront the sins of settler society.

Alberta artists Lana Whiskeyjack and Beth Wishart MacKenzie take a different approach.

Their film-and-art project does recall the horrors of residential schools. But the main thrust of pîkiskwe-speak – the Cree word is pronounced peek-squay and means speak – is to encourage dialogue, rather than provoke guilt. Call it reconciliation through friendly persuasion.

“In this time of reconciliation, pîkiskwe-speak seeks to engage host communities in conversations of reconciliation through art,” says a statement by the two artists. Their exploration of the enduring effects of the residential school system has the aim of “writing a new chapter, painting a new vision and creating a new protocol.”

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Lana Whiskeyjack works on “Lost My Talk,” a portrait of her late uncle, George

(still image from Beth Wishart MacKenzie’s film, “Lana Gets Her Talk,” 2017)

The project, partially financed by the Canada Council for the Arts through its special 150th anniversary fund, started a national tour last year and is now on the brink of stops in Yellowknife, Winnipeg and Regina.

Pîkiskwe-speak includes a 37-minute documentary film, Lana Gets Her Talk, about a sculpture Whiskeyjack made as a tribute to her late uncle, George, a Cree man who was badly scarred by his residential school experience, became indigent and died of alcohol poisoning.

Accompanying the film, made by Wishart MacKenzie, a Métis from Edmonton, is a series of Whiskeyjack’s paintings honouring various relatives.

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Lana Whiskeyjack, “Capun (Grandfather) Joshua” (detail), 2011

oil painting, 20" x 16" (photo by Paul Gessell)

An integral part of the tour are gatherings in which the artists can discuss issues raised in the film with the general public.

The film shows Whiskeyjack creating a mixed-media sculpture of her uncle’s face while discussing how residential schools tried to destroy Indigenous cultures and languages. The sculpture looks tormented, like a cross between masks made by the late Northwest Coast artist Beau Dick and the man in The Scream, an 1893 painting by Norway’s Edvard Munch.

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Lana Whiskeyjack, “Lost My Talk,” 2016

central panel of mixed-media triptych, 24" x 30" x 5" (photo by Rebecca Lippiatt)

“The film is based on my uncle but it’s really about me,” says Whiskeyjack.

The sculpture becomes part of Whiskeyjack’s own healing process as the confused child of a woman who survived residential school. The artist was largely raised by her grandmother on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation northeast of Edmonton.

Whiskeyjack says the project, in its initial cross-Canada stops, has been an excellent way for people to ask questions that help dispel misconceptions about Indigenous languages, cultures and traditions.

The project, she says, is a true “dialogue starter.” ■

Pîkiskwe-speak will be at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife from Oct. 18 to Nov. 10; at the Winnipeg Public Library’s Millennium branch from Dec. 1 to Jan. 13; and at the Regina Public Library in February. Lana Gets Her Talk will be screened at the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival in Calgary on Nov. 17.