Fine Arts: Indigenous Art

“Since its founding in 1929, the Heard Museum has grown in size and stature to become recognized internationally for the quality of its collections, world-class exhibitions, educational programming and its unmatched festivals. Dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art, the Heard successfully presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitions that showcase the beauty and vitality of traditional and contemporary art.
The Heard Museum sets the standard for collaborating with American Indian artists and tribal communities to provide visitors with a distinctive perspective about the art of Native people, especially those from the Southwest.”

“ The collection of Indigenous Art includes many divergent artistic practices that operate outside of established western canons of art and art history. Many contemporary indigenous artists draw on their ancestral connections, combining these with their knowledge and engagement with contemporary international art practices. The resulting art is often a critique of current social conditions that are the consequence of colonial histories. The experience of forced assimilation, cultural repression, and displacement, common to many indigenous peoples are defining characteristics of these art forms....”

“The McCord Museum celebrates our past and present life in Montreal– our history, our people, our communities.” The website also Includes information about the permanent exhibition “ Wearing Our Identity. The First Peoples Collection.”

"The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

The National Museum of the American Indian operates three facilities. The museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., offers exhibition galleries and spaces for performances, lectures and symposia, research, and education. The George Gustav Heye Center (GGHC) in New York City houses exhibitions, research, educational activities, and performing arts programs. The Cultural Resources Center (CRC) in Suitland, Maryland, houses the museum's collections as well as the conservation, repatriation, and digital imaging programs, and research facilities. The NMAI's off-site outreach efforts, often referred to as the "fourth museum," include websites, traveling exhibitions, and community programs....”

"Resilience rebukes the historical erasure of Indigenous women's bodies and the exclusion of their art. Images by 50 First Nations, Inuit and Métis women artists embody the multitude of connections and contradictions that constitute contemporary Indigenous identities. In inner cities and on highways, sites from which too many women have disappeared, the presence of Indigenous women is made highly visible, individualized (beyond statistics), celebrated. This project is a physicalized reminder of buried histories and diverse contemporary perspectives. Indigenous women artists present their ideas, their visions, themselves.
Racism and exclusion have long been entwined in the historical development of Canada. Within Indigenous populations across the country, the long-term effects of racist and genocidal strategies include high rates of suicide, alcohol and drug addictions, the horrific atrocities of residential schools, mental disorders, poverty, contaminated land and water, internalized violence and imprisonment. As we look beyond Canada's sesquicentennial celebrations of 2017, this project is pivotal at this moment in this country's history.
For far too long, Indigenous women have been misunderstood (their powerful status misinterpreted to conform to early Settler gender models), disenfranchised (Indigenous women, as well as men, did not have the right to vote federally until 1960), rendered invisible (Indigenous women lost their status and rights when they married outside of their communities until 1985) and, in horrifying numbers, murdered (Canada’s Minister for the Status of Women estimates there could be as many as 4,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women in this country). Furthermore, the experiences of Indigenous women in urban centres have largely been misrepresented or entirely ignored."

"...focuses on rare surviving artworks created by children who attended the Inkameep Day School (Okanagan), St Michael’s Indian Residential School (Alert Bay); the Alberni Indian Residential School (Vancouver Island) and Mackay Indian Residential School (Manitoba). The focus of the exhibition is not on the schools themselves, but upon witnessing the experiences of the survivors as conveyed through their childhood artworks – for some the only surviving material from their childhoods."