Native Art in Canada

An Historical Overview

To understand native art in Canada ... or anywhere in North America...it helps to have an appreciation of where it was fashioned, the lifestyle of its maker, the asethetic values of the society and more than a smidgeon of information about the spiritual beliefs embedded in the culture.

Don't be put off by the "Canadian" moniker....read what I have to say and then try mapping the information onto any section of the continent that most interests you.

The prehistoric Eastern Woodland Indian art had very much in common with my own culture north of Lake Superior, for example.

In North America examples of post-contact First Nations' art have been collected, scrutinized and written about by explorers, fur traders, christian propagandists and anthropoloigical researchers for 500 years.

Canadian native art of the prehistoric and post-contact periods can be described as traditional art. Although it was affected by European materials, techniques and motifs during the historic period it was largely shaped by the context of the culture which created it.

But from the earliest period when contact was made with Europeans to the present, appreciation of the art has most often been disconnected from the cultural character of the tribes in relation to where they lived, the manner in which they eaked a living from the land, what they valued most, and how they viewed themselves in relationship to the rest of the universe.

That attitude has resulted in a distorted view of the immense depth, diversity and richness of Canadian native art history.

Six Regions of Canadian Native Art

Arctic Region

Necessarily self-sufficient because of their total isolation, people had managed to thrive in the Canadian Arctic for more than 5000 years before being 'discovered' by European adventurers.

Their nomadic lifestyle dictated few possessions other than those needed to survive, but the culture produced carvings of variable complexity that were manufactured from walrus ivory, bone, antler and very occasionally stone.

Some of the carvings were clearly made to be used, and some seem to have had a spiritual significance. But pendants or ornaments carved with complex geometric patterns, combs and tiny human figures would only have been made for pleasure.

From the 1500's the Inuit residents of the area began trading with whalers and explorers who were looking for the Northwest Passage to India. As a result Inuit artisans started carving ivory miniatures as trade goods. A century later church missionariess even pushed for the production of Christian imagery!

The nomadic lifestyle had collapsed by the 1940's and the Canadian Government looked for ideas that would provide a new income source for the Inuit hunters. By mid-century James Houston, who wrote Eskimo Handicrafts, came up with the notion that the Inuit could be taught to make limited edition prints from images incised into slabs of soapstone. The government thought it was a great idea and funded artist cooperatives across the north. Contemporary Inuit art was born.

Sub Arctic Region

The Eastern Subarctic native art is probably the oldest in Canada. The majority of prehistoric and early contact rock art sites are located in this region of the Canadian shield. The inhabitants - the Ojibwa, Cree, Algonquin, Ottawa, Montagnais, Naskapi, M'qMak and the Maliseet - lived a nomadic lifestyle based on hunting, fishing and the gathering of wild foods. In some cases the lifestyle continued well into the 20th century...I lived further south, but didn't leave that way of life until 1955!

The Western Subarctic native art came from a region of environmental and cultural conditions similar to that inhabited by the Cree in the eastern Subarctic, but was produced by Athapaskan speaking peoples.

The Dene Nation, as they prefer to be called, are linguistically distinct, but share a culture that has much in common with their eastern neighbours. Decoration of personal gear and clothing was their major form of artistic expression.

The artisans had a well developed sense of color and design compared to some of their Eastern counterparts. Caribou and moose hide was embellished with porcupine quills, beads and commercial threads in geometric and floral patterns.

Moosehair tufting was introduced by the Grey nuns who moved into Fort Providence, Northwest Territories in the early 1900's. Above is a superior example of that craft decorates the moosehide gloves made by Bella Bonnetrouge of that community.

I knew Bella.

With children in tow and a rifle at hand, she tracked the moose, killed it, skinned and butchered it, dragged it home, shared the meat with friends and family, tanned the hide then smoked it with punky spruce wood ... I can tell by the photo :) ... collected thousands of the white coloured under hairs that had grown along spinal ridge on the moose' back, spent hours and hours sorting individual hairs into "shades of white" on a table beside a window so that when she dyed them each bundle was of a consistent colour, dried and packaged the coloured moose hairs into appropriately shaded bundles, trapped a beaver, shared the meat with family and friends, tanned its hide leaving the fur in place, used a home-made pattern to cut the glove sections to the exact size she wanted, tufted the appropriate sections of hide by sewing a multitude of dyed hairbundles ever so tightly together, 'carved' the moose hair into rounded tufts with nail scissors, sewed the sections together by hand, embellished the gloves with strips of beaver fur then sold them to the store for $40 (the museum made their purchase from the local store).

Southern Great Lakes Region

The southern Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River valley and the boreal forest that extended south along the Atlantic seaboard and west to the headwaters of the Missouri River sourced the prehistoric Eastern Woodlands Indian art.

But even in prehistoric times this culture was influenced by what was happening further afield. The Iroquois for example had established trade routes with the highly complex and economically advanced Eastern Woodland cultures along the Mississippi. That culture had in turn been affected by Central American Mayan civilization. Technological innovations in the way of making pottery came to Canada through this trade route, for example.

From the beginning of the historic period it was this area that suffered the most rapid cultural changes. Unlike their nomadic neighbours to the north, a milder climate had allowed many tribes to practise subsistance farming which meant that people lived in relatively permanent villages. That meant that their political and social institutions were different from their northern cousins and artisans had more time to advance artistic techniques.

But by the 19th century many of the First Nations peoples living in this area had migrated both westward and eastward or were even settling into Reserves in the area.

Art came to have a new purpose. It was a source of income to people whose traditional means of livelihood had been destroyed. Baskets, beaded necklaces, model birchbark canoes and even feathered headbands were made to be sold to outsiders...tourists and collectors of "native arts and crafts".

Prairie Region

Historic prairie native art and culture, as it developed in the 19th century, was a combination of First Nations and mainstream cultures - the product of post-contact European influences such as the horse and the gun which provided increased mobility and effectiveness in the buffalo hunt.

Art produced by the Bloods, the Blackfoot and the Assiniboine was similar in technique, materials to that of the subarctic and eastern neighbours. But, most native art produced by people living on the prairies was two dimensional and painting on hides was the major genre.

The Blackfoot lavishly painted the tipis of important men with naturalistic and geometric motifs. Large tipis might have used up to forty hides. Dream images on rawhide shields might be said to be comparable to contemporary surrealistic paintings in visionary and aesthetic impact. Painted buffalo robes were another major art form.

Personal belongings like deer hide moccasins, jackets, dresses, legings and shirts were embellished with porcupine quill work and beads. Rawhide containers of various sizes, parfleches for example, were unique to the area and each had its own distinct design painted on.

Central Plateau of British Columbia

The Interior Salish ... the Lillooet, Thompson, Okanagan and Shuswap tribes ... lived in an area of Canada known nowadays as central British Columbia's plateau region.

When easterly winds blow clouds from the Pacific they tend to bump into the mountains and drop their moisture before reaching the plateau. It's a dry climate, sparsely treed with many rocky outcroppings and in prehistoric times the residents created a large number of pictographs. on those same rocks.

The Lillooet, Thompson, Okanagan and Shuswap of the historic era made finely crafted and watertight baskets using a coiling technique and decorated them with geometric motifs.

The plateau peoples may have been the only First Nations group in Canada to have used textiles - they wove blankets from mountain goat hair - but next to nothing is known of their clothing or religious beliefs which would provide a context for an interpretaion of their art.

Northwest Coast Region

The tribes that live along the west coast of Canada from Vancouver to Alaska is a term applied to a style of art that is produced by members of the various tribes that live on the west coast of Canada from the Vancouver area north to Alaska.

This style of native art is distinguished by the use of formlines, and the use of characteristic oval, u and s shaped forms. The imagery evolves from nature to include bears, ravens, eagles, and humans or legendary creatures such as thunderbirds.

Before European contact the most common medium was wood but contemporary artists use paper, canvas, glass, and precious metals. If paint is made part of the product the most common colours are red and black, but yellow is also often used.