Artist embodied Indigenous creators’ push for recognition

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This article was published 04/11/2023 (723 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS hosts of the One Great History podcast, Sabrina Janke and Alex Judge love exploring Winnipeg’s past.

With Winnipeg’s sesquicentennial approaching, the two have produced a podcast series that explores the city’s colourful history. The series is presented through the lens of 15 historical figures, focusing on critical events surrounding their lives and their impact on Winnipeg. The series will conclude Nov. 9, the day when Winnipeg became a city 150 years ago. Summaries from each podcast will be republished in the Free Press. The podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and through the One Great History website — onegreathistory.wordpress.com

At the age of 13, Daphne Odjig contracted rheumatic fever and became housebound. A keen student, Daphne watched with disappointment for nearly three years as her siblings went to school without her. Her grandfather Jonas, a stone carver, took over her education — it was from him that Daphne first learned to paint and sketch.

At 18, when Daphne’s mother died, she and her sister Winnie made their way from their home at Wikwemikong, on Lake Huron, to Toronto. Daphne worked in a munitions factory and in her spare time explored the galleries of the city.

Eventually, Daphne met a soldier named Paul. Like Daphne, Paul was of mixed white and Indigenous descent. He was proud of his identity and encouraged Daphne to feel this same pride. Together, the pair moved to a farm in British Columbia where they lived with their son Stanley and Paul’s son from a previous marriage, David. Paul loved Daphne’s art and encouraged her to create and show others her work. Tragedy struck when Paul was killed in a car accident in 1960.

For the first year after his death, Daphne worked until after dark planting and harvesting strawberries. The crop was good and the income was sufficient to support her and the boys through the winter, allowing her to spend those cold months painting full-time. Daphne was still, however, painting primarily for herself; her art piled up to the point she began lining the barn with her canvases.

In 1962, Daphne remarried to a community development officer named Chester and the two moved to Easterville in northern Manitoba. The Chemawawin Cree now living near Easterville were a community in transition; they had been displaced from their traditional fishing grounds due to construction of the Grand Rapids Dam. Daphne took to drawing the people of Easterville, partly in an effort to record a way of life she worried would soon disappear.

Around 1964, Daphne brought Chester back to Wikwemikong to meet her family. What she found there was a revival of traditions that had long been suppressed, an “explosive resurgence of Native culture.” Her sister-in-law Rosemary, who had organized the community’s first powwow in decades, began encouraging Daphne to illustrate the stories they had been told by the elders as children. This resurgence was part of the larger civil rights movement — across North America, marginalized peoples had begun to discuss their rights and identities, taking action to demand better treatment.

It was shortly after this trip that Daphne sold her first piece of artwork to a visiting public servant, who also began taking some of her pieces back to Winnipeg to sell. Soon Daphne began exhibiting her work more widely, including in a solo exhibition at Brandon University. Despite Daphne’s growing success, gaining recognition in the art world was difficult. At the time, Indigenous art was often considered as ethnology or history, and placed in museums rather than galleries.

In 1970, Chester quit his job with the government so he and Daphne could open a print shop in Winnipeg. Daphne sold prints of her own work, along with art made by people she had connected with in northern Manitoba. The shop expanded in 1974 and became the New Warehouse Gallery, the first Indigenous-owned gallery in Canada. The print shop and gallery quickly became a gathering place for Indigenous artists, seven of whom formed a group aimed at supporting lesser-known Indigenous artists: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. Although the group was short-lived, it was a vital step in establishing recognition for Indigenous art and artists in Canada.

In 1976, Daphne sold her gallery (its new owners re-named it the Wah-Sa gallery and eventually moved to The Forks, where it remained for many years). Though Daphne’s time in Winnipeg had been brief, her impact was significant. She had created a space where Indigenous artists could make connections and sell their work without hurdles, creating a model that galleries today are still working to emulate.

Daphne moved back to B.C. and rented a house with the biggest living room she could find to begin work on a new mural for the Canadian Museum of History (then called the National Museum of Man): The Indian in Transition. Nearly 30-feet wide and detailing the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada over four panels, the piece is impressive and moving.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that some of Daphne’s most significant opportunities, including also The Creation of the Earth, her mural at the Manitoba Museum, came from history museums rather than fine-art galleries. This is demonstrative of the roadblocks Indigenous artists faced at the time. Despite these hurdles, Daphne Odjig achieved mainstream success, having her work exhibited globally and being elected to the Royal Academy of Art in 1989. She continued to create until her death in 2016.