Books Issue: Early Days

The McMichael no longer gathers totem poles by stealth

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Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael book cover (photo courtesy of McMichael Canadian Art Collection)

Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael

Sarah Milroy, Bonnie Devine, John Geoghegan

Figure 1 Publishing

Art & Architecture

November 28, 2023

1773272330

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REVIEW BY PAUL GESSELL

The first Indigenous artwork to enter the McMichael Canadian Art Collection at Kleinberg, Ont., was donated in 1969 by the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson. The carved and painted wooden mask was “reputedly” from the Skeena Valley region near Terrace, B.C. The human face mask has since come to be identified by some – but not all – experts as from the Heiltsuk people of B.C., and carved “some time” in the 19th century.

Provenance of Indigenous objects, the names of their creators and other salient facts were not a big issue during the McMichael’s “early days.” Jackson recounted in a Dec. 15, 1927 Maclean’s article about his plans to chainsaw down the totem poles of the community Kitwanga, along the Skeena River, repaint their surfaces with bright colours and remount them in the village’s main street, the poles’ sacred and traditional relationship to family and community forever altered.

Or fast forward to 1970, when Robert McMichael, the man whose family name graces the Canadian museum now with 1,500 Indigenous artworks, arranged for a totem pole to be removed surreptitiously at night from Ba’as on the West Coast, eventually to be shipped to the McMichael museum. The community’s opposition to this plundering of its pole was a minor obstacle, not a concern.

Those are anecdotes from the “early days” of the McMichael. Respect and reverence for Indigenous art has vastly improved as the collection has grown. The massive, new book Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael testifies to that. This is a book largely written from Indigenous perspectives. It does not, for example, refer to the Riel Rebellion of 1885. Instead, it is the Riel Resistance, a term more corresponding to an Indigenous reading of history.

In Early Days, more than 100 Indigenous objects are each treated to a full-page, colour photograph and an accompanying essay. Almost all the essayists are Indigenous, often with a familial, tribal or geographic attachment to the artist who created the object. The essays are not written in academic artspeak by settler curators trying to fathom Indigenous art. Instead, these are grandchildren, other relatives and neighbours explaining in often the plainest possible language how an object was created and what it means years, or centuries, later to the community from which it sprang.

Just listen to Sarah Florence Davidson discuss her father, Haida artist Robert Davidson:

“I do not remember how old I was when I asked my father why he never painted for fun, but I was barely tall enough to see over the bottom of his easel. We were in his studio in Whonnock, B.C.,and I remember the light as it streamed in through a row of windows above us. I watched him carefully as he ran his paintbrush along the pencilled design; it was such a slow and precise action.

“He chuckled at my question, then tried to convince me that what he did was fun. As I watched him continue to paint the line, though, I remained unconvinced. At the time, I did not understand that the foundations of Haida art are rooted in symmetry, formline, and the traditional colours of red and black. My father’s commitment to precision was a way to honour his teachers — his ancestors and his family members.”

Early Days presents Indigenous art dating back to the 1700s. But there are many contemporary artists also honoured. The book cover displays an image of a contemporary work by B.C. artist Dana Claxton entitled Shadae, in which a standing woman wears so many hats, strings of beads and feather ornaments that her face and much of her figure is hidden. The first page of the book shows another contemporary artist, Kent Monkman of Toronto, dressed as his sexually ambiguous alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle astride a horse in front of the McMichael. Virtually every modern Indigenous art star from Dempsey Bob to Annie Pootoogook, Norval Morrisseau, Ruth Cuthand, Rebecca Belmore and Barry Ace get the full movie star treatment.

The lead editor for Early Days is Bonnie Devine, one of Canada’s most accomplished Indigenous curators. The other two editors are John Geoghegan, McMichael’s associate curator, Collections and Research, and Sarah Milroy, executive director and chief curator.

Many of the works in the book appeared in an Early Days exhibition at the McMichael in 2020-21 when most people were avoiding all public spaces because of Covid. The exhibition is touring the U.S. in 2024 and then comes home to the McMichael for an expanded return engagement; dates are yet to be announced.

The term “early days” does not just refer to the past. The McMichael is still in “early days” in its exploration of Indigenous art, says Milroy.

“These are indeed early days for the McMichael as a museum (just past 50 years old), and early days, too, in the long road to reconciliation,” says Milroy. “We will keep going. Our efforts here have been to unite belongings with appropriate cultural stakeholders, celebrating the reunion with the sharing of knowledge and stories. This is an important first step toward restoring these belongings to a good life—whether here at the McMichael or in their home communities.” ■

Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael, edited by Bonnie Devine, John Geoghegan and Sarah Milroy: Figure 1 Publishing, 2023.

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