A Rich Heritage Ignored

In the wake of the First World War, Canada began to shake off its colonial status and to define itself as an independent state with its own indigenous art forms. One of the enduring initiatives in this movement was the creation of the Group of Seven, officially formed in Toronto in 1920, and its legacy of defining Canada by painting the Canadian landscape, sea to sea to sea. Indeed, from this obsession we ended up with an image of Canada that emerged from Toronto studios and portrayed a suite of landscapes that few Canadians live in and most have never seen.

Pushed to one side in this process was the art of Canada’s truly indigenous peoples, the Indian tribes, with their totems, longhouses, masks, weapons, objects for rituals, beadwork, basketry and carving. Native art did not include landscape painting, and the Group of Seven did not carve masks or totems: joining these two to produce a unified image of Canada was not likely then or, perhaps, even possible. The...