Rebecca Belmore is an Anishnabe (Ojibwa) artist born and raised in Upsala, Northwestern Ontario, and now living and working in Vancouver. Her main focus is installation and performance art, but she also works in other media, including photography, video and sculpture. Belmore has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally since the late 1980s. She won the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s prestigious VIVA Award in 2004, and her work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and other prestigious institutions.

In My Lifetime features Belmore’s haunting and timely 2002 installation blood on the snow. Together with its companion work, a video titled Vigil, blood on the snow suggests a parallel between historical and contemporary atrocities .

In 1890, the United States cavalry massacred 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota; their frozen bodies lay for four days under a blanket of snow before being thrown into a mass grave. Belmore’s installation also honours the memory of the missing and murdered women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She uses a quilt to evoke the pristine indifference of a blanket of snow defiled by the blood of the dispossessed, and a chair to serve as a metaphor for the deceased women. The work adds to the artist’s repertoire of monuments to the despair and futility of so many violent deaths.

“ My work often deals with the elusive quality of memory,” Belmore has said. “The importance of the act of remembering becomes essential in works that are often created as memorials. Current history and place become crucial elements for understanding the complexity of the terrain that we inhabit.”

In the context of her heritage, Belmore’s dynamic and defiant art speaks of more than injustice and loss — it speaks of survival.

blood on the snow 2002 Fabric, feathers, chair, acrylic paint 107 x 610 x 610 cm Collection of the Mendel Art Gallery, purchased with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, 2004 Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Hannah Claus is a member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (Tyendinaga) in Eastern Ontario. She is also of European ancestry. She has exhibited widely throughout Canada and in Mexico since her graduation from Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design in 1997. She completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Concordia University in Montreal in 2004, and now divides her time between Montreal and Gatineau, where she is artistic director of the artist-run centre Axe-Néo-7.

Claus manipulates objects and patterns to explore the intersection of her two cultural identities: Native and European-Canadian.

In My Lifetime features Claus’s unsettlements (2004), a work inspired by the souvenir beading industry that determined the relationship between the Iroquoian makers and the European-Canadian consumers around the turn of the twentieth century. This association is expressed through a collection of houses that combine screenprinted wallpaper designs with beadwork patterns, in order to highlight intercultural relationships, and to examine areas of cross-cultural overlap and transformation.

The single-family houses feature wallpaper motifs from Victorian England and other European-style designs. Together, they symbolize Western consumption and values. In stark contrast, shadows of beads spill out from the buildings, evoking the multi-family dwellings so central to the lives of the artist’s Mohawk ancestors.

The artist has also pierced the paper with delicate beadwork designs that are not immediately obvious against the screenprinted designs. The subtle layering of symbolic motifs further underscores the complex relationship between cultures.

The life-sized scale and dishevelled form of a frayed quilt lying nearby suggests a soothing landscape filled with history and memory, comfort and longing.

unsettlements 2004 Screen print on kozo paper, bass wood, seed beads, quilt, electronic components, microcontroller, sensors, fiber optic filament, LEDs Variable dimensions Collection of the Artist Installation at Articule, Montreal; photo © Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

David Garneau is a Métis artist who was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He currently lives in Saskatchewan, where he is a member of the faculty in the University of Regina’s Visual Arts Department. He teaches painting, drawing and graduate theory courses, and participates in an interdisciplinary class on Shakespeare. He is also a curator and art critic, and co-founder of Artichoke, the Vancouver-based visual-arts quarterly published between 1989 and 2005.

Garneau’s artistic practice focuses on painting, drawing and contemporary theory, and deals mainly with masculinity, representation and the negotiation of white, Aboriginal and Métis identities.

From an early age, Garneau was fascinated by his family’s Métis heritage and the stories about his great-great-grandfather. Laurent Garneau was jailed as a collaborator of Métis resistance leader Louis Riel, but was ultimately saved from the noose. Coming to terms with his Métis roots was not always easy. Garneau grew up in a predominantly non-Aboriginal community, where he was called “Indian” and subjected to racial discrimination.

Influenced by his personal experiences, Garneau’s paintings investigate historical and contemporary misconceptions about the Métis. Who is Métis? What does it mean to identify oneself as Métis? The artist raises the questions in the context of conventional pop culture caricatures of “Cowboys and Indians,” using a distinctive style reminiscent of comic books, pulp novels and Pop Art.

In My Lifetime features three oil paintings from the series Cowboys and Indians (and Metis?):

Cross Addressing (2002), from the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s own collection of Canadian Aboriginal Art, shows two men dressed in stereotypical “cowboy and Indian” dress, asking the same question, thus emphasizing the duality of the Métis identity.

Métis-Mountie (2002) is a reference to the impact of European exploration and settlement on the First Nations in the Canadian Prairies.

May Tea? is a playful recollection of the artist’s boyhood misunderstanding of his family’s heritage. But the hand on the Métis man’s neck signals a clear understanding of the persecution and hanging of Louis Riel.

Cross Addressing 2002 Oil on canvas 153 x 122.5 cm Collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization - CMC 2006.31 Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Métis-Mountie 2002 Oil on canvas 122.5 x 153 cm Collection of Pierre-Henri Aho, Montreal Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

May Tea? 2002 Oil on canvas 153 x 122.5 cm On loan from the Canadiana Fund, Crown Collection of the Official Residences of Canada, National Capital Commission Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Kainawa (Blood) Nation of southern Alberta. Her multidisciplinary artwork, which sometimes includes literal or metaphorical references to blood, is driven and inspired by her personal memories, her family and her community.

HeavyShield studied at the Alberta College of Art, and has gained much recognition over the past two decades, with numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada and the United States. Her work is in the collections of several major museums, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the MacKenzie Art  Gallery in Regina and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.

HeavyShield’s contribution to In My Lifetime, titled Aapaskaiyaawa (They are Dancing), shows forms symbolic of the human body, arranged in groups that evoke family and community.

This 2002 sculptural installation was inspired by HeavyShield’s recollections of the lives of her parents and others who came before them. Here, they are embodied by 12 yellow canvas figures suspended from the ceiling in an irregular semi-circle. The figures suggest a group of people engaged in a dance, moving gracefully in response to currents of air.

The figures and the shadows they cast float like spirits in the transitional space between earth and sky, past and present, affirming the continuum between the land and the enduring cultural traditions of Aboriginal peoples. The figures attest to a history in which the artist’s ancestors travelled with purpose, their movements influenced by the weather, the seasons, resources, commerce and social activities.

Aapaskaiyaawa (They are Dancing) 2002 Acrylic on canvas, plastic filament 178 x 366 x 183 cm Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, purchased with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program Photo © Walter Phillips Gallery ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Neal McLeod is a multimedia artist with a wide range of talents. He is a painter, poet, academic, writer and former member of the comedy troupe the Bionic Bannock Boys. McLeod has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Saskatchewan, and received his PhD in Canadian Plains Studies from the University of Regina in 2004. He now lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Trent University. A member of the James Smith Cree First Nation of northern Saskatchewan, McLeod draws heavily on his Aboriginal ancestry for creative inspiration.

In My Lifetime presents two works from McLeod’s wîhtikow series. In Cree narratives, wîhtikow (or windigo) is an evil spirit-being that pursues humans relentlessly in an all-consuming quest to satisfy its greed and self-absorption. It is a metaphor for the colonizers’ destruction of Aboriginal lands, spirit and narratives. McLeod also uses wîhtikow as a way of naming his own dreams and the demons that inhabit them.

In McLeod’s painting Wîhtikow II (2001), the terrifying spectre brandishes a cross in one hand and human flesh in the other, clearly symbolizing the European colonists’ devouring of Indigenous land, resources, spirit and narratives. The malevolent being also serves as a metaphor for the greed and individualism that are consuming contemporary society. Phrases in English and Cree — “progress,” “a new light on the land,” “ate our souls” — express opposing views of European expansion.

Dreams are central to Cree religion and philosophy, and the focus of the second painting, Wîhtikow pism/wîhtikow sun (2002), illustrates McLeod’s recurring nightmare in which darkness replaces light and the earth buries the old stories for all time. Here, wîhtikow represents the demons that inhabit the darkness within us all, and the existential questions with which humans have grappled since time immemorial.

Conversely, viewed from a more optimistic perspective where destruction contains a promise of renewal, both paintings reflect the artist’s enduring hope that order will be restored, and that wîhtikow actually signals his culture’s continuity and survival.

Wîhtikow II 2001 Acrylic, oil, latex and photocopies on canvas 189.5 x 117 cm On loan from the Canadiana Fund, Crown Collection of the Official Residences of Canada, National Capital Commission Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Wîhtikow pîsim/wîhtikow sun 2002 Acrylic, oil, latex, photographs and dried flowers on wood 122 x 153 cm Collection of Robert Byers Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Nadia Myre was born in Montreal and reinstated as a member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg band in Maniwaki, Québec, thanks to Bill C-31, the 1985 law that addressed Aboriginal disinheritance. In Myre’s case, the connection had been severed when her mother was adopted by a family off the reserve. This multidisciplinary artist’s sculptures, paintings, videos and writing explore recurring themes of language, loss and identity, as well as her complex relationships with her family, ancestors and friends.

Myre earned a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal in 2002. She has exhibited her work across Canada and as far away as Australia, and won awards from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation and the British Columbia Arts Council.

In My Lifetime includes three separate but conceptually linked works that allow Myre to express her vision of identity.

Grandmothers' Circle (2002) is a sculptural installation centred on a structure reminiscent of fish-drying racks, a reference to food preparation and other family activities. The circle invokes the spirits of Myre’s maternal ancestors, and honours the strength of community and family. At the same time, by placing four wooden poles outside the circle, the artist expresses her distance from that past, her sense of loss of identity, and her longing to reconnect with the culture of her ancestors.

In the video Wish (2002), the rhythmic up-and-down movements of Myre’s own abstracted body connect her with the ancestors in the circle. Like many Aboriginal people of her generation, Myre has not suffered directly from the assault of colonialism experienced by her elders, but she is touched by their pain and loss.

Nadia Myre describes her third work, coda construction, as “an exploration in language and desire.” Here, the artist interweaves English prose with distress messages in Morse code (written in Braille) and ground-to-air signals. The result is a narrative that speaks to the difficulty and urgency of communicating desire: “(help) you loved [unable to move] as a child (help) lost, in the thick of  wood [do not understand] (help) [need assistance] haunted (help) by a slew [need compass and map] of ghastly creatures (help).”

Grandmothers' Circle 2002 Ash, basswood, birch, ironwood, red alder, hide, graphite 122 x 213 x 244 cm Courtesy of the Galerie Art Mûr, Montreal, Quebec Canadian Museum of Civilization Collection Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Wish 2002 Video (12 min.) Courtesy of the Galerie Art Mûr, Montreal, Quebec Canadian Museum of Civilization Collection Photo © Nadia Myre ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Sonia Robertson is a member of the Innu nation. She was born in Mashteuiatsh (Pointe-Bleue), Quebec, where she currently lives. Robertson obtained her bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi in 1996. Her work, heavily influenced by her Aboriginal identity, has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Haïti, France and Japan.

Robertson’s artistic practice has evolved from photography — which still plays an important role in her work — to installation and performance art. In the past decade, she has developed her concept of in situ or site-specific art installations that address both place and the presence of spirit.

Robertson’s contribution to In My Lifetime is an installation titled Refaire l’alliance, which was originally created as an in situ work for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in 2005. The museum is located on the Plains of Abraham — or Battlefield Park, as it is now called — the site of the 1759 battle between France and Britain. The victory of British forces under General James Wolfe decided the future of Canada, including Canada’s First Peoples.

In Refaire l’alliance, the artist brings the memories and spirits of the Plains of Abraham into the gallery in order to redress historical inaccuracies within the collective national memory. Now, by inserting images of monuments in the National Capital Region, Refaire l’alliance extends the possibilities for reconciliation to this region .

The installation works as a contemporary wampum belt that reinvests the country’s history with new meanings in relation to its Aboriginal inhabitants. Historically made of quahog shell, wampum belts served as documents that recorded alliances, important events and agreements between Aboriginal nations and European newcomers.

With this work, Robertson suggests a new alliance for the future — a shared national history.

Refaire l'alliance 2004 - 2005 Installation in situ Variable dimensions Collection of the Artist Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Frank Shebageget is an Anishnabe (Ojibwa) artist and curator who was born and raised in Upsala, Northwestern Ontario, and now lives and works in Ottawa. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1996, and received his Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Victoria in 2000. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in Canada and the United States, and has been collected by the Canada Council Art Bank and the Aboriginal Achievement Foundation in Toronto, among others.

Shebageget has created his own repertoire of iconic symbols — seaplanes, houses and tarpaper, for example — that act as powerful references to the intersection of Aboriginal and European-Canadian cultures. By using repetition, he draws attention to the implications of mass production and consumption on Aboriginal cultures and economies. In My Lifetime features three works that reflect this artistic approach.

In Small Village (2000), 39 small grey houses lined up on cedar shelves approximate the number of family residences in the artist’s home community of Upsala. Shebageget uses these identical architectural models to comment not only on the substandard federal housing projects on First Nations reserves across Canada, but on the uniformity of many suburban developments.

Communities II (2003) features the names of 688 First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities across Canada that are in the process of reclaiming their languages, cultures and territories. The names appear on tarpaper, a material still used as a covering for many reserve houses today.

Beavers (2003) is an installation of 1,692 tiny basswood models of the iconic bush plane of the same name. The work is a sentimental homage to the Beaver, which has played a critical role in Canadian history. In First Nations and other northern communities, waterways and seaplanes are often the primary — if not the only — links to the outside world. The 1,692 miniature replicas represent the exact number of Beavers produced by De Havilland between 1947 and 1967.

Small Village 2000 Mixed media 140 x 244 x 26 cm Canada Council Art Bank Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Communities II (DETAIL) 2003 Tarpaper, acrylic 2.74 x 4.87 m Collection of the Artist Photo © Mus¸ée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Patrick Altman ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED

Beavers 2003 Basswood, metal 1,692 airplanes, each 14.73 x 8.8 x 2.54 cm Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program, Glen Bloom and The Ottawa Art Gallery's Acquisition Endowment Fund Photo © Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Peter McCallum ALL REPRODUCTIONS PROHIBITED