Quill Box View Three: Art as Political Statement and Resistance

Art as Political Statement and Resistance

Art can help to move forward and further develop the revitalization of culture. In the past in many different locations notable in Canada and the United States there have been large government and religious movements to eradicated Indiginous people and their conceptualized view of the world. These acts were acts of assimilation. Assimilation sought to remove every trace of one's culture, usually taking legal actions against the visible aspects of culture such as native dress and or language, and then through the forcible and commonly violent removal of children set to reeducate the youth, encouraging the questioning of one's Indigenous identity and building the new “acceptable” or “civilized” identity that the culture in power had sought to create. (2017, Brenda) There was a very large stigma created regarding anything Indigenous, children who had lived through the residential schooling system commonly did one of two things, turned away from their native roots or embraced them, this polarized reaction to this historical trauma contributed to discrepancies in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Indigenous ways of creating art persisted and survived a very large disturbance to the transmission of information intergenerationally, the act of creation therefore became an act of resistance, (2012, Lentis) taking part in a practice that was not supposed to have survived assimilation is a very powerful assertion that Indigenous peoples are not going to assimilate, that there is nothing wrong with their culture and their way of creating. Indigenous creators who are making art now and teaching others how to properly complete and cherish this way of creating are taking part in an act of resistance to past and present forms of control and assimilation tactics, as it promotes the continuation of this knowledge across generations and even cultures, this revitalization is key in the health of the community and the continual stance against assimilation. (2011, Slivka)