The Artisans of Big Cove

Recently, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton exhibited a striking collection of tapestries and prints from the Micmac Indian Craftsmen, a short-lived and mostly forgotten studio associated with Elsipogtog First Nation, then called Big Cove, in New Brunswick. Those who missed the show can learn about this “vibrant co-operative experiment” from the beautiful catalogue by the curators Emma Hassencahl-Perley and John Leroux. In English, Mi’kmaw, and French, Wabanaki Modern offers a comprehensive look at the production of commercial handicrafts by “the first modern Indigenous artists in Atlantic Canada.”

The formation of the MIC in 1962 was, in part, a response to the Massey Commission’s observation, a decade earlier, that “cultural and artistic vibrancy was vital to the social and intellectual health of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples,” as Leroux puts it. The provincial director of handicrafts in New Brunswick at the time, Ivan Crowell, had arranged to meet...