Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / 2031-01-02

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

Aboriginal arts practices in the southeast of Australia have, since the early years of colonisation, been rarely considered within the realm of authentic Aboriginal arts practices. Such attitudes were a reflection of the colonial encounter and associated attempts to assimilate the Aboriginal population with the White. This thesis explores Aboriginal arts practices and asserts that there has always been Aboriginal art in the southeast and that, despite the overwhelming effects of colonisation, the work of Aboriginal artists provides a distinct and definite counter-history to that endorsed by the dominant culture. Using published historical and contemporary accounts and recent interviews from Aboriginal artists and arts workers, this thesis investigates the continuation of the knowledge and practice of southeast Australian Aboriginal art and its connection to culture, identity and wellbeing. It explores the corresponding adaptations and changes to these practices as Aboriginal people contended with the ever-expanding European occupation of the region from 1834 onwards. / This project adopted a collaborative research methodology, where members of the Aboriginal arts community were consulted throughout the project in order to develop a study which had meaning and value for them. The collaborative approach combined an analysis of historical data along with the stories collected from participants. By privileging the Aboriginal voice as legitimate primary source material, alternative ways of exploring the history of Aboriginal art were possible. Although the story of Aboriginal art in the southeast is also one of tensions and paradoxes, where changes in arts practices frequently positioned art, like the people themselves, outside the domain of the ‘real’, the findings of this project emphasise that arts practices assist people with connecting and in some cases reconnecting with their communities. Aboriginal art in the southeast is an assertion of identity and wellbeing and reflects the dynamic nature of Aboriginal culture in southeast Australia.

Indigenous cultural possessions constitute a diverse global issue. This issue includes some culturally important, intangible tribal objects. This is evident in the Australian copyright cases viewed in this study, which provide examples of disputes over traditional Indigenous visual art. A proposal for the legal recognition of Indigenous cultural possessions in Australia is also reviewed, in terms of a new category of law. When such cultural objects are in an artistic form they constitute the tribe's self-presentation and its mechanism of cultural continuity. Philosophical arguments for the legal recognition of Indigenous intellectual `property' tend to assume that the value of Indigenous intellectual property is determinable on external criteria.

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This thesis discusses the recent construction and anthropological collaboration of the Paris museum: Musée du quai Branly (MQB), an art museum dedicated to showcasing art collections specific to aboriginal and indigenous cultures in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The opening of MQB in June 2006 raised a plethora of controversial questions concerning the museum’s methods of curatorial display of the art it has made its primary focus. One of the major issues discussed examines the Quai Branly’s authentic, or inauthentic, representation of certain artworks displayed throughout the museum. Thus, the essay raises the questions: does a non-Western object remain authentic once it is exhibited in a Western society’s art museum? To answer this question, the essay explores the various explanations of art and authenticity in order to reach an understandable conclusion of what constitutes an authentic display of non-Western objects in a Western art museum.

La représentation des aborigènes qu’elle soit due à des artistes aborigènes ou à un regard extérieur fait partie de la construction d’une identité, notamment lorsque l’acte de création est pensé comme un mode de transmission culturelle (afin de retrouver leurs esprits ancestraux), la première étape pour aborder les œuvres des artistes aborigènes consiste à multiplier les points de vue sur la question de l’identité culturelle (la dimension politique d’affirmation de soi) et à remettre en question leur intention d’être artiste. Le fait que l'artiste aborigène se pense comme artiste dénote déjà une tentative d’inscription dans un monde social non aborigène. Cette posture ne va cependant pas sans tensions. Après le tournant ethnographique (tournant contextuel et identitaire), l’artiste aborigène s’est obligé à réfléchir à son statut, à sa manière de créer et au pourquoi de ce choix de devenir un artiste. La voie choisie par les quatre artistes étudiés ici ne les a pas conduits à apprendre des choses (acte de construire ou se construire). Il s’agit plutôt d’un effort de désapprendre, afin d’exprimer la juxtaposition culturelle et la simultanéité de l’Autre dans un monde global et mobile. En conséquence, l’artiste en tant qu’aborigène-voyageur provoque un court-circuit des interprétations. Dans cette perspective, chaque présentation au musée noue une relation avec le visiteur ou le spectateur dans un espace temporaire ou parallèle à l’espace réel.Cette recherche s’appuie à la fois sur l’analyse de la situation socio-culturelle de quatre artistes aborigènes ( Rahic Talif, Walis Labai, Sapud Kacaw et Chang En-Man ), l’analyse esthétique de leurs oeuvres et l’analyse historique du contexte de production, de diffusion et d’exposition des œuvres aborigène en général entre 1895 et 2017. Elle tente de cerner une vision post-coloniale entre l’art et l’ethnographie et de développer une pratique de l’analyse qualitative bâtie sur trois questions fondamentales : comment les oeuvres des artistes aborigènes ont-elles été représentées et « encadrées » dans un discours identitaire ? Comment l’artiste aborigène met-il en lumière la traçabilité de son appartenance (comme identité traçable) à travers sa représentation ? Comment cette représentation introduit-elle un court-circuit des interprétations culturelles dans les modes de réception ? / The representation of the aborigines, whether due to aboriginal artists or based on an outside perspective, is an integral part of the construction of an identity, in particular when the act of creation is conceived as a mode of cultural transmission (in order to find their ancestral spirits). The first step to approaching the works of the aboriginal artists consists of multiplying points of view on the question of the cultural identity (the political dimension of self-affirmation) and the questioning of their intent to be considered an artist. The fact that the aboriginal artist regards himself as an artist, had already been attempted in the non-aboriginal community. However, this position has not been without controversy. After the ethnographical turn (contextual turn into specific identity), the aboriginal artist is obliged to think about his/her status, the way to create and the reason why (s)he would become an artist. The approach chosen by the four artists studied here has not led them to learn anything (act of construction or building of themselves) ; it is rather a question of unlearning, in order to associate with the cultural juxtaposition and the simultaneity of the others in the global and mobile world. Therefore, the artist as an aborigine-traveler causes a short-circuit in the interpretations. In this perspective, each presentation at the museum builds a relationship with the ‘visitor-viewer’ in a temporary or parallel space as it relates to the real space.This research is based at the same time on the analysis of the socio-cultural situation of the four artists (Rahic Talif, Walis Labai, Sapud Kacaw et Chang En-Man), the aesthetic analysis of their works and the historical analysis of the context of production, diffusion and exhibition of the aboriginal works in general between 1895 and 2017. By relying on a sociocultural and artistic representation, our research is designed to build a strategic vision for the post-colonial studies between art and ethnography. Developing a practice of the qualitative analysis, we wish to focus on three fundamental questions : How were the works of the aboriginal artists represented and « framed » in a control of identity discourse? How does the aboriginal artist consider the traceability of his/her feeling of belonging (like a trackable identity) through his/her representation? How does this representation introduce a short circuit of the cultural interpretations in the different modes of expression, perception, evolution and reception?

No description available.