Revising and Reconstructing the Indian Act
March 2014
Indian Act text, black material, red thread, white thread, chain
60 x 72 in.
I am a 35 year old Ojibway/Odawa Anishinaabe kwe who is searching for her place in her culture and her culture in herself. There is a private process in all Anishinaabe's journeys to find their right and true path. I search for this as I await my husband's return from prison.
While visiting my reserve, Garden River First Nation, during a break from university, my mother and I finally made an appointment to go to the Shingwauk University library which houses records upon records of the Shingwauk Residential School as well as others to create an archive and research centre. They are continuing research into their family and community history. I was searching for my grandmothers' names or faces in the albums from the two residential schools that they were said to have attended. My search was unsuccessful but I came away with lists of names from these schools' registrars to help in further research. I also left with other informative booklets to do with causal links between residential school attendance, aboriginals in the prison system, violence and alcoholism. One of the other materials that I left with was a 1996 revised copy of the Indian Act. I had heard recently from an inspiring talk by a Cree filmmaker, Jules A. Koostachin, that to decolonize "we must understand the system before trying to change it." This was a place to begin. Upon receiving new guidelines to begin my next collage project to do with systems, I immediately knew that I must deal with the Indian Act. This confusing, out-of-date yet revised and convoluted set of legislations that are born of racist, propagandist, and assimilative control tactics from a colonial government are, to say the least, daunting subject matter for any treaty person. I began to tackle this booklet with the only coloured pencil that I had, flesh-toned; that of course means a pale, pink, peach colour, nowhere near my own. I started reading and automatically began highlighting the word "Indian"; a gut reaction. Halfway through, tired of reading and re-reading paragraphs to circle back to related subsections and getting angrier and angrier at the confusion of terminology and overuse of pronouns, I began to simply scan the rest of the text and like a game, search and seek only the single word. When I came to the end of the booklet and the last "Indian" had been marked in "flesh-tone", I flipped the booklet upside down and began from back to front to over-highlight these markings with a reddish-brown coloured pencil. I felt a sense of reclamation and ease.
Again I re-read through the sections grasping a fuller sense of the contents until I was satisfied that I had gleaned what I must. My decision to shred the document had been my plan all along and now I set up my make-shift ruler and guides to cut one inch strips along the full length of the open booklet to create 42 cm long strips. I proceeded to scatter these on my floor and separate all of the pieces, crumpling as I go. There is a sense of release in this act. For a good part of the day I will walk on these pieces as I go about my day and also ripped and cut 21cm square pieces of black material. After all thirty one pieces are cut, I set up my sewing machine with white thread and began to randomly take a strip of the Indian Act and rip it in half. I did this six times and then began to sew them at equal intervals along one edge of a block of material. I tore another six and sewed it to the next edge of the block. I then wove these strips together in a lattice pattern. I sewed the two loose edges down to secure the lattice and moved on to the next thirty blocks. I began another pattern, this time with red thread on the top and white on the bottom; an X from corner to corner on each block. I then began to sew the blocks together in rows of five, as I have done before in the quilt making process, to make a blanket. The blanket/covering/hanging/quilt will be five blocks wide by six blocks high. After sewing all of the rows together I pinned the block with the "Indian Act" title into the center of the hanging with yellow headed straight pins. I then sewed two lengths of looped black fabric to to the back of the piece to insert rods into the top and bottom for stability and for hanging purposes. The piece will hang from chains. With the completion of the work I found a cathartic peace after working through anger and frustration, then detachment and finally a calmness and sense of freedom and understanding that this document is not "law" and that it is only a tool that may be bent and changed to the will of this government but also by the developing governments of my people.
The physical act of revising, cutting, tearing and reconstructing the thing has rewoven the psychological hold that it once had on this artist to become a release.