Interview with Doreen Jensen

INTERVIEW WITH DOREEN JENSEN LYNNE BELL AND CAROL WILLIAMS rtist, teacher, histo *.«*> rian, curator, poli^ •mi Atical and envi ronmental activist, Doreen Jensen was born in Kispiox and delivered by a medi cine woman in her great- grandmother's bedroom. In the interview that follows, Doreen talks about the role of the traditional Gitxsan artist and the significance of dance, song, performance, story-telling, and the visual arts in the everyday life of her community. A graduate of the Kitanmax School of Doreen Jensen, U992 Photograph by Alexis Northwest Coast Indian MacDonald Seto. Art in Hazelton, Doreen talks about this school's curriculum and its significance for the cultural revival of the Gitxsan peoples of the Upper Skeena. Stressing the importance of listening and learning, Doreen talks about her work as a historian and curator for the exhibition (and subsequent volume) Robes of Power: Totem Poles on Cloth (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986), in which elders and artists share their knowledge about ceremonial button blankets. In 1991, Doreen Jensen and Cheryl Brooks guest-edited a special issue of BC Studies entitled "A Celebration of Our Survival: The First Nations of British Columbia (no. 89)." In 1996, Doreen co-curated the exhibition BC STUDIES, no. 115/116 28c Autumn/Winter 1997/98 2ÇO BC STUDIES Topographies: Aspects of Recent BC Art (1996) at the invitation of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Most recently Doreen has contributed an essay for the exhibition Through My Eyes: Northwest Coast Artifacts on exhibit at the Vancouver Museum to 1998. A versatile artist working in carving, weaving, jewellery, printmaking, and button blankets, she is one of four indigenous artists featured in Loretta Todd's video Hands of History (NFB: 1994). She is a founding member of many organizations, including the Ksan Association and the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry. In addition she is a contributing member of the research collective, the Ksan Book Builders. In 1992 she was awarded the honorary degree of doctor of letters by the University of British Columbia. In October 1995 we met with Doreen Jensen in her home in South Surrey. A large winter storm the previous night had caused a power outage, and we conducted the interview huddled in front of the fireplace, surrounded by candles, and using Doreen's battery-operated tape recorder. At times we interrupted our talk to examine her carvings, bentwood boxes, prints, and button blankets, all of which are displayed throughout the house and in her working studio. The interview was edited and slightly modified, with Doreen's assistance, in the spring of 1997. This following conversation with Doreen Jensen is one of sixteen scholarly interviews conducted by Lynne Bell and Carol Williams with Canadian artists, curators, film- and video-makers, and critics over the past three years. The subject of these interviews is women and change in the visual arts, and they were made possible thanks to a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. CAROL: In the video tape Hands of History by Loretta Todd, which features the work of four Aboriginal women artists, Jane Ash Poitras describes the artist as a healer, while Rena Point Bolton talks about the role of the artist as a carrier of her people's culture during the potlatch ban from 1884-1951. Will you tell us what you think the role of the artist is? DOREEN: Traditionally, in my culture the role of the artist has been to record family histories. The artist collaborated with the person who commissioned a piece, before going into retreat to develop a visual history of that person's family. The work Interview with Doreen Jensen was shown publicly after it was completed, just as happens today at an art exhibition, only the artist composed songs and created performance pieces to go with the work and the chiefs were called in from the surrounding areas to witness it. Art is a holistic thing, it tells the history of the people and it is a way of com municating that history from one generation to the next. Women play an important role in the preservation of my culture's history and traditions because we're a matrilineal culture. So, in my work as a visual artist, oral historian, writer, and public speaker I have to bring forward my family history. Most of the arts that are created by First Nations artists are important on many different levels: they are important as objects of beauty but they are also important for their sacredness and for the history they tell. When you look at a piece you know that a family has been represented: it's like opening a book and reading, if you understand the language of that culture. LYNNE: In Gallerie you describe yourself as a traditional Gitxsan artist, a designation which encompasses your work as a teacher, historian, community organizer, curator, mother, and political activist as well as a visual artist involved in carving, fabric, dance, songs, performance, and writing. Can you talk about how you've developed this diverse practice and why it is significant for you to work in so many different capacities? DOREEN: Whenever people used to ask me what I did, I didn't know what to say because I was always doing something other than "art- making." I began to work in this diverse way when I first realized that we Gitxsan did not have a voice out there. When the potlatch ban was lifted in 1951, I felt that work had to be done to educate people to develop a better awareness of our art and culture: this is how I started as a teacher. And I am a historian because I go and seek out people who have the knowledge, the old knowledge, nothing that you can read in books. As to being a community organizer, we are raised to understand how to be good community organizers because the women are the ones who put on these huge feasts. Our system works so well, everybody knows what to bring to the feast. All of the Fireweedy for example, know that they have to bring a big pot of soup, a case of bread, a case of oranges, and a case of crackers to be handed out to the guest witnesses. On top of that, we stockpile all kinds of things as payments to people who act as witnesses for our business transactions at the feast. So right from an early age I 292 BC STUDIES learned to be a community organizer because that's part of our job. As to being a mother, we know what mothers do more than anything else: they nurture. So it seems that nurturing comes out in whatever I'm doing. It's all part of what I am. I am also a grandmother and a friend. As a visual artist, I try to portray things that are important to me. When I did the portrait mask of my great-grandmother, for example, I imagined how she would have looked when she was younger, when she wore the lip labret. By the time I was old enough to know what was happening, all of our customs had been banned and she could not wear her lip labret. I used to wonder why her lip hung down and then I noticed there was a hole right through it. When I asked my family about it they would say, "Oh, that's what we call lip labrets." That's all they would say, they didn't talk about the banning of our cultural traditions. When I was young that answer was satisfactory, but later on, I thought, "Why couldn't my great-grandmother wear a lip labret if she was a noble woman and had the right to wear a lip labret? Why was she made to stop?" So I became interested in being a political activist working for people who can't speak for themselves anymore because they are gone and for people who have been mar ginalized. I work for people who have somehow lost their voice because the dominant society has spoken with such force and said, "This is how it is." And I'm saying, "No, no, we have to speak up if we ever want to reclaim our identities." We don't have a word in our language for "art" because art was all around us. If I went for a walk as a child I'd see the totems and the community hall, which not only housed art but was a work of art in itself. And the story-tellers were very artistic in their delivery of the stories. When my grandfather, grandmother, mum, or dad spoke, I would see an image of what they were talking about. You never interrupted a story-teller when they were speaking. If there was something you didn't understand, you had to ask later. Art was fully integrated with the daily life of my people. Artists were provided for on a life-long basis: they didn't have to go out and hunt because their work was art. They had to understand all of the different family histories and the imagery that went with these histories. Their lives were fully integrated with the larger community, they were not separate from it. I started curating because I felt that it was important that our voices be heard. I don't go looking for work, I'm invited to consider different Interview with Doreen Jensen 2pj Doreen Jensen "My Great-Grandmother with Lip Labret" (1994).

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