In 1967, the Vancouver Art Gallery held an exhibition entitled Arts of the Raven: Masterworks by the Northwest Coast Indian in celebration of Canada’s centennial. The following thesis discusses the way in which the curators of the Arts of the Raven exhibit constructed the Northwest Coast “Indian-Master” artist as a strategy that figured into a larger, shifting cultural field. The intention of the exhibit organizers was to contribute to the shift from ethnology to art. While this shift can be dated to the turn of the century, this thesis deals primarily with the period from 1958-1967, a decade described by the preeminent First Nations’ political leader, George Manuel, as the time of “the rediscovery of the Indian”. How the formation of an Indian-master artist (and his masterworks) intervened in art historical practice, and dovetailed with the meaning that the affix “Indian” carried in the public sphere, is considered. In the 1960s, this meaning was fostered, in part, through a reassessment of Canada’s history in preparation for the centennial. This event drew attention to the historical relationship between Canada and aboriginal peoples through public criticism of the government by public interest groups, Indian organizations, and civil rights and anti-poverty movements. The category of mastery, which functions as a sign of class, taste and prestige in European art canons, “included” the Indian under the rubric of white male genius. Yet the Indian as a sign of upward mobility was incommensurable with the Native reality in Canada at the time. In other words, the exhibit produced an abstract equality that eclipsed the concrete inequality most First Nations peoples were actually experiencing. This thesis concludes by arguing that the Arts of the Raven exhibit came to serve the important purpose of creating a space for the “unique individual-Indian” from which collective political First Nations voices would speak.

In 1967, the Vancouver Art Gallery held an exhibition entitled Arts of the Raven: Masterworks by the Northwest Coast Indian in celebration of Canada’s centennial. The following thesis discusses the way in which the curators of the Arts of the Raven exhibit constructed the Northwest Coast “Indian-Master” artist as a strategy that figured into a larger, shifting cultural field. The intention of the exhibit organizers was to contribute to the shift from ethnology to art. While this shift can be dated to the turn of the century, this thesis deals primarily with the period from 1958-1967, a decade described by the preeminent First Nations’ political leader, George Manuel, as the time of “the rediscovery of the Indian”. How the formation of an Indian-master artist (and his masterworks) intervened in art historical practice, and dovetailed with the meaning that the affix “Indian” carried in the public sphere, is considered. In the 1960s, this meaning was fostered, in part, through a reassessment of Canada’s history in preparation for the centennial. This event drew attention to the historical relationship between Canada and aboriginal peoples through public criticism of the government by public interest groups, Indian organizations, and civil rights and anti-poverty movements. The category of mastery, which functions as a sign of class, taste and prestige in European art canons, “included” the Indian under the rubric of white male genius. Yet the Indian as a sign of upward mobility was incommensurable with the Native reality in Canada at the time. In other words, the exhibit produced an abstract equality that eclipsed the concrete inequality most First Nations peoples were actually experiencing. This thesis concludes by arguing that the Arts of the Raven exhibit came to serve the important purpose of creating a space for the “unique individual-Indian” from which collective political First Nations voices would speak. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories.

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

In this dissertation, I chart the conflicting and shifting assertions of meaning for Northwest Coast objects in Canada through a series of representational projects implemented between 1922 and 1961, beginning in January 1922, with the prosecution by the Department of Indian Affairs of participants in the Cranmer potlatch. The intersection between the concept of the 'fatal impact' or death of First Nations societies under European modernization, federal assimilationist policies, the government's exercise of disciplinary control, and the expansion of public museum collections was explicitly illustrated when the Lekwiltok, Mamalillikulla, and the Nimpkish peoples surrendered over seventeen cases of ceremonial objects in exchange for suspended sentences for violating the potlatch ban. The dissertation concludes by examining the Gitanyow agreement, engineered between 1958 and 1961, in which Gitanyow laws, histories and territories would be published by the government of British Columbia in exchange for the removal and replication of four crest poles. The raising of the poles' replicas in 1961 coincided with Canadian parliament's approval of the enfranchisement of First Nations people, the theoretical end to the era of assimilation in Canada. These events bookend a period in which representation continued to be entwined with politica and social conditions created by the Indian Act that depended on promulgating views that First Nations lifeways were vanishing. However, production of Northwest Coast objects retained significance throughout this period, such objects playing complex and multifaceted roles. Because of the symbolic and financial value many Euro-Canadians attached to First Nations objects, "art" proved an avenue for communicating First Nations-related social, political and economic issues. The objects produced or displayed between 1922 and 1961 operated through the projects I describe in the intertwined transformative processes of identity construction and boundary marking among individual First Nations groups and within Canadian national identity. Through these projects, important steps were taken in formulating two major characteristics of the post-1960 period: 1. a burgeoning market in Northwest Coast objects constructed as "traditional;" and 2. First Nations activism for land claims and self-determination using "tradition" and "art" as a platform in activism for land claims and self-determination.

No description available.

In this dissertation, I chart the conflicting and shifting assertions of meaning for Northwest Coast objects in Canada through a series of representational projects implemented between 1922 and 1961, beginning in January 1922, with the prosecution by the Department of Indian Affairs of participants in the Cranmer potlatch. The intersection between the concept of the 'fatal impact' or death of First Nations societies under European modernization, federal assimilationist policies, the government's exercise of disciplinary control, and the expansion of public museum collections was explicitly illustrated when the Lekwiltok, Mamalillikulla, and the Nimpkish peoples surrendered over seventeen cases of ceremonial objects in exchange for suspended sentences for violating the potlatch ban. The dissertation concludes by examining the Gitanyow agreement, engineered between 1958 and 1961, in which Gitanyow laws, histories and territories would be published by the government of British Columbia in exchange for the removal and replication of four crest poles. The raising of the poles' replicas in 1961 coincided with Canadian parliament's approval of the enfranchisement of First Nations people, the theoretical end to the era of assimilation in Canada. These events bookend a period in which representation continued to be entwined with politica and social conditions created by the Indian Act that depended on promulgating views that First Nations lifeways were vanishing. However, production of Northwest Coast objects retained significance throughout this period, such objects playing complex and multifaceted roles. Because of the symbolic and financial value many Euro-Canadians attached to First Nations objects, "art" proved an avenue for communicating First Nations-related social, political and economic issues. The objects produced or displayed between 1922 and 1961 operated through the projects I describe in the intertwined transformative processes of identity construction and boundary marking among individual First Nations groups and within Canadian national identity. Through these projects, important steps were taken in formulating two major characteristics of the post-1960 period: 1. a burgeoning market in Northwest Coast objects constructed as "traditional;" and 2. First Nations activism for land claims and self-determination using "tradition" and "art" as a platform in activism for land claims and self-determination. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

No description available.