This Painting is a Mirror by Christi Belcourt honors the flower beadwork artistic legacy.
Warrior Woman: Stop the Silence by Mary Longman is a memorial to the Indigenous men, women and children who died for the sake of colonial land acquisition.
Naw Jaada-Octopus Woman by Teri-Lynn Williams-Davidson explores the legal concept of the occupation of land and sea.
WINNIPEG-Starting in August, 174 billboards across Canada took on a new look, highlighting the work of 50 Indigenous women.
The Resilience project runs from coast to coast. Images by 50 First Nations, Inuit and Métis women will serve as a highly visible celebration of Indigenous women and make the Indigenous culture more visible. A goal of the project is to give the non-native public, which still lives in much ignorance about the first inhabitants of Canada, a positive visual of their Indigenous neighbors and the community histories. The billboards are also designed to be an inspiration to the native people themselves.
"For native people and native women it will hopefully be a source of pride to see imagery that reflects us-and our hopes and dreams and feelings and memories," said Skawennati, a Mohawk artist from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal.
"For far too long, Indigenous women have been misunderstood, disenfranchised, rendered invisible and, in horrifying numbers, murdered-Canada's Minister for the Status of Women estimates there could be as many as 4,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women in this country," write Lee-Ann Martin, guest curator, and Shawna Dempsey, co-executive director of MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women's Art). "The Resilience billboard exhibition is a response to Call to Action #79 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report: the integration of 'Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada's national heritage and history.' The call supports collaborations among Aboriginal peoples and the arts community to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration."
With a budget of about $380,000, the project is "the largest exhibition of indigenous women's art in the country's history," said Dempsey.
A total of 174 billboards will be set up across the country. Twenty-four will be static, paper posters, while the remaining 150 are digital and will feature all 50 images on rotation through October. The billboards will be set up on major highways and roads, both in cities and in rural communities. Durable prints of 30 of the posters will be shipped to the far north and displayed near community centers and similar locations. Several of the locations were chosen strategically because they are places where Indigenous females have disappeared or have been murdered.
All billboards are displayed on https://resilienceproject.ca/en/artists, along with maps showing where they have been placed, and notes from the artists.
