Indian Group of Seven founder dies at 97

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This article was published 02/10/2016 (3311 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Daphne Odjig, the internationally-acclaimed indigenous artist known for founding the Indian Group of Seven in Winnipeg, died Saturday at age 97.

Her niece, Darla Fisher Odjig, confirmed her aunt’s death on a special Facebook page.

Her career as an artist spanned six decades, including pen-and-ink drawings, paintings and murals among other media.

She also published the Nanabush Tales, a 10-book series of children’s readers that contained traditional stories illustrated with her artwork featuring Nanabush, the Ojibwa trickster and spirit, and taught life lessons.

She lived in Winnipeg in the early 1970s and owned the 1974 New Warehouse Gallery in Winnipeg, until she moved to B.C. in 1976. She was honoured with the Order of Canada in 1986 and in 2007 received the Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts and the Order of B.C.

Her work is known for raising the profile of indigenous art and fearlessly addressing social and cultural issues surrounding indigenous people.

“If my work as an artist has somehow helped to open doors between our people and the non-native community, then I am glad. I am even more deeply pleased if it has helped to encourage the young people that have followed our generation, to express their pride in our heritage more openly, more joyfully than I would have ever dared to think possible,” she stated in a comment on her website www.odjig.com.

Odjig moved to Manitoba in 1966 when her second husband Chester Beavon, a friend and co-worker of her late husband Paul Somerville, was employed as a community development officer in Easterville in northern Manitoba, her website states.

She sold her first painting in 1966 and a co-worker of her husband’s began to sell them out of his home in Winnipeg. While her first solo exhibition was in Thunder Bay, Ont., her second was in 1968 in Brandon and was sponsored by the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood.

In 1971, she opened a small craft store at 331 Donald St. in Winnipeg. Also that year, she published the Nanabush Tales, which, her website notes, was added to Manitoba’s reading education curriculum for students in kindergarten to Grade 4.

She painted the mural The Creation of the World in 1972. It was commissioned by the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature to commemorate the Manitoba Centennial, a significant work still on display in the Winnipeg museum.

The Indian Group of Seven, founded in 1973, included Odjig, Norval Morriseau, Alex Janvier, Joseph Sanchez, Jackson Beardy, Eddie Cobiness and Carl Ray.

Odjig was the first aboriginal woman artist to have her work shown at the National Gallery of Canada.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca