New at the MacKenzie Art Gallery

Reflecting Dis-ease: eh ateh pahinihk ahkosiwin—Rethinking pandemics through an Indigenous lens

Ruth Cuthand, <em>Surviving: COVID-19</em>, 2020. Glass beads, backing and thread, vinyl lettering on glass. Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Ruth Cuthand, Surviving: COVID-19, 2020. Glass beads, backing and thread, vinyl lettering on glass. Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

The MacKenzie Art Gallery debuts “Reflecting Dis-ease: eh ateh pahinihk ahkosiwin—Rethinking pandemics through an Indigenous lens,” an exhibition featuring works from its permanent collection, curated by Felicia Gay, Mitacs Curatorial Fellow, and Timothy Long, Head Curator.

“The question we have, really, is what sort of society do we want going forward, because COVID’s just a mirror.” This statement by mental health expert Dr. Kwame McKenzie from a recent interview on the CBC Radio program White Coat, Black Art reminds us that disease does more than just attack a person’s health; it represents a challenge to the way we live together as a society. Disease is also dis-ease, in that it encompasses not just sick bodies, but damaged psyches, relationships, and livelihoods. While the COVID-19 pandemic has stirred reflection about our societal ills in ways that seem unprecedented, this is not the first time that disease has changed the course of history. The four Indigenous artists in this exhibition, Ruth Cuthand, Robert Houle, Norval Morrisseau, and Edward Poitras, show how the pandemics that followed European contact decimated the peoples of North and South America and permanently changed the shape of life on Turtle Island.

eh ateh pahinihk ahkosiwin is a Swampy Cree term loosely interpreted as “sickness that is spreading to many.” The pattern and agency of transmittable diseases in Indigenous communities changed drastically after European contact, with Indigenous people having no immunity to newly introduced viruses and bacteria such as measles, typhoid fever, whooping cough, and, most devastating of all, smallpox. The colonial history connected with this last disease is the subject of Norval Morrisseau’s painting White Man’s Curse, Edward Poitras’ print Blanket and Robert Houle’s installation Palisade I. These pathogens made consistent appearances throughout the fur trade era and subsequent periods of economic expansion connected with land settlement and resource extraction. In Canada, many children died from disease as a result of the intolerable conditions at residential schools, where forced labour was a common practice, as well as during the Sixties Scoop.

Will history repeat itself? If COVID-19 is a mirror and we peer closely at our colonial histories in the context of eh ateh pahinihk ahkosiwin, will we decide to consider how Indigenous communities are affected today? Ruth Cuthand’s most recent work, Surviving: COVID-19, reminds us of the disproportionate effect this virus has had on Indigenous communities in northern Saskatchewan and elsewhere. It brings into the present moment her Trading Series (2009), in which she reflects on the pandemics and epidemics that have historically affected Indigenous communities locally and globally. For this earlier series, Cuthand created seductive and sinister beaded images of the many viruses and bacteria brought by Europeans to the Americas, as well as a quilled image of the one disease, syphilis, which was brought back to Europe. These hauntingly beautiful images expose the terrible exchange which saw glass beads traded for epidemics of disease, beauty for destruction, and, in later times, medical knowledge for cultural understanding. The images also allude to a Cree understanding of the world. The word for bead in Cree is “animate,” meaning “it is alive”; this subtle cultural reference points to her work—and the viruses they represent—as living beings.

The works in this exhibition are a troubling mirror, but they also ask us to consider, as Dr. McKenzie suggests, what sort of society we want going forward. Critical mass has been reached for a society ill-at-ease with racial injustice towards those who are Indigenous, Black, or people of colour. The pause provided by COVID-19 is an opportunity to ponder these pressing issues and place our current moment in longer perspective.