Publication Date
January 1992
Abstract
In 1991, the National Archives of Canada made its first deliberate acquisition of art works by an Indian artist, the Kwaguitl David Neel, who had produced a series of serigraphs relating to events concerning native-white relations in Canada. The first work, Life on the 18th Hole (figure 1 ), was inspired by the events at Oka, Quebec, where Mohawk warriors had blockaded a provincial highway and defied first Quebec provincial police and then Canadian federal troops for more than two months in 1990.1 The second work, Just Say No (figure 2), was a commentary on the stand taken by Elijah Harper, a Manitoba Indian and member of Parliament, whose no vote in a crucial provincial legislature debate resulted in the collapse of a national constitutional accord which had been several years in the making. In 1992, two additional Neel prints were acquired: Trial of Tears, a reaction to an adverse judgement in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to a land claim by the G'tsaan Witsoa'tin, and the more personal Kwagiutl Family Portrait, a portrait of the artist and his family in traditional motif.