How the Arts Make Us Human: Part Two
Art at the Heart of our Growth as Societies
By Nikki Little
This article is the second in a three-part series examining why art is important to our humanity. Read part one here. Throughout these articles, I’ll be referencing the stories of many members of my creative community. I owe these people a huge thanks.
Special thanks go out to Jo, Vanessa, and Mackenzy, whose stories I’ve not directly shared, but still influenced this piece of writing. All three are educators and artists, and they spoke passionately about how the arts let them both express their beliefs and help bring about changes in the world.
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I’d like to take you back to my days as an educator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. It’s 2019, and I’m leading a group of elementary school students on a tour. We are looking at a show called Walking with Saskatchewan that highlights the many peoples and perspectives that shape this province. We stop in front of two paintings by nēhiyawak (Cree) artist Allen Sapp. The show’s curator, Timothy Long, has strategically placed these two images side-by-side.
The first is Recess at Onion Lake School. An imposing yellowish building looms above the painting’s grey-green foreground. Shadowy silhouettes of children fleck that dull grass. Three of the children stand out in their red shirts, and many of the kids are slouched with their hands in their pockets. A British flag watches over this scene. And is it my imagination, or does the whole image seem to be at a slight, disorienting angle?
The neighbouring painting is Going to Christmas Concert in the School. It shows Red Pheasant Day School on a snowy winter’s evening. The building in this second scene is smaller and more proportionate to the people approaching it. Another noticeable difference is the painting’s vibrancy and movement. We see horse-drawn sleds that have just pulled up and are now being tended. Three little dogs are playing amongst the sleds, and families are drifting towards the school. One child pulls a parent forward. Three figures are seated in the foreground wrapped in vibrant red and blue blankets or coats. The snow shimmers with icy blues, and the schoolhouse windows reflect the warmth of a vibrant coral sunset.
This moment of conversation between us and the paintings buzzes with potential.
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In my last article, I discussed how the arts support our personal mental health and wellbeing. Yet the benefits of the arts extend far beyond that to the wellbeing and progress of entire societies and cultures. The arts are reflections of our beliefs and values, giving us opportunities to examine and appreciate what matters to us. The arts also shape those beliefs and values, helping us all progress to new levels of understanding. In my imagination, this process is like holding two mirrors up to each other to create an infinite tunnel of reflections.
While researching for this story, I was fortunate to speak with Joley BigEagle-Kequahtooway. Her art practice is an eloquent example of art and culture reflecting and influencing each other. Joley describes herself as a multi-hyphenate buffalo artist whose practice bleeds into all aspects of her life. “Everything I do is around buffalo.” Joely explained, “Whether it’s painting, telling stories, making videos, making fashion, it’s all related to buffalo identity.” Joley is Nakota, Cree, and Saulteaux, from the White Bear First Nation. She and her partner Lorne Kequahtooway co-founded the Buffalo People Arts Institute. “Our mission is to bring back the buffalo mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally, especially through traditional Indigenous arts such as buffalo hide tanning.”
Not only does Joley’s creative practice reflect her Indigenous beliefs, but it in turn shapes societies around her. It shapes the lives of other Indigenous people who come to the Buffalo People Arts Institute to be immersed in their own traditional practices. They can find a sense of wellbeing that will seep from their personal lives into the lives of everyone around them.
Joley’s practice also shapes the perspectives of non-Indigenous newcomers like me. I personally feel so blessed when people invite me to share in the beauty and meaning of their cultures. This invitation also creates a gentle “in” for having harder discussions.
“I want to create conversations, you know? But not just one-on-one,” explains Joley, “I want others to have conversations and make them think. Because that’s a part of TRC [Truth and Reconciliation]. I don’t want to hit people over the head with the buffalo hammer. . . . Sometimes that works but for the majority of people it doesn’t. I’m in it for the long haul, for a gentle indoctrination of my buffalo way of thinking, which is related to identity, culture, ceremony, language.”
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Let’s return to that gallery tour. I asked the children to compare the two paintings. They immediately noticed the huge emotional shift between the two, the sorrow and restriction in the first painting and the vibrancy and love in the second. We talked about how one image was of a residential school where the children were pulled away from their families. I explained that the other was a day school, where children still went home to their families each night. We talked about how both schools would have still taught from a European perspective (the second scene is a Christmas concert after all) but at least the children grew up with the love of their families and influence of their own cultures.
There is a gentleness to the way that Allen Sapp’s art sparks this conversation. It feels akin to moments I had with my own grandfather, where he took me aside and told me his life stories. Of course, this is not to say that all art should be gentle. But sometimes this gentleness creates an access point for onlookers to talk about what they see, think, and feel.
Such conversations don’t always result in people immediately changing their beliefs. In this story, one of the parents on the field trip was upset by our conversation. They voiced that a family member had taught at a residential school and described the environment as one of charity and support. So, we continued to discuss residential school history. We discussed how that family member’s experience of residential schools was one among many. We talked about how even amongst residential school survivors, not all experiences are identical. We discussed how there are many stories of harm and abuse shared by survivors of residential schools (such as in the Truth and Reconciliation report[1]) and how the sum of those stories is that residential schools were a negative thing.
Allen Sapp’s art is part of a shift in the public’s views on Indigenous peoples. He and many Indigenous artists were and are painting, drawing, singing, dancing and telling stories to reclaim their own cultures from the harm done by colonization. “If I don’t do this, the history will be lost,” explained Sapp in a Leader Post interview.[2] Past artists like Allen Sapp helped pave the way for today’s artists like Joley to push cultural reclamation even further. Today, most of us are familiar with Indigenous cultural practices local to us, many of which were banned not that long ago. What a societal shift!
And this shift in understanding goes beyond just cultural appreciation. Art can be a record of historical events, giving us opportunities to unpack our own histories. During that tour at the MacKenzie, Allen Sapp’s artworks were acting as records of the school systems Indigenous children were forced into. He asked us to acknowledge the reality of the harm caused by residential schools. The fact that the students on that tour were already aware of this history tells me that a change in understanding Canada’s history is underway.
Looking back on that tour, I am hopeful that the conversations inspired by Allen Sapp’s artworks planted a seed of change in the parent’s mind. A buffalo seed, as Joley would say. Because isn’t that how change often happens? We take in an idea, mull it over, discuss it with our community, and it gradually blooms in our hearts. In a world where art helps us have important conversations, I’m hopeful that we can all keep growing together.
[1] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “The Survivors Speak: A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” in Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series, v. 81 (Published for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), https://nctr.ca/publications-and-reports/reports/.
[2] Michelle MacAffee, “Sapp Hasn’t Forgotten Roots,” The Leader Post (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), October 6, 1992.
