Thank you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs.
My presentation will be in English, but if you have questions in French, I can address those as well. My name is Viviane Gray. I'm the manager of the Indian and Inuit art collection at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Thank you for inviting me to give a presentation.
The Indian and Inuit Art Centres of Indian and Northern Affairs are responsible for the preservation, development, and promotion of Indian and Inuit art for their collection through acquisition, loan, exhibitions, and promotion.
The Indian and Inuit art collection represents works of art by Canada's most prominent Indian or first nations, Métis, and Inuit artists, as well as works by young emerging and mid-career artists. The collection of over 4,000 artworks includes representation from across Canada and of all major art forms, such as basketry, beadwork, carvings, ceramics, drawings, installation art, paintings, photography, sculpture, and textiles dating from the early 1960s to the present.
Since I'm speaking on an art collection, I couldn't see just giving you text for your presentation, so I interspersed photographs of the images from the art collection. This one is from Norval Morrisseau, an artist from the Red Rock Band in Ontario. Norval Morrisseau is one of our most prominent master artists. He's a painter. What he's known as is a shaman artist, and what shaman artists are noted for is survival. That was the theme I was giving myself for this presentation, because survival is key, not just for aboriginal people, aboriginal artists, but for non-aboriginal artists and people all over the world.
The mission statement for Indian and Northern Affairs is working together to make Canada a better place for first nations, Inuit, and northerners. Increasingly, Indian and Northern Affairs' role has become one of facilitating change and bringing together the partners and interests needed to implement “Gathering Strength--Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan”.
You'll notice that I use “Indian” at times versus “first nations”. We recognize that many first nations people in Canada prefer not to describe themselves as Indians. However, we use the term “Indian” because it has a legal meaning, according to the Indian Act. The term “Indian” is considered outdated by many people and there's much debate over whether we should continue using it. The department's popular usage typically uses the term “first nations” instead of “Indian”, except in the case of Indian art. The term “Indian” collectively describes all indigenous people in Canada who are not Inuit or Métis. Indian peoples are one of the three peoples recognized as aboriginal in the Canadian Constitution of 1982. It specifies that aboriginal people of Canada consist of Indian, Métis, and Inuit peoples.
There's also discussion in the art academic world that Indian is acceptable in Indian art because of the recognition of art schools. In Canada, there's an absolute recognition of Inuit art as an art school. There's also the Northwest Coast Indian art school, and we also recognize the American art schools of the American southwest and also the Woodland school, of which Norval Morrisseau, the artist I presented a while ago, is a founder.
When we deal with our programs, we are aware of the high population of aboriginal people in Canada, which is forever increasing. We notice it especially in the urban areas and we also notice it in the north. Nunavut has the highest Inuit population and Quebec's Inuit population is the second largest in the country. According to the last census in 2006 of Census Canada, on the international level among selected countries, the aboriginal peoples' share of Canada's total population ranked second, behind New Zealand, whose Maori population accounts for 14% of its total population.
The work that you see up there is by an Ontario artist named Zoey Wood-Salomon, and this work is called Meeting with the Chiefs.
The Indian and Inuit Art Centres programs have existed since the early 1960s at Indian and Northern Affairs. They were some of the oldest programs at the department. Inuit art development and promotion started in 1949 in the northern program, and the Indian art program was part of the education program, economic development, and is now part of the administration program in corporate services.
Since 1949, Indian and Northern Affairs has acquired a substantial collection of art. However, in 1990, the Inuit art collection, which was about 5,000 works, was transferred outside of the department. They were transferred to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the Inuit Cultural Institute in Nunavut, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Avataq Cultural Institute in Quebec. As well, during that time of devolution of the northern programs, Indian and Northern Affairs started the Inuit Art Foundation, a national aboriginal organization that was created and lives in Ottawa. It was started in 1987 with a publication to promote Inuit art. It's been in existence for 20 years, and the department funds this organization and we have authority to continue funding until 2012.
This work is by Benjamin Chee Chee, a deceased Ojibway artist from Ontario.
The Indian and Inuit Art Centres are now part of corporate services, as I said, and a lot of artists thought this was a strange program for it to be in. However, having been there for almost 23 years myself as manager, I've found that it has been the best place for it to be because aboriginal art is considered a valued asset at Indian and Northern Affairs, similar to what other collections would recognize, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs, which has a valued assets division.
Our annual operating budget is $374,000; $224,000 is for the Indian Art Centre, and $150,000 for the Inuit Art Centre. The reason it's more for the Indian Art Centre is that we still have the collection that we collected from 1960, while the Inuit Art Centre just started to collect Inuit art again in 1997.
We also administer, as I said, the annual contribution grant to the Inuit Art Foundation of $458,000. Both programs have been reviewed several times by the department for its relevancy to the clients, to the aboriginal people, and to the department. At all those reviews, it was found that it was still relevant to the mandate.
This is a bentwood cedar box by west coast artist, Don Yeomans.
We have an art acquisition budget--it could be smaller at times, and sometimes it could be a little bit larger, depending on what we get from submissions--usually it's $160,000 a year. We also administer an art loan program once we acquire the work, and I will get more into the acquisition program later, but we also administer an art loan program from the works that are in the collection. We also have an Indian and Inuit art gallery, as you see here, situated in our building at 10 Wellington Street, Gatineau, and we have a research documentation library that's used not just by people in Canada, but by scholars from around the world.
In the work that we do with artists, we respect the Copyright Act, the Privacy Act, and the access to information laws with regard to artists' information. For example, when we purchase works from an artist, they retain the copyright. We ask their permission to show their work at educational presentations such as this one. When people ask to borrow images of the collection for publications or for art exhibitions, we say that they should pay a fee that's actually outlined by the organization called CARFAC, which is the Canadian Artists Representation/Le front des artistes canadiens.
For the Inuit art, the Inuit Art Foundation has a copyright clearance service for a fee. We also pay exhibition fees for the artists in our collection, whether we have the exhibition in-house in our gallery or whether the works are loaned to other institutions such as the National Gallery or others.
The Indian and Inuit art collection is divided up into several sub-collections. For example, the Indian Art Collection has 3,041 works; the Inuit collection has 423; we also have a collection called the Alberta Collection, where we have 220; and we have the Dewdney manuscript collection, and we have a collection for educational, archival, and resources.
The Alberta collection was acquired by us at the request of artists from Alberta. In 1993, the Alberta collection, which was then owned by the Alberta arts and crafts corporation, was put up for sale at an auction. The aboriginal artists of Alberta didn't want to see the art work dispersed to the general public. At that time, they thought it would be purchased by Texas oil ranch collectors. They asked the department if we could buy it in one collection. The department got the money together, and we were able to buy it for $75,000. I also heard that the artists at that time picketed the auction so that other collectors wouldn't purchase it. You can see that the aboriginal artists have a lot of faith in the department in terms of how we acquire and maintain the work.
We also purchase works, as I said, through commissions. This is one of the works that you see in front of you. It was commissioned when the building was installed in Gatineau, in 1978, I think it was. It was a commission by the Department of Public Works. However, it now belongs to the Indian and Inuit art collection.
At this time, the collection is valued at $2,552,959. The estimated value is actually $4 million or more. We've never really had an actual evaluation as that would cost money we don't have. But from what we see in the market today, that's the estimated value.
We accept gifts for the collection. Not only do we buy them at art acquisition programs, as you just saw, we have the special acquisitions, such as the Alberta collection. We have anonymous donations, artists' donations, and we have commissions. We also have gifts to the minister. Any gift that is given to the minister that's valued over $1,000 becomes part of the Indian and Inuit art collection. Public donations are done through the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, where we are designated as a category A institution. This allows us to issue tax receipts for public donations over $5,000.
As you can imagine, because of the history of the collection from the early 1960s, we have no idea how a lot of work got into the collection. We think it may have been through regional purchases, in an attempt to help the artist at the regional level; or from other events, such as exhibitions that were done for the federal government.
This work is important in terms of its subject matter. It's a work that is actually in the office of Minister Jim Prentice right now. It's called Elijah Harper and the Dead Heads, and it was done by a west coast artist named Chuck Heit. It's an homage to Elijah Harper and his influence on the Meech Lake accord.
How we purchase art was done randomly prior to 1989. Since 1989, when I came on board, we have made sure that we have Treasury Board authority. Treasury Board authority was obtained to acquire Indian art for the purpose of displays, exhibition and loan of artwork, which is in support of promoting an emerging art form, and to maintain a representative Indian heritage collection for the benefit of all Canadians.
We also went to aboriginal artists for advice on how to acquire art. Many of the artists we consulted knew of the standard art acquisition methods from the Canada Council art bank, and from regional, or provincial and territorial, art councils--the same system as we use.
This group you see in front of you is our present advisory committee for the Indian Art Centre. We meet every two years. The last time we met, in 2005, discussions were about review of the Indian art program, review of our art acquisitions, better storage for our art collection, protection of intellectual property and traditional knowledge, and aboriginal self-identification. The people who are chosen for these committees are artists from the regions, and they are artists who are usually involved with artistic organizations.
Our art acquisition program is done through a national call for submissions. We send out our call for submissions in three languages: French, English, and Inuktitut. In the last 10 years we've had 54 acquisition exhibition programs. The person you see in front of you there is an example of an event that deals with an exhibition program. This artist was chosen. She is Innu from Mashteuiatsh, Quebec. Her name is Katia Kurtness.
When we have an acquisition exhibition program, it's an aboriginal event. We bring in entertainment. We have an opening. We ship the work to the department for the exhibition, and the artist comes in to set up the exhibition with us, thereby giving the artist a complete experience in art development.
We've averaged about four to six exhibitions a year over the last ten years, and it's been too much. We found that we didn't have time to do much collection maintenance. We've had to change our process since our last committee meeting in 2005, and based on our reduction in budgets, we now have biennial art acquisitions, which means every two years, which sets off the other year for collection maintenance.
I put this in because we work with a lot of people when we deal with aboriginal art; we don't just work with the artists. In Canada, we have in our collection 644 artists. We still need to communicate with the 615 first nations and Métis artists who are not in the collection. There are 123 Inuit artists in our collection, but there are actually 3,000 active Inuit artists we need to communicate with. We also deal with 108 art dealers across Canada, and we deal with over 600 first nations, 53 Inuit communities, and urban first nations and Métis.
For non-government organizations, we deal with the organization I just referred to, CARFAC, which is the Canadian Artists' Representation, or le Front des artistes canadiens; the Inuit Art Foundation; artist-run centres; aboriginal collectives; artist collectives; and aboriginal organizations. In the private sector, we deal with 440 art galleries, and in education, which would be universities, colleges, and schools, we have 88 in our database.
Our participation over the last 30 years has been quite vast. We've had an enormous number of exhibitions, but I wanted to point out the main ones we've had since 1997. We had an exhibition with the Assembly of First Nations, where they honoured the artists Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier. We've worked with the Canada Council for the Arts, and in fact the department funded the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Secretariat from 1996 to 1998. We've recently done a project with the National Aviation Museum where they wanted to include northern artists, and they translated their invitations and correspondence into Inuktitut and English. We have constant loans with the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Capital Commission for events such as Winterlude and the “history on the Hill” project. We also work closely with Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Just recently, in the last two years, we were involved with International Trade and with the Canadian missions in presenting a gift to St. Petersburg in Russia for their 300th anniversary. We also loan works to the Governor General of Canada, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Prime Minister's Office--and here I will refer to a project that is still ongoing and has been going on for ten years. We are about to finish it with an exhibition in northern Quebec, in Mashteuiatsh. I gave you this publication with the handout. It's an exhibition that was developed in cooperation with Indian and Northern Affairs and with Foreign Affairs and International Trade. It's an international travelling exhibition. It is at the end of its travelling schedule.
We have had enormous success with this exhibition in terms of being able to show it in nine different countries, and now we will end it with a showing in an aboriginal museum in Mashteuiatsh, the Musée Amérindien. That will be on June 21, 2007.
We also have had projects with the Russian Association of Indigenous People of the North. We've just finished a three-year Canada-Russia project with them that took place from 2002 to 2005.
In 2002 we held a conference in Tyumen', which is in eastern Siberia, with the indigenous people of Russia and the Inuit Art Foundation and some aboriginal speakers from Canada.
We then held the second project, which involved an exhibition in St. Petersburg at the Russian Ethnography Museum.
There was also a workshop held in Ottawa with the Inuit Art Foundation, entitled Connecting Cultures and the Business of Art.
In fact, the reason we worked on this project was that the Russian Federation for Indigenous People felt that the Indian and Inuit Art Centres at Indian and Northern Affairs and the Inuit Art Foundation were the model organizations and institutions for what they are trying to do in Russia.
We also have loans with the Senate of Canada.
This is a well-known contemporary artist, Robert Houle, who came with us and was invited to come to St. Petersburg for the exhibition. Here he is in front of a museum that he wanted to see.
How does the Indian and Inuit Art Centre fit into the mandate of Indian and Northern Affairs? First of all, we purchase art directly for the collection, directly from the artists. We don't go through an intermediary except sometimes for a gallery or a cooperative. We also make sure that we purchase only from artists who are living.
The Indian and Inuit art collection promotes the mandate of Indian and Northern Affairs by creating an awareness of aboriginal people in the work environment. There are only two government departments in Canada that have this authority from Treasury Board: Indian and Northern Affairs, and Foreign Affairs.
What does the Indian and Inuit art collection represent? It represents many things. First of all, it's sui generis. It's a unique collection, and it's a source of pride for all Canadians.
It's unique in the sense that the creative expressions by the aboriginal artists are based on our culture and on our experience. Indian and Inuit art collection is also a living collection. It's a model for aboriginal curatorship.
For example, in this photograph you see Yukon artist Ann Smith. Ann Smith is not just an artist; she has played quite a role in her community of Kwanlin Dun. She is Tutchone and Tlingit. She was chief of Kwanlin Dun at one time, but she is now a master weaver. She revived the lost art form of Ravenstail weaving. Here she is shown with three pieces, The Robe, The Apron, and The Dance Anklet, the footwear.
She made these pieces over a period of three to four years, and at each art acquisition we had, we purchased them. We now have the total robe in our collection, but what Ann does every now and again that makes it so unique for our collection is that she will ask to borrow it. She will borrow it, use it at an event, dance with this outfit, with this robe, and return it. Nowhere else in Canada can you do this with a public collection.
Also, the Indian and Inuit art collection provides emerging aboriginal artists national and international promotion. No other public or art institution does this.
The Indian and Inuit art collection represents a legacy for future generations, and this is important. Aboriginal communities and aboriginal artists always mention this to us when we meet them.
And it was also mentioned in the last Auditor General's report that she tabled in 2005, where she mentioned how important heritage collections were. We were part of that study, and we were part of that report, and we got good commendations from the Auditor General's office because, for a small operation, we have protected and maintained and put resources into our heritage collection.
As well, our collection completes the Canadian art history for Canadian art institutions. For example, this is a painting done by deceased artist Gerald Tailfeathers, who was a Blood from Alberta. Gerald Tailfeathers was a painter who painted images in the 1970s and 1980s.
This piece is in our collection; it's called The Drinking Party. You would not find this in other art collections, because people are uncomfortable with issues that are real to aboriginal people. This was an issue that has always been part of our history and still is today. Now the National Gallery of Canada borrows works by this artist, and has borrowed this work for an exhibition they are now putting together--and have been putting together for the last two years--called Art of this Land.
Prior to 1985 the National Gallery did not have aboriginal art. This is why our collection is so important as well--because we complete the art history that no other art institution was doing during the last 100 years. We have been doing it and we complete that art history.
That's the end of my 20-minute presentation.
You also asked me about the future of the collection. The artists have been saying they want the collection to stay at Indian Affairs and Northern Development until a suitable aboriginal organization is found. They want us to continue the art acquisition program. To do that, because of our limited resources, we have to increase our partnerships with Canadian art institutions, government departments, and private industry. As you can see, we have already had a history of doing that.
Thank you very much.
