IntroductionAanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute (Figures 1 and 2) opened in 2011 after many decades of planning and fundraising. For decades, Elders in Eeyou Istchee had wanted somewhere to preserve and strengthen “the ways.” Part of our cultural programming involves research into historic collections extracted from our territory in the last centuries. This research allows us to rediscover, relearn, and reintroduce the traditions of our ancestors that are revealed in belongings currently cared for, or incarcerated by,1 museums and other memory institutions. This project report shares our process and some of our research outcomes from a community-based research project partially funded by the Canada Council of the Arts, “Rediscovering the Tradition of Painted Caribou Coats in Eeyou Istchee.” The goals of this project were to bring Eeyouch2 knowledge together with surviving examples of painted caribou coats and accessories created and worn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that are usually referred to, and classified as, “Naskapi” by museums and “experts” outside our region. We relate to these belongings as Ancestors, with their own spirit and energy or life force.3 Our research found that without any records naming the makers or owners of these belongings, nor their ancestry or community lineages, the precise regional origins of these coats can never definitely be known, but our community researchers connected with our ancestors’ belongings in ways that cannot easily be described in words on a page.Figure 1Map of Eeyou Istchee. Image courtesy of Cree Nation Government.Figure 2Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, 2012. Photo by Mitch Linet.Overview of Our ProjectThe Caribou is a highly respected animal, as the Caribou carries everything someone would need to survive off the land. The caribou not only give themselves for us to nourish our bodies through their flesh but give us gifts to use as well. Every part of the caribou is used to make objects; nothing is wasted. For example, the caribou skins are turned into hide to sew moccasins, coats, and mittens; the caribou bones and antlers are carved into working tools for preparing the hide; the caribou muscles (tendons/fascia) are dried and used as sinew for sewing; and so on. With all that the caribou provides for the people, in return we honour the Caribou in many ways, such as painting, beading, embroidering, and quill working hides (our clothing), as beautifully as we can, to show the Caribou respect and honour.Our research was led by Natasia Mukash, an artist/curator from Whapmagoostui Cree Nation; Margaret Orr, a multimedia artist/curator from Chisasibi Cree Nation; and Paula Menarick, an artist/curator also from Chisasibi who has lived for many years in and around Ouje-Bougoumou Cree Nation. Many other community-based researchers, including Elders, youth, and wisdom/knowledge keepers, were part of our project.In our community research, we applied the OCAP principles of Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession (First Nations Information Governance Centre 2020), and we focused research on relationships with each other, the land, and experience-based knowledge, defined by Yellowknives Dene First Nation scholar Glen Sean Coulthard (2014, 13) as “grounded normativity”:I call this place-based foundation of Indigenous decolonial thought and practice grounded normativity, by which I mean the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time.For our project, we interpreted this concept as letting what felt normal to our Eeyouch ways lead the process. This meant that our project followed an emergent process. Despite having to provide a detailed project plan in our initial grant application to Canada Council for the Arts, we adapted and revised the project timeline to reflect the availability of the community researchers and other project requirements as it progressed. The Canada Council for the Arts was accepting and understanding of our project revision as it moved forward, which felt empowering and made us view our project plan as evolving rather than a structure that had to be strictly followed.The first months of our project focused on researching external knowledge that has been published about painted caribou coats and discussing this information, and the project in general, with Elders in both Whapmagoostui and Chisasibi. These communities have strong traditions of caribou hunting and material culture related to caribou ceremonies.4 The Elders consulted were strongly opposed to any reliance on external theories or interpretations of ceremonial aspects of caribou knowledge presented by non-Cree individuals, and they stated that individual designs should not be “interpreted” as they are personal and specific to each maker and the person the belongings are created for.One of the earliest findings from speaking to Elders and knowledge keepers was that we should be researching entire outfits, not just the coats. The complete outfit would have had mittens, leggings, moccasins, and accessories like bags and pouches. These outfits, not just the coats, are important for us because there are so many aspects of our lengthy ancestral artistic practices that went into making these belongings, from the acquisition and fixing of the caribou hides to the creative patterns and designs that we still use today in decorating clothing and possessions. The colonisation of our territory in the last four hundred years means we have been impacted by attempted genocide, residential school removals, and having our ceremonies declared “illegal.”5 Historical belongings of our ancestors are important to us today because we can use them to demonstrate the ongoing strength of our traditions, land-based teachings, and language.Our research, based on knowledge shared by Elders in Whapmagoostui and Chisasibi, confirmed that there is a tradition of painted coats in the Eeyou Istchee region, something that outside “experts” and even some Eeyouch people associated only with our Naskapi neighbours. As further proof, the Cree Nation Government’s toponymist recorded that David Bosum, an Elder from Ouje-Bougoumou, has a location on his trapline called ᑳ ᐅᑕᑎᐦᐧᑫᑯᐦᐱᐤ ᑳ ᒥᔥᑕ ᐧᐄᔥᐧᑫᔥᑎᐧᑳᓀᐦᐱᓱᑦ (Kâ Utatihkwekuhpiw kâ mišta-wîškweštik-wânehpisut), which translates in English as “Caribou Coat wears a large headscarf,” demonstrating the potential of ancestral knowledge held in place name research.6
Our communities value these painted caribou outfits because they are a direct connection to the knowledge held by our ancestors and the land. We know these outfits were used for ceremonial purposes in relation to the annual caribou hunt. It is possible that they were also worn for hunting, as this would follow our practice of wearing beautifully decorated clothing and accessories to honour the animals who give themselves to us while we hunt, and to carry the energy of the ceremony into the hunt. This is still done by our hunters today to honour the person who made the clothing and accessories and the spirits of the animals.These coats have generally come to be referred to as “Naskapi coats” by external experts over the years. The locations (when known) from which coats were extracted may very well be in Naskapi, Cree, Innu, or Montagnais regions today, but this does not take account of the fact that the current “divisions” for community and “tribal” groupings do not reflect overlapping territories, travelling that was undertaken by community members, or intermarriages or other cultural exchanges that frequently took place (and still take place today). Many of these coats were extracted from our territory, which originally spanned 450,000 km2 and overlapped with that of our neighbours.It is important for museums today to understand all of the confusion about the term “Naskapi” since it can mistakenly be used exclusively rather than expansively in understanding regional ancestries, and what has been called Naskapi by anthropologists and collectors is vastly different to how we understand the term today.7 Unless there is accurate documentation stating that the maker or wearer of the coat was from a Naskapi community, these coats should not be referred to as Naskapi coats because this term is unnecessarily exclusive. Like many belongings extracted from Indigenous Nations, the terms of reference need to be redefined in decolonizing processes led by Indigenous experts, which will take time and resources. Our research focuses on our own understandings of our cultural collections, using our own authority to interpret our own histories. Our right to self-curate our own culture, past and present, is guaranteed under the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007).Community Resources and Project ActivitiesAn Overview of Our ActivitiesThe project activities listed here demonstrate how we decided to undertake research into our historical belongings in a contemporary setting, using our community resources and knowledge.Our project started with extensive research to evaluate external publications and museum holdings, and we consulted with Elders to evaluate the theories and opinions held by external “experts.” We created a project Facebook page as one method of sharing and gathering community content. We also held community consultations to gather community knowledge from local experts. In 2018 and 2019, we undertook two research trips with Elders, knowledge keepers, master craftspeople, youth representatives, and culture teachers. On one trip, we travelled to view painted caribou coats and other belongings in Gatineau at the Canadian Museum of History and in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada.8 The other trip was to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.In addition, we held artist residencies at Aanischaaukamikw to activate the knowledge that was being shared during this project and to demonstrate how our contemporary artists still draw inspiration from the landscapes in Eeyou Istchee, in line with the artistic creations of our ancestors expressed on their belongings. These residencies featured two Eeyou artists, Tim Whiskeychan of Waskaganish Cree Nation and Margaret Orr of Chisasibi Cree Nation. Margaret, as one of our project researchers, included elements of creation and inspiration from the historic caribou belongings in a second series of artistic workshops held in Ouje-Bougoumou, Mistissini, Eastmain, Chisasibi, and Whapmagoostui.9 In 2021 we plan to feature an exhibition of historic and contemporary painted caribou hide belongings at Aanischaaukamikw to showcase new creations from the project alongside historic belongings in our collections, including some that are on loan from other museums.Reflections on Our Trip to the Royal Ontario MuseumIn 2019, a group of Elders and knowledge keepers travelled from Eeyou Istchee to the Royal Ontario Museum. This trip followed a week-long workshop at Aanischaaukamikw, where we looked at the historic caribou belongings in our collections and made contemporary creations inspired by these works. Members of the research group had travelled from Chisasibi and Whapmagoostui for the initial workshops. We travelled by air from Chibougamau airport to Montreal, then stayed overnight in Montreal near the airport. Some of the Elders travelled by plane from Montreal to Billy Bishop airport in Toronto, while the rest of the group took the VIA train from Dorval to Toronto Union Station. In Toronto, we stayed within walking distance of the Royal Ontario Museum and spent three days in the secure storage areas looking at belongings from our region. Some of the Elders were in their eighties, so we built in a lot of rest time so that they would not be too exhausted from two days of travelling. Prior to this trip we had been sent reports of the ROM collections, from which we were able to select the belongings that most interested us for this trip.Paula Menarick (2019) shared these details about our trip to the Royal Ontario Museum in August 2019:There are many caribou teachings that were shared throughout both weeks of the research project10 and everyone had a chance to share their community teachings about the Caribou. In this research project we had participants from Whapmagoostui, Schefferville (Naskapi) and Chisasibi. Teachings were rich and touched on many other topics because they are all intertwined and connected in the Cree way of Life. All participants pulled more and more puzzle pieces together to further understand the teachings of our ancestors. . . .The participants approached this workshop with great respect and interest because of how we were all taught growing up to honour and respect the caribou. We were very excited to visit many of the caribou hide painted objects. As the caribou hide objects were presented to the group many of us felt an instant connection to our ancestors and culture especially through being able to touch and handle the objects.11 To us these are not only objects but living objects. We all felt very fortunate and honoured to be able to connect with our ancestors this way.Knowledge Shared During Artist Workshops, January-February 2020In planning the community workshops, Margaret used “practice-based research” methodologies, defined by Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds (2018) as the process of actively participating in a creative process informed by critical exploration research. For the workshops, Margaret’s critical exploration research included looking at painted caribou-skin coats in museums, visiting the coats in person, and reading about them. Listening to stories told by others is another form of critical exploration. Actively participating in a creative process to know more about the research formerly undertaken results in knowing more about the creative practice of making the caribou-skin coats.Margaret chose not to share her thoughts on the spiritual elements of making the coats, which are unique and private for each person and should not be speculated about. These are her feelings about the physical action of making designs and participating in this project, shared in her project report (Orr 2020):After seeing painted caribou-skin coats and accessories at the Royal Ontario Museum and at Aanischaaukamikw, I marveled at, and respected, the skill of the artist and the amount of time it must have taken to produce one full coat. Some coats were done very quickly with minimal amount of lines and forms covering the coat. The more detail and more area covered by paint, the longer it takes to make. There were other items of clothing that were made and painted on too. Some were matching sets.I incorporated personal stories in my designs. In my gun cases (Figure 3) my story is about the water, land, sun, and sky, and energy lines at the tip of the case to ensure a connection to the animal. I kept in mind that the animal presents itself to the hunter and used very bright colors in my designs to be sure they know they are being honoured by these creations.Figure 3Canvas gun case [2020.06.01] made by Margaret Orr, inspired by painted caribou coats, 2020. Photo by Peter Olson.Research Creation OutcomesThe direct community participation in project activities means that we cannot measure the longer term impacts of the project, other than to say that they are immeasurable.Natasia Mukash (2018) speaks of how she approached the research process, as an artist and designer:For us, the Cree our spirituality comes from surviving off the land, which we still practice today. . . . The Elders I spoke to went directly into their Ancestral knowledge of their parents and grandparents about the traditional ways prior to contact with Europeans. They did not need a book to confirm these teachings or memories. Their gentle teachings about bringing back the knowledge of painting on hides, which we still practice today but in more contemporary forms that are still very much alive. . . . Our designs differ from family to family and person/artist. This allowed me to see the connection between artists today and artists of the past. . . .Our cultural identity has not been forgotten but has remained visible in the clothes and accessories we use every day . . . some information and teachings must only be accessible within our people’s knowledge, this is most certainly for the Cree, by the Cree. Some knowledge about sacred and ceremonial parts of our culture must be kept for only some community members to know.The physical creations from our project (see Figures 4, 5, and 6 for a selection), some of which were added to our permanent collections, as indicated by their object numbers below, include:Figure 4A contemporary painted hide [2020.07.01] by Margaret Orr, Paula Menarick, Cree-Lynn Shecapio, and Emily Sam. Photo by Peter Olson.Figure 5Bag made by Margaret Orr during the project workshops, which she gave to someone as a gift. Photo by Margaret Orr.Figure 6Tools carved from bone and antler [2019.16.01 - .08] by Gordon Shecapio Blacksmith. Photo by Natasia Mukash.Caribou hides fixed white, prepared by Katrina Orr of Nemaska, Frances George of Whapmagoostui, and Elders from Mistissini, one of which we added to our permanent collection for display purposes [2019.15.01]A historic painted caribou coat [2019.07.01]Antler and bone painting tools made by Gordon Shecapio Blacksmith of Ouje-Bougoumou [2019.16.01-.08]Hide scraps with painted demonstrations using the tools by Natasia Mukash [2019.17.01-.02]Artworks by Tim Whiskeychan [2019.02.01-04; 2019.03.01-.86]Artworks by Margaret Orr [2019.13.01 ab; 2019.13.02]Artworks by Natasia Mukash in her Caribou Universe series, Past / Future and Reflection [2020.05.01-.02]A contemporary painted hide [2020.07.01] by Margaret Orr, Paula Menarick, Cree-Lynn Shecapio, and Emily SamA canvas gun case painted in the style of the ceremonial outfits by Margaret Orr [2020.06.01]Painted moose hide child’s-sized mittens by Margaret Orr [2020.06.02 ab]The above list does not include the many creations by community members who participated directly in our workshops, or who carried these teachings into their own artistic process.In conclusion, we hope that what we have outlined here shows how we have applied Eeyou values and worldview to this project, which was initiated to meet some of the core programming goals formulated as part of the concepts that drove the foundation of Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute. Through our community-based research, we connected contemporary Eeyouch to the painted caribou belongings of our ancestors in museums far from our region and demonstrated that it is possible to recognize many familiar elements despite these items being absent for many generations.