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McMaster challenges First Nations stereotypes

Author

Alfred Young Man, Windspeaker Contributor, Lethbridge Alberta.

Volume

12

Issue

6

Year

1994

Page 13

Upon entering the Southern Alberta Art Gallery one is immediately confronted with a plastic container set up by artist Gerald McMaster labelled "deposit here..Cultural Amnesty." The public is requested to participate in the philosophy governing a future installation to be called Cultural Amnesty.

Curator Rosa Ho of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology says the box is meant for the collection of voluntary contributions of objects related to the issues within and beyond the present exhibition.

Some art purists may find McMaster's works in his current exhibition, Savage Graces, a tad too political for their "good taste." They may elect to ignore McMaster's culturally different attitude, giving previous little thought to the artist's main-line concern tat the exhibition is meant to work as a unit.

None of the presented pieces can be merchandised as individual texts, very successfully, without running the risk of taking them out of context and fundamentally undermining the central premise of McMaster's hypothesis.

If we are expected to treat the work as mundane commodity, to be bought

and re-sold as nearly all art is, we compromise the very integrity of the exhibition itself, destroying the meaning of the installation i the process. (Where has this happened before? Right! In the fields of anthropology and under both Canadian and U.S. government policies in this past century.)

Several non-Indian members of the audience who attended McMaster's talk

at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery left. The subject matter was likely beyond their comprehension, which only serves to underscore the legitimacy of Savage Graces.

What is McMaster's thesis concerning cultural amnesty? Briefly, it is founded upon his very sound belie that we all harbor false and even prejudicial stereotypes about First Nations people brought about through the democratic, frivolous ingesting of too many bad Hollywood images or cliches. Or, we too willingly perhaps let ourselves be mainly subjected to artfully constructed objects in Indian kitsch, a concept which in itself remains largely unrecognized, therefore unexplored, by the public.

Add to this more than a century of dreadfully constructed scientific theories about who North American Indians "really" are, or even the way we were taught to regard Native people throughout our lives, more specifically, that especially critical period of growth between the first and 12th years of schooling, and one has a recipe for racism.

He plays the role of investigator/provocateur on these issues, daring to act the part of the unfortunate messenger.

McMaster has been the curator of contemporary Native art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa for about a decade now. That time he has spent putting together similar exhibitions which in turn have prompted his satirical conviction that this current production must be seen to serve its intended audience. There is no argument there. Like all good artists he challenges our perception and educates our sensibilities.

Now, back to that "Freudian" Plexiglas box at the door. He asks us to bring along a small (or large) object to add to his collection under the premise that this will provide us with the opportunity to symbolically, if not actually, get down the road to the divesting of any "apoplectic" tendencies we may inadvertently be giving asylum to in our minds, almost always erroneous of course, of who we think the Native American is.

By doing so, we hays, we expose ourselves to our own hidden biases. We eventually come to recognize how anaesthetized or callous we have become to the fact

of Native people today, a near paralysis of soul. Such ideological manifestations of empirical domination are made more noticeable as progressively more objects are accumulated.

Someone deposited a book on Daniel Boone by Edna McGuire, for instance. Still another contributed a deck of miniature trading cards inaccurately depicting Indians as the "atural" or "noble savage." Other contributions include a totem pole thermometer and a black-and-white photograph of Tonto and the Lone Ranger.

Over the course of this travelling exhibition, McMaster has collected many fraudulent images and stereotypes, everything from Atlanta Braves Styrofoam tomahawks (ala Jane Fonda and Ted Turner of CNN Television), to plastic kewpie dollars of the type sold in airport gift shops and city craft stores, initially sold as accurate images of Indians.

It is tempting to speculate what the cultural amnesty box could collect. One could conceivably see the Minister of Department of Indian Affairs dropping by to discard the Indian Act, or Prime Minister Chretein eighty-sixing the BNA Act, or someone conscientiously depositing a Nintendo or Sega video game with Indian stereotypes, or...! The list, theatrically at least, is tantalizingly endless. Cultural Amnesty ultimately questions the very foundations of Western society.

The SAAG upstairs displays the main show but in my opinion it is much too conf9ined a space to get its full impact (only about half of his work is exhibited.)

It is here where McMaster inventively investigates who does not understand Indian humor. This may be the first time ever SAAG has allowed the usually serene ambiance found within its gallery walls to echo with Native frivolity. Don't hesitate to laugh out loud if something strikes you as silly, for many things are. Of course if you go along with a friend you'll look much less demented.

The message here is non-judgmental. The message non-Indians walk away with may not seem so, weighing in the comments I've read in the undisplayed visitor comment books from his other venues.

Remarks span the width of the spectrum. Unfortunately, McMaster does not display these as an integral part of the exhibition which I think should be. They can only add to the strength of his convictions.

One witty station finds the viewer blithely implicated in the dubious conclusions reahed more than 70 years ago by famed photographer Edward S. Curtis wherein he states with dark sincerity, although by today's standards quite ineffectually. "And here is the Vanishing Race, which symbolizes my whole work."

Pinned to the gallery wall under a large sheet of Plexiglas, subordinate to this ignominious quote, are Indian photographs and other imagery gleaned from post cards, magazines and paintings, some quite recent, which question the accuracy of Curtis' world-view as well as the point of view of those who would foster this common attitude today.

Another emblazoned anonymous quote, "Kill the Indian; save the man!" bizarrely juxtaposes more ludicrous concoctions from the mind of mass culture.

Questions as to whether or not the image of the Native American should be used as a mascot for baseball or football teams, or whether the scientific curiosity about the so-called "primitive" is politically correct are implicit in McMaster's necessarily erudite discourse and provide interesting food for thought.

The fact that anthropology still retains enough professional integrity to investigate itself as exemplified through UBC Curator Ho's involvement needs to be positively acknowledged. So what is going on there?

Indeed, many other questions are posed and answered for those discriminating and open enough to read and understand the more complex narrations of the exhibition.

The shrewd slice in all this is that we reach the unsettling conclusion that some of the most talented and adroit in Western society aren't all that discreet (intelligent?) when it comes to "voicing" their false images in front of a critical audience.

Anyone with any kind of experience working with the Native perspective will understand this. McMaster, a Cree artist, works from that perspective.

In the end the outstanding question is, how does one get a non-Native to positively appreciate McMaster's very genuine response beyond the gallery walls?

So, take in the exhibition. don't forge to bring something with you to add to the collection box, but above all don't forget to bring your brains.

Savage Graces is now in Windsor, Ontario, and the travel itinerary for the show includes St. Johns, Newfoundland, before it winds up in Edmonton in August, 1995.

(Alfred Young Man is Associate Professor of Native American Art in Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge.)