Ancestors Rising: Aboriginal Art as Historical Testimonials

Testimony - the attesting to the truth of a matter - is often thought of in legal terms as a form of evidence based on fact or perceived opinions, though there is as well the personal testimony, the bearing of one's truth or personal experience for all to witness. For Aboriginal people, acts of testimony in the legal and personal sense have been a critical platform in the pursuit of reclamation of land, history, identity and personal experience. In the past two decades, many Aboriginal people have taken the legal stand for land claims to protect their traditional territories from further encroachment from governments and commercial enterprises by providing physical evidence of their historical territorial use. They have also had to 'prove' their painful, personal accounts of abuse in residential schools in order to bring forth justice and closure. The overlapping generation will soon testify to their personal accounts of the 'Sixties Scoop' - the apprehension of thousands of Aboriginal children who were placed in foster care by Canadian Social Services, many of whom experienced abuse and exploitation as child labourers, mirroring the residential school experience. The Sixties Scoop term is in fact a misnomer, given that apprehensions began in 1951 and remain today in a staggering amount of apprehensions, with Aboriginals in foster care averaging 40 per cent of all children in foster care in Canada, even though they make up only 3-4 per cent of the Canadian population. Given that Aboriginal peoples did not have the proof of written historical documents, oral accounts are being considered as admissible evidence in the courts. Aboriginal peoples do, however, have physical records of their history that have been overlooked: their historical art. Their artwork visually recorded major historical events, territorial maps, cultural ideology and customs, and personal and mythological stories - all of which were tied to a specific territory and period. This article explores how Aboriginal art in the past and present has served as a valuable testimonial of history and cultural identity. Aboriginal art as historical records For thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples have told their stories orally and visually to document their history and to teach the values, beliefs and traditions of their culture. Oral accounts, legends, songs, dances, ceremonies and art communicated experience and metaphors of life to the physical and the metaphysical realm. From these accounts, we have learnt about history and cultural customs and learnt to make meaning of the lessons of life. Aboriginal art - in representational forms or codified visual imagery - preserved this cultural and historical information for generations to come. The physicality of art, in and of itself, can be dated and placed within a specific area, though the content of the work points to specific stories. Pictographs and petroglyphs throughout Canada are good examples of visual records that document hunting practices, wars and colonial contact and provide large territorial maps on significant water passages. Works in stone, such as carved sculptures from the west coast and plateau regions, or tipi rings and medicine wheels from the plains, provided permanent markers for identifying communities that occupied sites thousands of years ago. Early palaeo-Arctic ivory engravings integrated images of everyday activities with the supernatural. Robe paintings and ledger drawings from the plains nations visually documented ceremonial custom and protocols, narrated wars and major political, historical or personal events. A recently repatriated sketch done by Chief Pasqua of the Pasqua First Nation, Saskatchewan, was created some time between 1874 and 1882 and is a fine example of visual art documenting history (Figure 1). The illustration became the possession of William Henry Barneby in 1882 and remained with his family in London, England, for 124 years. The graphite sketch shows the negotiations and trade agreements leading up to Treaty Four. …