{"id":23729,"date":"2019-05-09T16:49:19","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23729"},"modified":"2019-05-09T16:49:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:49:27","slug":"we-are-still-here-challenges-stereotypes-surrounding-indigenous-peoples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/we-are-still-here-challenges-stereotypes-surrounding-indigenous-peoples\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are Still Here! challenges stereotypes surrounding Indigenous peoples"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deron Ahssen:nase\nDouglas bristles at the word \u201cresilient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All too often\nIndigenous children are being described that way. It often comes first, ahead\nof \u201cThat person is smart,\u201d or, \u201cThat person is beautiful,\u201d or \u201cThat person has\ngreat leadership skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great that\nthey are resilient, but if you were to talk about a non-Indigenous teenager or\nchild, you wouldn\u2019t think of resiliency,\u201d says Mr. Douglas. \u201cIt occurred to me\nthat resiliency is something we have had to develop in order to survive and I\nwould like to see a time when resiliency is no longer a character trait people\nwill immediately think of, but they will think of the other things is well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Douglas, a\nKanien\u2019keha:ka painter, is doing his part to achieve this goal one brushstroke\nat a time and Aurorans will have the opportunity to be a part of the\nconversation as We\u2019re Still Here! A Solo Exhibition of his work opens at the\nAurora Cultural Centre on May 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roots of We Are\nStill Here, a showcase of very contemporary art, were formed through Mr.\nDouglas\u2019 work as Indigenous Artist in Residence with the York Region District\nSchool Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly a decade ago\nafter working with one particular class, he still vividly remembers a young\nfemale student running up to her father, pointing at him, as if to say, \u201cHe\u2019s a\nreal Indian!\u201d Her exact wording, he says, has been lost to the mists of time,\nbut the feeling is still vivid as ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started going\ninto different schools in York Region on a volunteer basis to talk about\nIndigenous culture,\u201d he explains. \u201cHer words really struck me strongly because\nI realised kids these days don\u2019t know anything about Indigenous people. As I\nstarted to investigate further, I learned that the only thing they knew about\nIndigenous people was from history books. They actually believed that we no\nlonger existed and only existed within history books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter that, I found\nit was important for me to continue to go into schools and speak to kids and\ntalk about my culture and social issues and, depending on the grade and how old\nthey were, talk about Residential Schools and that kind of thing, in order to\ntell them that we are still here and we\u2019re not just a part of history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some respects,\nMr. Douglas\u2019 art might not be what many non-Indigenous viewers have come to\nexpect when they hear the phrase \u201cIndigenous art.\u201d He does not follow what he\ndescribes as \u201cwoodland-style\u201d art with its trademark totem poles and like\nsymbolism. His paintings are figurative, a collection of portraits and\ndifferent characterisations intended to represent various topics related to\ncontemporary Indigenous life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople are\nexpecting woodland style art and because of their expectations, artists are\npainting these types of paintings with spirit animals and those kinds of things\nand it really doesn\u2019t open up a discussions round current issues \u2013 the current\nsocial issues \u2013 that effect indigenous people,\u201d he says. \u201cBasically, those\nartists are pandering to the marketplace and they are working within the\ncontext of what is currently expected or what is currently known about indigenous\npeople. In a lot of cases, some of them are stereotypes. I felt that because of\nthe way I paint and because of the topics that I paint, it would open up a\ndiscussion and it would bring to the non-Indigenous audience things about\nIndigenous people that currently exist: their social structures, social\nstruggles, the problems they are having, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women\nand Girls, teen suicide and that type of things \u2013 things not covered in\nstereotypical woodland-style art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am trying to take\nindigenous people out of the history books. When people think of indigenous\npeople, they think of feathers, headdresses, leather and that sort of thing, so\nall the portraits that I create are of contemporary indigenous people doing\ncontemporary things. For example, I have one woman who is actually dressed up\nas Princess Leia, and Star Wars is really popular with Indigenous people\nbecause it is about an oppressed society being overrun by a huge empire. It is\nabout their survival. Indigenous people actually relate to that quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Are Still Here! A\nSolo Exhibition featuring the work of Deron Ahsen:nase Douglas runs at the\nAurora Cultural Centre from May 9 through August 3. The Artist\u2019s Opening\nReception will take place Saturday, May 25, from 1 \u2013 4 p.m. and all are\nwelcome. Light refreshments will be served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Douglas will be present for an In\nConversation event on Wednesday, June 5, from 6 \u2013 7.30 p.m., and will host a\nportrait painting demonstration on Wednesday, July 10 from 6 \u2013 7.30 p.m.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Deron Ahssen:nase Douglas bristles at the word \u201cresilient.\u201d All too often Indigenous children are being described that way. It often comes first, ahead of \u201cThat person is smart,\u201d or, \u201cThat person is beautiful,\u201d or \u201cThat person has great leadership skills.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s great that they are resilient, but if you were to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6aJ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 15:22:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}