They move this way through the 33 galleries, the young, soft-spoken Hill touring, and the elder Commanda sharing memories sparked by art. A straggling procession of about 25 Gallery staff members follows, trailing through the smoke. The group passes through galleries in the midst of being “re-hung,” where paintings by Emily Carr, Jean Paul Riopelle, Paraskeva Clark, and other Canadian-art heavyweights lean against walls on swatches of rug. The paintings appear subtly changed in the softened air, with its eerily filtered light.

Charles Daudelin Crouching Woman (1947)

Perhaps they sense what’s coming. In the weeks and months after the smoke has cleared, among them will be interspersed many items hitherto unseen in the Gallery: a Quw’utsun’ spindle whorl, a Gwich’in dog blanket, an Algonquin-style canoe from 1920, a birchbark scroll by Anishnaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, a silver sea-bear bracelet by Haida artist Bill Reid, bitten bark patterns from the late 1800s, a red cedar “wild woman” mask by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Ellen Neel, and paintings by Aboriginal artists such as Rita Letendre, Robert Houle, and Alex Janvier. They make up part of Art of this Land, an ambitious project to integrate more than 100 works of Aboriginal art, spanning 8,000 years, throughout the Canadian galleries, marking a major shift in the Gallery’s philosophy regarding the history and presentation of art in Canada.

Commanda, who is 90 years old and lives in Kitigan Zibi, near Maniwaki, Quebec, travelled to Ottawa after accepting an invitation from Hill to enact a smudging ceremony to bless and cleanse the Canadian galleries before the arrival of the Aboriginal works, which were installed through the fall and winter, and into spring. Hill is an artist and curator with a Kanyen’kehaka (Mohawk) background hired by the Gallery in 2000 to work with Denise Leclerc, associate curator of Modern Canadian art, on the development and implementation of Art of this Land. He sees Commanda’s presence as the true beginning of the project. “It was a respectful and responsible way to embark on this initiative,” he says. It was also unorthodox: Special permission was obtained from conservation staff, and fire alarms were briefly turned off. And the burning of sage in the Gallery hasn’t been the only unusual occurrence here lately. In its efforts to integrate the histories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadian art into its permanent exhibition space, the Gallery is travelling uncharted territory. Save for a similar project underway at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and a smattering of special exhibitions at various galleries over the past several decades, no other major institution in North America has tried mixing Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art in such a comprehensive fashion. There are no models to follow.

Unknown Artist Ivory Comb (Thule Period, 1000-1600 A.D.) Eskimo Museum, Churchill, Manitoba

“I think it’s great that Canada is taking leadership in this re-gard,” says Gerald McMaster, a prominent Plains Cree artist and scholar, and a former curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, who sat on an advisory committee that gave input into the Gallery’s plan. McMaster is now deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. “The United States,” he says, “still lags far behind in the sense of integrating the original peoples and their art into an American art history.” But once an entity such as the Gallery inches beyond familiar boundaries, it must adjust to new ground. The smudging, a simple but – for a Western-style art museum – foreign matter of etiquette, was, indeed, just the beginning.

Because the Gallery is in the early stages of collecting Aboriginal art – and because many Aboriginal objects are in the process of being repatriated to their communities – most of the objects in Art of this Land were borrowed. One such object is a stone tablet with an incised turtle, dating from 850–1350, and held by the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. The tablet, considered “of” the earth, must remain earthbound. Thus, it travelled to the Gallery by truck rather than plane. Once there, it was to be stored on red cloth with sage grass. Margaret Hanna, curator of Aboriginal history at the Royal Saskatchewan, received these instructions from local elders, who granted permission for the loan. “These objects are considered to be spiritually alive,” says Hanna.

That an institution such as the Gallery finds itself learning how to treat works of art as sacred objects is the culmination of several decades of soul-searching in an art world that has long resisted admitting Aboriginal art into its mainstream. Although the Gallery held its first exhibition of Native and Euro-Canadian art in 1927 (see Archives, p. 28 for a catalogue excerpt from that show), it did not place the two traditions on the same footing, characterizing one – you can guess which – as primitive. Even 57 years later, curator Dennis Reid and anthropologist Joan Vastokas complained in their catalogue essay for the 1984 AGO exhibition, The Four Quarters: Native and European Art in Ontario 5000 BC to 1867 AD, of the “apartheid status” accorded Native art: “The old categorization of Native North American art as ‘primitive,’ static, strictly utilitarian, and without a documented ‘history,’” they wrote, “has unfortunately persisted into the 20th century. Even today, there are many scholars and museum administrators who consider the proper place for Native art – both traditional and contemporary – is in museums of ethnography or in separate Native art collections and not in galleries alongside other traditions of world art.”

Such categorization has persisted along the lines of this sort of argument: Either it’s art and you admire it, or it’s a shoe and you wear it. It can’t be both. Thus, intricately beaded moccasins and cradleboards and parka panels, while skillfully made and clearly designed with an aesthetic in mind, would not stand as art in the pure, Western sense of the word. It’s a view Hill exposes as a double standard: “In our own galleries, which are fairly conservative, we have a piano, a hooked rug, Emily Carr pottery, and all the silverwork – the bulk of which was made for function, religious or otherwise.”

While such crossover regarding the function of art has existed, the artistic histories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities are in many ways starkly dissimilar. “The aesthetics and forms are widely divergent, cultural views on representation are different, certain developments are obviously quite different,” says McMaster. This reality presents a challenge – ultimately the challenge – for Hill and Leclerc. How to display objects from divergent traditions together in a way that does them justice? How to avoid unproductive apples-and-oranges comparisons?

The AGO has gone for heavy-duty educational backup, such as videos of artist interviews, and radical design changes. The McLaughlin Gallery, recently re-opened as the first phase in the AGO’s integration, was once designed to suggest a 19th-century domestic interior. It now bears geometric patterns relating to Ojibway cosmology. “It’s been absolutely transformed,” says Richard Hill, curatorial assistant of Canadian art at the AGO. “It’s an elaborate attempt to ensure the European work was coming into an environment already alive with an Aboriginal perspective.”

The National Gallery’s plan is less dramatic. Its galleries, which have a classic, neutral-walled design, look much the same as before. Aboriginal works are accompanied by extended captions, and a new audio guide will provide context on Aboriginal cultures. Hill and Leclerc use chronology and geography as chief guidelines for organizing the art works. For example, objects from Aboriginal peoples in northern Ontario in the early 20th century will appear near works by Canadian Shield painters such as F.H. Varley and J.E.H. Macdonald.

“My concern,” says Bob Boyer, a Métis artist and the head of the Aboriginal art department at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, “is that it’s going to be quaint window-dressing for the Group of Seven.”

Jeff Thomas, an Aboriginal artist with a Six Nations background who lives in Ottawa, is also wary. While deeply heartened by the Gallery’s initiative, he reserves judgment on whether integration will work. “My fear is that people will look at the painting in one way, and look at the object in another way,” he says, “and it will reinforce this notion that one was highly civilized and one was pagan. You can do this [kind of intermixing], but there has to be didactic material. You can’t go on faith that the public is going to make that leap, to really look deeply at this.”

Neither, however, can you assume they won’t. Colleen Skidmore, an associate professor who teaches the history of photography and art in Canada at the University of Alberta, is thrilled about the possibility for critical enquiry that the Gallery’s integrated approach will offer her undergraduates – provided that integration is carried over to the Gallery’s web site, a major study tool for art students outside of Ottawa. “One of the complaints my students have is the simplistic nature of the representation of Canada’s art history,” she says. “They argue that it should be presented in a complex way that brings problems and questions to the foreground.”

And complex that history was. Even a cursory look at the range of works makes it abundantly clear that influences, from content to style, have long moved freely in both directions. In one instance, Denise Leclerc places the painting Genocide No. 1 (p. 17), by Anishnaabe-Potawatami artist Daphne Odjig, near Léon Bellefleur’s Dance of the Drowned, and Charles Daudelin’s sculpture Crouching Woman (p. 16). Her intent: to illustrate the Surrealist thread running through all three works, and to emphasize the influence of Surrealism on Odjig, and its links to her spiritual heritage.

Greg Hill hopes Art of this Land will spawn more examination of this ilk. “For Aboriginal art to advance, we have to have serious intellectual criticism and dialogue,” he says. “There’s been a lot of cataloguing, but not a lot of situating of the art in the context of what’s going on globally, within and outside Western art traditions. We’re all part of a larger world. Aboriginal art is not just happening in the backwoods of the lands now known as Canada.”

A survey of 100 gallery visitors between January and June 2001 suggests the public is also keen for change. Shown totem poles, a beaded felt bag, and other objects, visitors were asked questions such as “Do you feel that the objects in this case are works of art?” The response was strong: 70 percent identified the objects as art, and 90 percent said they should be displayed in the Gallery. “The public,” says Hill, “has less of an issue trying to categorize things than we do.”

As do the artists themselves. To illustrate her belief that “art is art,” Odjig describes a visit to a home show several years ago: “A cement house and a wooden house were both showcased. The two homes were remarkably different, but displaying them together made a great deal of sense. Comparison shopping or viewing makes sense. Showing Canadian, or European, or Aboriginal art together should generate thought and interest rather than confusion.”

That said, if the media response to the Gallery’s last major foray into Aboriginal art – the 1992 exhibition of contemporary art Land, Spirit, Power – is any indication, it is in for intense scrutiny. A story in the Edmonton Journal about that exhibition led as follows: “The National Gallery of Canada is getting toasted for holding its first ever Indian art show, and roasted for leaving out prominent Native artists.” John Bentley Mays, visual arts critic for the Globe and Mail, chastised the Gallery for appearing to ignore “conventional artistic quality” and for engaging in what he saw as a “public relations gesture.”

Skidmore warns that the Gallery is walking into a minefield. “They’re taking risks, and there will be strong critical response to whatever they do,” she says. But she welcomes the debate. “The European definition of art, excluding other practices, is a very bound and conceived notion. Perhaps as Canadians we can challenge old hierarchies and argue for a different perspective.”

A perspective, she means, that acknowledges Canada’s messy, interwoven histories, and displays the visual heritage from those histories side-by-side, saying: There. What do you make of that? Hill, for one, is ready for the questions, criticism, and debate. “This is the National Gallery,” he says. “We should be on the avant-garde. We can improve as we learn, but it’s important to take that initial step.”

Entering one of the final galleries during his smudging ceremony, Commanda notes the small squirrel, the symbol of his clan, in Christiane Pflug’s Kitchen Door and Esther*. The towering painting seems to stir beneath his attention, as a painting might for anyone who saw in it a particular story, a vision of the world. “The squirrel climbs up everything,” he says, with pride.

– Anita Lahey