{"id":189,"date":"2019-04-16T23:30:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T23:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/artsyfn\/?page_id=189"},"modified":"2019-04-19T03:23:32","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:23:32","slug":"reuniting-a-divergent-past-reasserting-the-road-ahead","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/artsyfn\/reuniting-a-divergent-past-reasserting-the-road-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Reuniting a divergent past, reasserting the road ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Originally from Beaver Creek \u2013 population 80, on the border between Alaska and Yukon \u2013 Teresa Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 has her sights set on the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old beadwork artist is grounded in her community, but is also curious about the world outside her hometown. She made the decision to base her beading operations out of Whitehorse \u2013 a rite of passage for people from smaller communities who wish to develop their careers.<\/p>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 is a member of White River First Nation. At 250 members, it happens to be the smallest First Nation group in Yukon Territory. Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 is one of three residents who have chosen to make a living off of their traditional art.<\/p>\n

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Exposure \u2013 Community Face<\/h3>\n

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Her work has garnered widespread support from her First Nation. Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says the community is happy whenever members\u2019 works are featured in public.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a point of pride for the beader to call Beaver Creek her hometown. Each time Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 returns to her birthplace, she feels \u201cat home\u201d \u2013 she draws inspiration from the town\u2019s extensive history, which dates back to the first signs of human civilization on the continent: 14,000 years ago, migrants passed through the region known as Beringia as they spready throughout the continent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I go to Beaver Creek it feels, it feels right, you know what I mean?\u201d Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says.<\/p>\n

Cultural organizations and funders are devoting more attention and supports to northern communities. This includes the Canada Council for the Arts, who launched an Indigenous arts-specific funding stream, Creating, Knowing and Sharing, in April 2017. Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says it\u2019s a good start, but it has to go further than email outreach alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to go there, you have to make a connection, you have to become a part of the community in some way,\u201d says the beader. She has a message for well-intentioned funders: \u201cYour face has to be recognizable before they take the next step\u2026 of doing it consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Making a contemporary living from the arts<\/h3>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 picked beading back up in earnest about five years ago. She was coming back to the craft for the first time since she\u2019d been gifted a bead and needle set by her grandma at age seven.<\/p>\n

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Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 works hard, and she works strategically: she prepares certain products for quick sells at craft shows, gift shops and the like, and she receives artist fees when she shows her work at galleries. Artist grants offset her other expenses.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken her four years of working full-time in the arts to get to where she is. She \u201cabsolutely\u201d acknowledges that putting a monetary value on a historically priceless art is shaking up tradition: in the past, Indigenous communities gifted art and cultural relics through a sharing culture. For Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9\u2019s reality, \u201cit\u2019s a science of how to actually make it as a full-time artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Money matters: the inroads of government funding<\/h3>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 was a recipient of a major grant amount from the Canada Council for the Arts. In April 2017, the Council launched a new Indigenous arts funding stream called Creating, Knowing and Sharing; Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 received $50,989 to mount her public-private art sculpture project in schools between Beaver Creek and Whitehorse, as well as to curate workshops in Whitehorse and as far away as Montreal.<\/p>\n

Alongside her project partner Nicole Bamberger, the pair was able to mount a public-private installation between January and May 2018 called Scavenging for Raven. They fashioned raven-inspired sculptural works from blown tire scraps \u2013 or \u201cstreet washers,\u201d as she refers to the treads personally salvaged from the road, or donated by people who respond to her open call on community forums.<\/p>\n

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Scavenging for Raven<\/h3>\n

All photos courtesy Teresa Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9<\/p>\n

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One branch of the project saw the women \u201cputting little raven-inspired sculptures in people\u2019s front yards\u201d to bridge public art with private spaces, the other saw them touring schools in Haines Junction, Destruction Bay and Beaver Creek, dialoguing with students and adults on what the raven means to them and First Nations people.<\/p>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 encourages artists to pursue Canada Council grants so that they can continue their work.<\/p>\n

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For Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9, the experience was successful in how it combined Indigenous and non-Indigenous forces. She sees it as a gesture towards reconciliation through the arts. \u201cWe want to write this grant and we\u2019re going to get it, and we\u2019re going to do this project,\u201d the beader recalls thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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“It\u2019s one form of reconciliation because it was an Indigenous person in the lead of a project with a non-Indigenous person and we\u2019re both learning together, educating each other, but I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s the pinnacle of reconciliation, like, ‘Yes, she\u2019s going to give me my land back!’ No! because she doesn\u2019t have that power.<\/p>\n

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So when we\u2019re talking about reconciliation, we can talk about ground-level, and the arts is definitely a part of that, like blanket exercise. That\u2019s a form of art; that\u2019s a form of performance art, and that\u2019s teaching a lot of people across Canada the history of Indigenous Canada relations…when we talk about arts, that\u2019s where social justice movements start.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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A modest beadwork artist<\/h3>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 has accepted external recognition and federal funding for her works, but she still holds close ties with her home community of Beaver Creek, where she is one of three officially recognized artists. Keeping her community\u2019s unrecognized artists in mind, she sees her position as neither an honour nor pressure-inducing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s more frustration \u2013 I think a lot of people take that for granted that they have the privilege and the wealth to actually take some time to become a full-time artist,\u201d she says. In her own case, she lives at home with her mom: since this frees her from many expenses, this allows her to focus full-time on her artistic output, personal enrichment and career planning. \u201cThere are other people in the community that have to work three, four jobs at a time so they can pay for their heating and everything like that,\u201d Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says. \u201cThey really don’t have time to do the art that they really do enjoy, or they’re doing it at night or they’re doing it when they’re eating or watching TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Totem Pole \u2013 Cultural Appropriation<\/h3>\n

In December 2018, an incident involving Indigenous cultural appropriate arose out of Nova Scotia. As reported by CBC<\/a>, NHL team-branded totem poles were being sold in a provincial drug store chain.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously there’s no totem poles over there,\u201d Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 dismisses the authenticity of the items. \u201cYou can tell that this is not made by a First Nation person because it has nothing related to what our culture actually holds.\u201d She wonders whether the artist reached out to any First Nations communities before taking the totem pole product to market. \u201cThey\u2019re getting a lot of pushback from other Indigenous communities,\u201d she says. \u201cThis isn’t just yours. This is shared,\u201d Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 notes the homeland of the totem pole along the West Coast, from Alaska into British Columbia.<\/p>\n

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Elder permissions and consults<\/h3>\n

For her own peace of mind, Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 consults with her family and elders from her First Nation about her artistic choices. She wants them to hold her accountable in her actions, to authorize how art work is produced or shared outside the community.<\/p>\n

And if she reaches a point in her career where she\u2019s on the cusp of making top dollar, Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says she will routinely touch base with her elders in order to balance out temptations of money and ethics with upholding her community\u2019s art responsibly.<\/p>\n

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“I think it’s more of, They have the right. Like my grandma has the right to tell me: is this a culturally-sensitive object, or is this a culturally-sensitive piece of artwork that I should not be showing to the masses? Does this, like, hold some truth about our culture? Then I will not sell it. It will be held over here. But if it’s so contemporary that nobody knows what the heck I’m even doing then my grandma is like, ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re even doing. So yeah, go ahead.’ “<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The politics of reconciliation: a grassroots organizing effort<\/h3>\n

Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says that reconciliation doesn\u2019t start until the oppressed community spearheads the movement \u2013 the healing process starts with them. \u201cI find politicians, people like that are pushing for these ideas because they just want to get it over with,\u201d she says. She brings up the European occupation of Indigenous land: \u201cYou took hundreds of years away from us, so you can wait another few hundred, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

For non-Indigenous people looking to get engaged in the healing process, she encourages them to actively pursue alternate perspectives, whether it\u2019s through taking a workshop, going to a course, or anything else to keep re-educating their understanding of the culture. \u201cThat\u2019s just my perspective on what reconciliation means to me, is that people actually take those steps to learn for themselves,\u201d Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 says.<\/p>\n

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As well-intentioned as they may be, Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 indicates that non-Indigenous people should gauge when they need to hold the floor, and when they need to step aside and leave community knowledge to its Indigenous members.<\/p>\n

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Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 is encouraged by the mobilization among First Nations people of her generation and younger. \u201cWhen I make a post that is overtly political and I know that people won’t like it I tend to get messages from other young Indigenous Peoples, \u2018Oh I totally agree but I just didn’t want to ever say it,\u2019 \u201d she says. \u201cA lot of people that experience residential school have a really hard time standing up for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“It\u2019s so much different when you actually go back home and you know where your family was born, where they hunted. That connection of just understanding that, \u2018I am a descendant of those people that actually lived there and resided there for that length of time\u2019 \u2013 it definitely warms the heart.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Landmarks in Beaver Creek<\/h3>\n

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History of Upper Tanana art<\/h3>\n

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The traditional art of White River First Nation came out of functional needs more than aesthetics. Items like clothing, knife handles and spear tips served an everyday purpose for their nomadic lifestyle. Today the community artists use a distinctive moccasin floral pattern: one glance at the wearer\u2019s feet, and others would know where they\u2019re from. They have asserted a stronger cultural identity through their own art.<\/p>\n

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“I think arts is for sure going to be the one that\u2019s going to expose a lot of wrongdoings that Canada has ever done to Indigenous Peoples. You can\u2019t expect Indigenous to always be constantly be educating, because it is extremely exhausting, culturally exhausting. Your entire community \u2013 Indigenous, non-Indigenous \u2013 have to be full-heartedly ready for this. Because it\u2019s going to change people\u2019s perspectives; we\u2019re asking people to change their ways, we\u2019re asking people to change their minds. It\u2019s a very hard thing to do, especially if they grew up in a form of whether they\u2019re used to racism and things like that.”<\/p>\n

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Originally from Beaver Creek \u2013 population 80, on the border between Alaska and Yukon \u2013 Teresa Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 has her sights set on the bigger picture. The 26-year-old beadwork artist is grounded in her community, but is also curious about the world outside her hometown. She made the decision to base her beading operations out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-189","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nReuniting a divergent past, reasserting the road ahead - First Nations, First Hand Art<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/mrp\/artsyfn\/reuniting-a-divergent-past-reasserting-the-road-ahead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reuniting a divergent past, reasserting the road ahead - First Nations, First Hand Art\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally from Beaver Creek \u2013 population 80, on the border between Alaska and Yukon \u2013 Teresa Vander Meer-Chass\u00e9 has her sights set on the bigger picture. The 26-year-old beadwork artist is grounded in her community, but is also curious about the world outside her hometown. 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