In conversation with Ernest Cobiness

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This article was published 25/06/2016 (3415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ernest Cobiness, an Ojibway artist from Buffalo Point First Nation, is creating an elaborate collection of statues to honour indigenous peoples and the history of their survival since European contact.

He unveiled a model of a figure’s head, the first part of the statuary, earlier this week at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Accompanying him were Southern Chiefs Organization Grand Chief Terrance Nelson and members of the Mediwiwin, a group of teachers, historians and spiritual leaders trained in the Ojibway traditions.

Cobiness, with the help of his cousin Ron Preluitz, hopes to finish the first part of the collection, a prototype, by this time next year. The full grouping will include four figures atop a pre-Columbian-style pyramid and will take years to complete. Many people think of pyramids as Egyptian, but settled indigenous cultures throughout the Americas included pyramid-type mounds.

The final location for the finished piece is yet to be determined, but its temporary home will be along Highway 6, close to the Red Sun gas station.

Cobiness hopes to see his work used as an architectural model for a building containing a museum to indigenous perspectives. If that happens, it will be funded privately. He won’t accept government funding.

He comes from a long line of artists, and is the son of acclaimed artist Eddy Cobiness.

Free Press: The final stage will be to use your work as a model for a museum dedicated to the history of the Americas from the indigenous perspective. Why are you doing this?

E.C.: There’s always two sides to every story. Ours is never heard. It’s always pushed aside, the denial of our rights and who we are… we want to tell our story… this is the life of our people, these are our survival stories, not the story they tell in school about Christopher Columbus coming and discovering our people. That’s the story we’ve been told and we believe that. I’m just saying, that’s just not the true history, that is what we’re trying to correct. And if we don’t, it’s just going to go on and on, making our people look bad and putting them down. We should be walking tall, telling people our history. We’re not aboriginals. We’re not natives. We’re Anishinabe.

F.P.: And this art pays tribute to that, how exactly?

E.C.: For the art, the head of the first statute is six, seven feet high. Imagine that. He’s going to be sitting down, about 12 feet across at the shoulders. From the tip of that, from where he’s holding his pipe, it’ll be about 20 feet high. He’s pointing his pipe to the summer solstice on June 21, when the sun rises over the Earth. He’s praying. In ceremony, you always give thanks to the Creator. We always acknowledge the Creator first. Without him, we won’t be where we are today. That’s what the statue means.

F.P.: What about the other figures?

E.C.: There are four figures on the building (the pyramid). My concept is they are like doorkeepers for each direction and that’s why they sit in the four directions. Even when we sit in the lodge, we always acknowledge those four directions, that’s how we think. We live in this place, Mother Earth… It’s a spiritual thing.

F.P.: What’s your goal for this statue with the four figures and the pyramid, once it’s done?

E.C.: What we’re trying to do is attract the people to come and look. This is our story. This is what we want, to tell the real story about what happened to our people. The atrocities, the residential schools, all the the things that happened to the people.

F.P.: And what do you think presenting your side of history will accomplish?

E.C.: People talk about getting over that, about moving on. But how do you move on as a people? As a nation? When there’s denial? In order to move on and heal, you have to come to terms with what’s been done… We can’t move on unless we learn how to heal, accept things.  I think that’s one reason there’s so much racism toward our people. It’s the denial of what’s happened to our people, the genocide… It’s still going on today.

The newcomers who came to our shores didn’t understand us. They thought we were primitive, eh? We’re trying to bring awareness through my art, and through the knowledge of our people, like you said, the history of our people, through our eyes, our voices, our people. This is what my dad talked about, bringing something to life, creating something so other people will understand what you’re trying to say with your art.

If you can create something, people will say ‘Now I see what you mean.’ If my sculptures, my work, my painting will bring forward people to question about truth or whatever they seek, then he would say, ‘You’ve done your job.’

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca