Mouse Woman drawing by Luke J. Parnell
The Beat
A monthly newsletter about the art of
Welcome to the twelfth issue of The Beat, a free, independent newsletter that brings you up-to-date on the art events of the First Nations on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work, and all the First Nations of our province.
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Happening soon
On Wednesday September 10, the Contemporary Art Society is hosting a talk by Vancouver performance artist Rebecca Belmore (Anishnabe). It will take place at the HR MacMillan Space Centre Lecture Hall (Vancouver Museum) at 1100 Chestnut Street in Vancouver. Belmore’s exhibition Rising to the Occasion continues to October 5 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. An internationally acclaimed performance work created by Belmore represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Important information sessions will be held for artists interested in public art for the city in connection with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. Both will be held at the Sunset Community Centre at 6810 Main Street in Vancouver, one on Wednesday September 3 at 3 pm and the other Thursday September 4 at 6:30 pm.
Dorothy Grant (Haida) is having a sale of her elegantly designed clothing and accessories at her boutique on September 2 to 6 2008, open from 10am to 6pm. It is located at 138 West 6 th Avenue in Vancouver. Call 604 681 0201 for further information.
Haida Gwaii
A huge celebration took place on Saturday August 23 2008 when the Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Llnagaay near Skidegate had its grand opening celebration.
A parade of the clans was the ceremonial highlight, and the dramatic launching of the three beautiful new canoes commissioned for the occasion (see The Beat September 2007) was unforgettable. A cedar rope was cut by Skidegate Chief Councillor Willard Wilson to mark the occasion.
Two poles were unveiled to join the existing ones already at the site. Reg Davidson’s 30-foot Heart of Canada Totem Pole was carved on by over 175,000 people from 35 countries as it toured fifteen Canadian cities. An ancient pole moved from Skedans depicting the story of the Bear Mother will be kept in the Centre’s very fine Museum. The Skidegate Band Council provided a bountiful seafood feast. In the evening Sinxii'gangu (Sounding Gambling Sticks) was performed. The Haida language play was created by artist Jaaden Edenshaw and eleven others, who adapted the traditional Haida story from a recorded source.
Archaeology
Fort St. James was founded in 1806 by Simon Fraser and John Stuart in northern British Columbia as part of a fur-trading venture, but the area had already been home to civilization for thousands of years before. In the summer of 2008, the area was the focus of a dig to examine a site on nearby Paarens Beach on Stuart Lake. Professor Farhid Rahemtulla of the University of Northern British Columbia led a group of thirteen local First Nations and his UNBC students in the excavation
“ This excavation has been a remarkable success, both from the perspective of what we found as well as how we used this course to train local members of the Nak’azdli Band and UNBC students. This kind of experience is very unusual in North America, for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students alike,” said Anthropology Professor Rahemtulla. “The northern and interior regions of BC have largely been ignored by archaeologists and the last excavation on Nak’azdli land took place in the 1950s. These students have become immersed in history and have gained great personal knowledge, but their work is also making a major contribution to our collective knowledge about the people who lived here thousands of years ago.”
More than 200 artifacts were found, as well as the first “earth oven” ever found in northern BC. The professor sought to integrate local First Nations’ oral histories with the science of archaeology. Excavated pieces of charcoal will be studied later in the university laboratories to determine the age of the site.
Underwater archaeological investigation has been carried out this summer in Hecate Strait near Rose Spit, between the Haida Gwaii and the mainland of British Columbia. The Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) and the Haida Heritage Guardians, and consulting archaeologists, are working together to provide a baseline study of the area before a cable is laid underwater to the Haida Gwaii and to the BC mainland. The study would assist in assessing the impact of the cable running underwater from the NaiKun wind farm to be built on the islands. The area being studied, Dogfish Bank, was a grassy meadow about 16,000 years ago and likely inhabited then by the early Haida peoples; old stories tell of artifacts coming up in fishing nets. Read the whole story in the July issue of Haida Laas at:
http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Haida_Laas/PDF/Newsletters/HL_July_08.pdf
Questions arising from excavations and the destruction of ancient cultural sites in the harbour of Prince Rupert , as well as the larger issues raised by development, will be discussed at the First Nations Archeology Symposium planned for Sept 10-12 at the Haida Heritage Centre at Skidegate in the Haida Gwaii.
Negotiations have been going on since January 2008 among the First Nations of the Prince Rupert area and the developers of the Fairview Terminal, with Douglas Eyford appointed by the Canadian Federal government as a mediator. The Metlakatla and Lax Kw’alaams Nations, as well as archaeologists and scholars of First Nations culture, have been alarmed at the destruction of the sites, which are rich in evidence of human habitation for over 10,000, perhaps even 14,000 years.
Can differences be resolved before the 2008 Export Trade Conference taking place in Prince Rupert on September 15-18 2008, to be attended by hundreds of delegates from Asia and Southeast Alaska?
Auctions
Summer can be a quiet time in the art auction world, but an interesting work appeared in August on Vancouver’s Heffel Fine Art online auction website: a Tsonoqua mask by James Dick (born about 1900), carved around 1960, from a private collection in Toronto. With an estimate of $3000-4000, and an opening bid of $2500, spirited online bidding ensued, and the final bid of $6500 on August 28 2008 successfully took the work. See www.heffel.com
Galleries and museums
Prominent Kwakwak’wakh artist Marianne Nicholson has created a new work, The House of the Ghosts, to be projected after dark on the north wall of the Vancouver Art Gallery from October 4 to January 4 2009. The artist has used the projection of light through figured glass in several works in recent years. As she says: “…I wanted to show how much more there was to these objects than just their physical presence. And that’s why I started to use the shadows and the light to give it the dimensions we give it when we use these things.”
Nicholson created a major public art commission in 2004 for the Esquimalt Library near Victoria, Return of the Lifebringers, which includes a light projection visible only at night onto a multi-coloured mural she created on the building.
The Douglas Reynolds Gallery at 2335 Granville Street in Vancouver currently has an interesting show of Gallery artists and antique First Nations objects. An unusual item has appeared: a carved chair, likely from the early 1900’s, perhaps late 1920’s, with a mix of Haida style and a touch of Art Deco. For a look at current work, see
www.douglasreynoldsgallery.com
The annual general meeting of the non-profit Grunt Gallery at 116-350 East 2 nd Avenue in Vancouver will be held on Saturday September 21 at 3 pm. For more, see www. grunt .ca
Congratulations to the Museum of Anthropology of the University of British Columbia on the return of t he remaining Bill Reid works stolen from the Museum in may 2008. All Reid art objects except a fragment of an argillite pipe are now safe. No arrests have yet been made.
The Museum will be closed for the final stage of its renovations until March 3 2009.
The Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver has initiated an exhibition project called Continuum: Vision and Creativity on the Northwest Coast . In the summer of 2009 an exhibition will open in the Gallery of commissioned artwork from 23 emerging and mid-career First Nations artists who are from the Northwest coast of Canada and the United States. As they create their commission they are engaged in a dialogue with their communities and the other participating artists about tradition, innovation and the role of the artist. Curator Trinity Bissett reports that artist/community dialogue meetings were held in Vancouver in April 2008 and another is planned. Two successful events were held at the Haida Heritage Centre in Skidegate in August. In September the U’Mista Centre in Alert Bay will host an artist-in-residence program. The ‘Ksan Centre in Hazelton BC will host an artist-in-residence, Squamish artist Aaron Nelson Moody, from September 8 to 12, mentored by Gitksan artist Phil Janze .
For three weeks in September 2008 Sonny Assu will be artist-in-residence at the Bill Reid Gallery, working on a painting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from September 9 to 24. Not just the interesting process of the dialogue, but the resulting works, will be landmarks for the artists and the public who follow their evolution. For updates on the project see: www.billreidgallery.ca
Rivermania on the Fraser 2008
A multi-faceted celebration is being held along the greatest river of British Columbia, as a flotilla of boats travels southwest along the river to the Pacific shore. Starting in Prince George on August 24, festive events have been held as the boats pass among the many communities linked to the Fraser. 2008 is the 150 th Anniversary of British Columbia and the 200 th anniversary of Simon Fraser’s exploration of the river for the fur trade.
In Lillooet on the weekend of September 5 to 7 the People of the River Festival will include a tour of the ancestral fishing rocks at Xwisten (Bridge River) on Friday. The next day, tours of the Seton Creek spawning channels and foreshore restoration project, a visit to the Lillooet Indian Band’s very fine traditional s7istken (pit house) for story-telling and St’at’imc cultural performances are among events offered. For more information call 250 256 7990.
The special role of the First Nations of the Fraser will be especially marked with celebrations in Mission.
The fir st part of the project will honour four aboriginal artists who live in Mission, Nuchalnulth Tom Patterson, Scowlitz(Sto:lo) Johnny Williams, Shuswap Roxane McCallum, and Métis Pascal Pelletier. They have collaborated in carving a 20’ traditional Coast Salish House Post for the city of Mission. The post will be raised at the Celebration of Community Sept 20 2008 on the grounds of the Mission Chamber of Commerce.
On September 21 a feast and festive events will be held at the Xa:ytem Longhouse near Mission, British Columbia, reports Events Co-ordinator Rikki Kooy. A visit to the Xa:ytem Longhouse, just east of Mission on the Fraser River, is an opportunity to visit the sacred Hatzic Rock, an ancestor transformer stone. Well-informed guides explain the traditions of the Sto:lo people who lived here for the last 9000 years.
For more on the celebrations, see http://bcrivermania.com/
Another community carving project begins in September 2008 at Macdonald School in downtown Vancouver at Hastings and Victoria Streets. The Spirits Rising Memorial Society is working with the Vancouver School District in the creation of the Lax-Saux Men’s Pole , a companion piece to the Women’s Memorial Pole carved in 2007-08, and also dedicated to victims of violent abuse and oppression. Men, women and children are invited to assist with the carving. It will be finished for National Aboriginal Day June 21 2009. The Git Hayetsk Dancers will perform at the initial ceremonies.
Coast Salish Art in Seattle
The Seattle Art Museum’s major new exhibition on Coast Salish art and culture S’abadeb—The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists will be opening on Friday, October 24 until January 11 2009. While you will want to view the show in Seattle, it is also travelling to the Heard Museum in Phoenix (Febrauary 21 – August 16 2009) and the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria (November 20 2009 – March 8 2010). The exhibition features more than 175 works of art from national and international collections that offer a glimpse into the daily and ceremonial lives of the 40 groups that make up the Coast Salish nation. A 300-page, fully illustrated exhibition catalogue by SAM Curator of Native American Art Dr. Barbara Brotherton is being published by the University of Washington Press. Many Canadian Coast Salish artists are naturally part of this dynamic group and included in the book. For more information on the exhibition and related programming see www.seattleartmuseum.org
Don’t miss seeing an exhibition of Salish weaving near Seattle in Auburn Washington, at the White River Valley Museum - SQ3TSya’yay: Weaver’s Spirit Power . Curated by the late Bruce Miller and Susan Pavel as a travelling exhibition, it will include antique and modern examples of Salish weaving in wool and cedar. There will be a demonstrations of twill and twine techniques on Saturday September 20 from noon to 4 pm at the museum. The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 12 – 4pm. The exhibit runs August 20 to November 9. More at the museum website at: www.wrvmuseum.org
The Stonington Gallery at 119 S. Jackson Street in downtown Seattle will have an exhibition, This Coast Salish Place, from October 2 - 31 2008, its third exhibition dedicated to Coast Salish art. See
Canada council
September 15 2008 is the deadline for submission of applications to the Canada Council for assistance to aboriginal artists who wish to undertake activities that contribute to the knowledge, sharing, understanding and development of aboriginal traditional art forms. Such activities include research, as well as preservation, creation, production and dissemination (sharing the knowledge) of aboriginal peoples’ traditional visual arts forms. For more information and forms, see http://www.canadacouncil.ca/grants/visualarts/cr127323013497656250.htm
Not on the Pacific coast, but of interest for many reasons: Enbridge Inc. has donated $1 million to support the construction of a dedicated Aboriginal program building at the Centre. The first of its kind in Canada, the new building will house The Banff Centre’s Aboriginal Leadership and Aboriginal Arts programs. It will include the Enbridge Indigenous Cultural Circle — a central meeting area — classrooms, multidisciplinary performance and rehearsal facilities, and rooms for ceremonial and social gatherings. Scheduled for construction between 2010 and 2014, the new building will be built in a central location on The Banff Centre campus. It will provide self-contained facilities for Aboriginal ceremonies, performances, workshops, social gatherings. More information is at: www.banffcentre.ca/media_room/Media_Releases/2008/0506_enbridge.asp
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Comments, news and new subscribers to this free newsletter are welcomed. Please write to: editor@coastalartbeat.ca
Past issues are available at our website www.coastalartbeat.ca
Thank you to David Dumaresq, Trinity Bissett, Daina Augaitis, Herb Auerbach, Martin Landmann and Mike Dangeli, for your assistance.
The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver, Canada by Ann Cameron. Copyright 2008 Ann Cameron.