Art To Voice What Was Lost
A deep dive into the numerous examples of Indigenous artwork with meanings that are being rediscovered.
Indigenous artwork encompasses native spirituality, myths, nature, and anything that embraces a love of the land. But it’s also a token of memory—of reclaiming the values and traditions of a group who witnessed their culture nearly dissolve before them.
I recently visited the McMichael Art Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario. It features Canadian art and history, with a wide collection of work from the famous Group of Seven at the forefront. The gallery also highlights the heritage of Indigenous Peoples native to Canada. From cultural masks and paintings, to beaded belts and totem poles, the gallery is a haven for Indigenous art and cultural mementos.
From now until March of 2026, the art gallery has an exhibition called Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael, featuring artwork from the late-twentieth century, and historical pieces from early native history.
The exhibit honed in on the artwork of Norval Morrisseau, a Canadian-born Indigenous artist. Emerging during the 1960s, Morrisseau was a pioneer of the contemporary Indigenous art style which bled into pop culture. His acrylic paintings dazzled audiences: they portrayed Indigenous figures, blending colour and geometric shapes to create a story of native land in a way that “popped,” and inspired an almost avant-garde movement among his contemporaries.
Morrisseau’s paintings at McMichael incorporated Indigenous peoples’ symbolic elements and myths. In his “Merman—Ruler of Water” (1969), there’s a gliding half-man, half-fish. It reflects how the earth and the land are integral parts of Indigenous culture.
The McMichael gallery even featured some work of Emily Carr, a Canadian and contemporary artist of the Group of Seven era. Her art was denoted for showcasing native people, specifically those of the Indigenous Northwest Coast.
An eerie piece from the gallery was the “Indian Residential School, Leaving the Shallow Graves and Going Home” (2022) by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, a residential school survivor. Spirits of totem poles and a colourful skeleton walked in a procession to something unknown on a dark, rocky terrain. The acrylic painting commemorates the unmarked graves of Indigenous children discovered in British Columbia the previous year. These unmarked graves evoked the atrocities of the residential school system. The painting gives voices to those long-forgotten Indigenous children.
Totem pole carvings guarded the rooms in certain corners of the gallery’s exhibit; carvings of Indigenous creatures, possibly from their folklore, animals (birds), and celebratory masks. A mini stone carving by Billy Gauthier, an Inuit, was of swimming loons in webs of what appear to be kelp. He carved the loons from muskox horn, while carving the intertwining kelp out of a moose antler. Symbolically, Indigenous peoples hunted their food, but after gathering their meat, never wasting the animal, they used the materials that remained to create art.
One of the most incredible art pieces I observed was the “Scar Paintings” (2006) by Nadia Myre, an Indigenous to Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, Algonquin. On canvases of pastel pink and yellow, red, brown, and orange, Myre depicted different skin tones and the wounds of human flesh, by slitting each canvas and physically stitching them back up. Her art draws from personal experience, hinting at the violence endured by her own people and the scars left upon their lineages.
Indigenous communities utilize beads in various ways, whether as accessories or artwork. One example I saw at McMichael was a wampum belt, circa 1770, made of whelk-shell beads and clamshells, woven into several rows on thin leather string.
You can see the appreciation of Indigenous art at our campus as well in the MN building. This past year, the stairs from the main floor ascending to the second level showcased an array of Indigenous paintings: colourful art displays of nature and lands they once inhabited, and the storytellings of their people.
To learn more about the McMichael gallery and its Indigenous pieces, visit mcmichael.com.
