Norval Morrisseau
Father of Canadian Native Art
This is where native art in Canada begins.
Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau is the grandfather of native art in Canada. His vision of himself and his people created the possibility that native artists and native culture could stand along side the art and culture of the Canadian mainstream society.
Born on the Sand Point Reserve, near Beardmore, Ontario, March 14, 1932 Norval Morrisseau was raised by his maternal grandparents, Moses (Potan) Nanakonagos and his wife, Vernique, on the Gull Bay shore of Lake Nipigon. This was a traditional arrangement. As the eldest of seven boys it was expected that he would be the link between his grandparents and his own generation. The tradition benefited both participants. The younger generation was schooled in the cultural conventions of the Anishnabe and the older generation benefited from the young muscles.
Potan was a Midewinini and Jissakan - a shaking tent seer. Morrisseau learned stories, myths, spiritual concepts from his grandfather but in his eighth year was taken away to a Catholic residential school in Fort William.
Morrisseau was taken to a residential school
It wasn't a good experience for the child and in the end it resulted in only a 4th grade education. Too bad...but it was the Jesuits themselvece, centuries early, who had declared that if they were given a child for the first eight years of his life they could influence the man for ever. Lucky for us...Potan got there first!
Eventully, back on the reserve, Norval Morrisseau began exploring old canoe routes, paying particular attention to the rock petroglyphs common in the area. In 1952 he met Selwyn Dewdney, a former missionary who was investigating the rock art scattered through out the region. Morrisseau guided Dewdney to many of these sites and decoded their meanings for the researcher, but it was Dewdney who became known as the expert on the rock paintings scattered throughout the Canadian Shield. While acting as Dewdney's guide, Norval shared many of the Ojibwa myths and legends in an attempt to make the petroglyphs significant to the researcher. In 1965 Ryerson press published the stories, Legends of My People, The Great Ojibwa. The book, now long out of print, was edited by Dewdney and presented to the world as a book of stories for children.
The wrong man is acknowledged at Agawa
There is a blasphemous bronze memorial to Dewdney imbedded into the Lake Superior rock face at Agawa - a sacred site to the Ojibwa. Like any man, Dewdney deserves acknowledgement for a lifetime of hard work, but not at a sacred First Nation's site. What were you thinking, guys!!!! (Please! Someone - remove it!)
About this time Morrisseau started making drawings of the prehistoric rock art and of the images he had seen with his grandfather on the Medewiwin birch scrolls. The elders told him that this was taboo.
At 19, Norval Morrisseau developed tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitorium, again in Fort William. To pass the time he began drawing the same forbidden images. A doctor, not knowing of the taboo, encouraged him to paint.
Still at the hospital, Morrisseau had a series of dreams and visions that he said were calling him to be a shaman-artist. "My paintings are icons - that is to say, they are images which help focus on spiritual powers, generated by traditional beliefs and wisdom." Norval Morrisseau, decided that the cultural images of the Ojibwa could only be made relevant to contemporary minds with a contemporary medium. He began working in earnest.
The dream world profoundly influenced Morrisseau
In a dream, too, he finally had a traditional naming ceremony. The manitous declared him to be Miskwaabik Animiiki, Copper Thunderbird. He writes that name in syllabics (taught to him by his wife) on all his paintings. Copper was significant to the Anishnabe. It can be found in rare surface deposits on the rocks of the Canadian Shield. Archaeological evidence indicates it was mined and used probably for ornamental purposes at least a thousand years before European contact.
So as Miskwaabik Animiiki, Norval Morrisseau began painting what is felt or perceived inside a living being whether it be animal or human. The images represent a kind of spiritual-guts - a source of power.
His images portray an x-ray anatomy with the spirit power lines radiating from the spines of the creatures he represents.
Without the artistic elegance, the same features are seen on the Midewiwin birch bark scrolls of rites and song mnemonics. They are also roughly suggested in the rock petroglyphs all over the woodlands north of the Great Lakes.
In the beginning there was no market for his (or any other contemporary native artists), work. He lived in poverty on his reserve, trading drawings and paintings in return for food and other supplies. The mainstream art world had always excluded the prehistoric and functional works by native artists. Even the Department of Indian Affairs catered to the tourist trinket market which included beads and buckskin, buffalos coming out of clouds and plastic totem poles cast in Hong Kong. This anthropology/art debate was alive and well even into the 1980's. Despite all that, in 1962, the paintings of Norval Morrisseau stormed the Toronto market. By chance, he had met Toronto gallery owner Jack Pollock who, in the summer, had been teaching painting in northern Ontario. Pollock was amazed at Norval's work. There had never been anything like it - the combination of imagery and colours so unique. Pollock arranged Norvals's first show. On the first day of his solo exhibition every painting sold.
The elders chastized Morrisseau for sharing secrets
But while he was lauded in the streets of the big city, he was criticized at home for revealing sacred images. But few true spiritual practioners would have remained. It may be that jealousy played a larger role in creating the communal critical attitude than reverence to the imagery because by that time the Christian church had all but obliterated the Anishnabe spiritual traditions. At any rate, Morrisseau was by then more sure of himself. He defended his work, saying he wanted to restore cultural pride to the largely catholicized members of his community. Given the number of artists that have been influenced by him and who continue to bring forth their versions of his imagery, (even into the mainstream consciousness), he seems to have done so, single handedly.
Norval Morrisseau, despite his genius, has lived a life that I wouldn't want to endure. Alcohol has plagued him and caused grief to those nearest him. But over and over again he's managed to put that despair aside and re-create the Great Ojibwa in the world.
I love you, Norval, (and thanks, Gabe, for your contribution).
Nokomis
- Emerging from the Wilderness
In the aesthetic sense, Canadian aboriginal art didn't occur as a concept until the midpoint of the twentieth century.
- Indian Group of Seven
In 1973 seven native artists gave birth to the Indian Group of Seven, or as they called themselves, the Professional National Indian Artists Inc.
- After Morrisseau
In 1972 the show Treaty Numbers 23, 287, 1171 broke the ice jam of native art in Canadian galleries. Despite Morrisseau's success a decade earlier Canadian native art was still considered simple iconography by the art establishment until works by Daphne Odjig, Jackson Beardy and Alex Janvier were shown in the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Other shows followed and as did opportunities for other artists.
