Mistaken Identity
The Expositor (Brantford)

The Expositor (Brantford)
Thursday, March 8, 2007

Mistaken identity
Four Indian Kings paintings part of exhibition exploring native stereotypes

By Elizabeth Yates
Expositor Staff / Brantford

Regally stoic, clad in flowing robes and adorned with tattoos.

Portraits of the Four Indian Kings – native emissaries who visited England in 1710 – presented a romanticized image of First Nations people to Europe and the world, shaping a misconception of the noble savage which persists today.

Now, Canada and England are re-examining that perception through two art exhibitions featuring historic and contemporary works.

This week, the National Portrait Gallery in London opened Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850. The show features portraits of Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, also known as King Hendrick; Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row, King of Generethgarich; Etow Oh Koam, King of the River Nation; and Sa Ga Yeah Qua Pieth Tow – also known as Peter Brant, he was Joseph Brant's grandfather. They were Iroquois commissioners, sent to Queen Anne in 1710 to mediate between British and French struggles over trade in North America.

Impressed by these exotic visitors, the queen commissioned official portraits by court painter John Verelst. The resulting works are majestic – and deceptive, says Keith Jamieson, a Six Nations member representing the Confederacy at the exhibit's opening.

"They coloured how natives were portrayed from then on," says Jamieson. "We had to fulfill an image that was never ours in the first place."

That mistaken identity, and the real lives of modern natives, is explored in a parallel exhibition at London's Canada House. Called Contemporary Voices, it features works by Jeff Thomas and Shelley Niro of Six Nations – both internationally known artists.

Thomas pairs black-and-white photographs with images of the Indian Kings to explore past and present stereotypes. In one, his brother, Steve Thomas, becomes pseudo-Mohawk warrior, posing with a quiver of arrows, head covered by a welder's mask with a protruding bandanna. He's paired with Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, the forefather of Joseph Brant, who is depicted wearing a loincloth, inked designs lacing his face and chest.

Another shows the artist standing on the Champlain monument in Ottawa, wearing a windbreaker and holding the shutter release to his camera. His mate is Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, dressed in European garb and grasping a wampum belt.

"I'm looking at adding a new voice to the past," Thomas says from home in Ottawa, before flying to London for the show. "There's a stereotype that real Indians lived in the past and don't live now. But we're still here today."

And their existence is not reflected by the popular myths of Indians as angry, protesters, drunks, suicides or malingerers.

"It's important for people to realize that we're working and thinking and doing things – and that we can talk about who we are."

Thomas' work raises important questions, says Lilly Koltun, director general of the Portrait Gallery of Canada.

"It's a very unsettling image," Koltun says of the welder's mask portrait. "You have to think about what it means to be stereotyped as a First Nations person. How does it make you feel to see yourself as a stranger in your own land?"

Photographs by Brantford's Shelley Niro, meanwhile, also address the past. But the focus is personal, not political.

Moody black-and-white photos – some portraits, some still lifes, all with beaded, wampum-like frames – are from a 2004 series called Ghosts, Girls and Grandmas. They're a poetic statement on the influences of family, experience and individual choices.

Another series, The Essential Sensuality of Ceremony, invokes the healing legacy of The Peacemaker, says Niro. "It's about being part of the community and being aware of your own weaknesses."

Taken together, these Contemporary Voices are an intriguing contrast to the historical portraits. And they'll reach viewers not commonly exposed to modern First Nations art.

"It's great. It gives us a different audience to look at our work," says Niro, a Mohawk of the Turtle Clan.

"Rather than keeping Indian art in the context that it's made for the North Americans, we can broaden (our reach)."

While in London, the multi-media artist and filmmaker is anxious to view the Four Indian Kings, whose legacy is both artistic and political.

Painted 300 years ago, they commemorate a meeting that still reverberates in Canada, says Thomas.

"There's a history to why that piece of land (in Caledonia) is so important to the people of Six Nations. And once you understand the history behind it, you get a sense of why Six Nations is fighting for what they are."

Born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., Thomas is an Onondaga who spent summers and holidays visiting family on the Grand River territory, where his brother now lives. There, he learned about the Confederacy, the Indian Defence League, "and old-time battles with the Canadian government." Those narratives laid the groundwork for the future artistic explorations, including his Indian Kings series.

He remembers seeing the original Verelst portraits in 1994, glimmering dimly in the confines of a storage vault. "I thought: These need to be seen in the light. That really got things started."

Primarily an artist, the 50-year old is also a curator and author, currently working on a book of historical photographs. He embarked on a life in art after a serious car accident in 1979 left him with a broken neck. "I vowed if I ever walked out of the hospital, I would do something different with my life."

Now, Thomas is eager to see how people respond to the Four Indian Kings – and his own work.

"Generally, non-aboriginals say they don't know whether to laugh or cry … They do seem to hit home."

ON LOAN

Contemporary Voices was organized by the National Portrait Gallery of Canada, which loaned the Verelst portraits to Britain.

These commanding works stayed in the royal collection for more than 100 years before coming into the possession of a private family for more than a century. Then, in 1977, they were purchased by the National Archives of Canada, now known as Library and Archives Canada.

They current show marks their first return to Britain – and it's a momentous occasion, says Koltun, of the portrait gallery.

The exhibition highlights the significance of First Nations to Canadian and British history and the continued connection between First Nations and the Crown, she said.

And it allows the paintings, normally stored in a vault – to reveal their glories to the public.

"The Four Indian Kings are world treasures," Koltun said in a telephone interview from England before the opening. "They are the earliest surviving portraits in European art of North American First Nations."

And more eyes may see them soon – maybe in Brantford.

We'd like to bring (the portraits) and Contemporary Voices back together and create a show to travel in Canada, particularly in southern Ontario," says Koltun. "We hope to do that later this year."