Nanabozho's Sisters

ESSAYS NANABOZHO’S SISTERS WANDA NANIBUSH Nanabozho is a half-spirit, half-human shape- [A]s children we realized that we were shifting Anishinaabe who lives on in our stories different from boys and that we were and art. They (and this is the proper pronoun) treated different—for example, when break rules and boundaries through hilarious, we were told in the same breath to be sometimes ridiculous situations for the benefit of quiet both for the sake of being ‘ladylike’ the whole community. The laughter that comes and to make us less objectionable in from their actions shows us our own flawed the eyes of white people. In the process character and the changeability of our way of of consciousness-raising, actually life- doing things. The spirit of Nanabozho lives in the sharing, we began to recognize the sisters (meaning friends) gathered together in this commonality of our experiences and, from exhibition: Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, Dana the sharing and growing consciousness, Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Ursula to build a politics that will change our Johnson, Shelley Niro, and Anna Tsouhlarakis. lives and inevitably end our oppression.... Their works are audacious, rebellious, and cutting We realize that the only people who care edge. The freedom to be whoever one wants to enough about us to work consistently for be outside the prescriptions and oppressions our liberation are us. Our politics evolve of a two-gender system, colonialism, sexism, from a healthy love for ourselves, our and heteronormativity is created through sisters and our community which allows imagination, satire, and ironic reversals. Video us to continue our struggle and work. and photography allow for the active construction This focusing upon our own oppression of images of family, childhood, sexuality, and play is embodied in the concept of identity that honour the contemporary lives of Indigenous politics. We believe that the most profound people that are not built on the tired notion and potentially most radical politics of authentic ‘Indians’. There is also the subtle come directly out of our own identity, as humour of everyday life in First Nations country opposed to working to end somebody else’s that allows us to survive. Finally, all of the images oppression. present a more realistic view of Indigenous — Zillah R. Eisenstein (1978), The women’s bodies in all their lived glory, allowing Combahee River Collective Statement humour to function both as empowering and humbling. It is this rebellious and loving spirit that was in the air when Rebecca Belmore decided to leave The exhibition begins in 1987 in two very different art school at the Ontario College of Art and places: Thunder Bay and Six Nations with return to Thunder Bay. The backlash against High Tech Teepee Trauma Mama by Rebecca identity politics was very real and she relates Belmore (Anishinaabe, b. 1960) and The Rebel that one of her teachers at OCA asked her if her by Shelley Niro (Mohawk, b. 1954). 1987 saw Indian-ness was going to interfere with her art. In Brian Mulroney in power and very little headway audacious fashion she quits and decides to make for the advancement of Indigenous Rights in work for her people by testing it on them at the Canada. It was a time when artists of colour and Friendship Centre and other northern spaces. Indigenous artists were fighting back against a This is where High Tech Teepee Trauma Mama history of exclusion. The term “identity politics” was performed. Belmore sings a song she wrote became a label for their artistic endeavors. The with Alan Deleary of Seventh Fire parodying term “identity” was and still is used to demean the souvenir versions of First Nations culture. artistic production. The actual term is thought She resists by dancing and singing “Come on to be coined by Black women fighting against Souvenir Seeker free me from this plastic.” Part oppression: of her point is to connect her song to a video Shelley Niro, The Rebel, 1987/2018. Photograph, hand tinted digital print, 32.8 x 47.3 cm. Courtesy of the artist. playing scenes from the popular film Little Big quickly transformed into an empowering Man (1970) where violence is perpetrated against moment by telling her “You are a squaw – it just Indigenous women. This juxtaposition shows means woman.” Again, the strength of women that the material consequences of stereotyping challenged Blondeau to be proud of herself as an is real violence. High Tech Teepee Trauma Mama Indigenous woman. There is an absurdity to the is an anthem for all Indigenous women as much sight of her in a buffalo bikini in the snow on the as The Rebel by Shelley Niro has become an icon. prairies with a pink surfboard, that pushes the The sight of Niro’s mother lying in a stereotypical boundaries of what are acceptable desires for all model pose on top of the Rebel sports car is a women. And when she puckers her lips for her tribute to the ways we honour our women in own First Nations inspired Cosmo magazine, we all their diversity and power. Niro had seen the realize that a completely alien culture setting the fourth First Ministers constitutional conferences standard for beauty for brown women everywhere on Aboriginal rights break down in 1987 precisely is absurd. over the issue of First Nations self-government. Niro comes from a matriarchal society that had All three artists, Niro, Belmore, and Blondeau, experienced repeated colonial attempts to destroy are given voice in quotes laid across three the power of their traditional government by performative and playful self-portraits by Ursula removing their clan mothers’ and chiefs’ power. Johnson. She pays homage to the influence To lighten everyone’s load she created The of each artist, as well as a fourth artist, Cheryl Rebel in a beautiful tribute to her living familial L’Hirondelle, in clearing the path for her matriarchy. generation to make and exhibit art, and to feel at home in their skin and culture. She replays Lori Blondeau picks up this line of work in Blondeau’s bikini-clad pose, creating space for us her performance personas Cosmo-Squaw and to stand in solidarity and to laugh cathartically Lonely Surfer Squaw, as a way to undermine at our own painful memories and experiences of the squaw and princess stereotypes that have trying to fit into an image not made for us. become colonialism’s main presentations of Indigenous women. Blondeau also tells a story Performance artists Blondeau and Shawna of experiencing childhood racism in being Dempsey are honoured in Thirza Cuthand’s labelled “a squaw”, which her grandmother innovative experimental video work Through the Thirza Cuthand, video still, Through the Looking Glass, 1999. Courtesy of the artist and Vtape. Looking Glass where they appear as Red Queen be, where the acceptance of homosexuality, and White Queen. Cuthand’s genuine, honest, boys who want to jingle dress, and young and humorous voice really defined a new genre of performance artists isn’t even a question. Niro autobiographical video art. As Alice, she is caught clearly respects her community, and cares for between a First Nations culture that has absorbed everyone by showing us it’s better when everyone the homophobia brought through contact is allowed to belong. Dana Claxton, like Niro, and a white culture that would see her people uses photography to construct images of family, disappear. Alice wants to wake up to a world childhood, sexuality, and play that honour where difference isn’t violently expunged. contemporary lives of First Nations people. There is a clear, powerful assertion of sexuality In a similar use of pop culture references, Rosalie throughout most of the works in the exhibition, Favell’s work cites Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. including Momma Has a Pony Girl... (named Favell wakes up back in Kansas to feel “her spirit History and sets her free). Sexual bondage and had returned” to her. A cultural hero, Louis Riel, pony play is used as metaphor for the trap of euro- is peaking in the window. He led a resistance centric colonial versions of history. In the photo, in 1885 that desired to realize a Métis and First the powerful dominant is played by a famous Nations Manitoba. Favell’s Dorothy is wrapped First Nations stage actress who is looking across in a Hudson Bay blanket which was used as a at her blonde pony-girl who is the submissive in trade item during the fur trade and became a way the relationship. Claxton, like Blondeau, points that smallpox was spread through Indigenous to the desires that underplay colonial history and communities, causing millions of deaths. I its representations for all parties. Sometimes, in have included three other photographs from playing with them in reverse, where we are the Favell’s series Plain(s) Warrior Artist where she stars and the doms, we can see freedom at the creates mini narratives of herself as a hero whose edges of the present. Instead of subjugation we adventures lead us through multi-vocal narratives can be set free. to find room for a Métis lesbian artist in the history books. Belmore’s Five Sisters assumes our freedom by enacting everyday scenes of five First Nations Shelley Niro’s film Honey Moccasin also uses women—all played by herself —going to work, fiction as a way to imagine a world as it should having a drink, tracking the land, making fun Dana Claxton, Momma Has a Pony Girl ... (named History and sets her free), 2008, from The Mustang Suite. Lightjet C-print, 121.2 x 151.5 cm.

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