Discovered gems
Published Saturday June 20th, 2009
'Ekpahak,' an exhibition opening today at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, features the 184-year-old Grandfather Akwiten canoe and works of art scouted from living rooms and yards in reserves across the province. The resulting collection is stunning. And organizers think they have only scratched the surface. 'There is probably so much more for us out there to discover.'
In spring, Peter Augustine searches for arrowheads unearthed when chunks of ice, pushed by the wind, scrape against the banks of the Richibuctou River. He has found nearly three dozen so far, some hundreds upon hundreds of years old, and carefully displays them in his home on the Elsipogtog First Nation, the Mi'kmaq reserve west of Rexton that was long known as Big Cove.
A slow-talking and soft-spoken man, Augustine grew up on the First Nation, and relies on it for sustenance, feeding his family with the work he does in the woods, and the moose he hunts with his bow and arrow and rifle.
There were antlers scattered in his yard and stacked in his garage when Terry Graff and Alan Syliboy visited last fall as they were scouring the countryside for aboriginal art. Co-curators of a First Nations exhibition that opens today at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Graff and Syliboy were amazed by Augustine's collection of moose horns, and asked if they could borrow them for the show.
So Augustine recently tossed 23 pairs of antlers into the back of his pick-up, and drove two-and-a-half hours to Fredericton, drawing stares along the way. As he neared the gallery, the police pulled him over to peruse the unusual cargo he was carrying, and then helped him find his way to the institution Lord Beaverbrook opened at the edge of the St. John River in 1959.
"I didn't know what they had in mind when they said they wanted my antlers as part of an exhibit,'' Augustine said this week as he stood in the gallery, admiring the display of his moose racks that nearly covers one entire wall. "I am surprised they wanted to include them, and I am stunned that it would make such a big display.
"I just had them laying around my house. I never imagined this."
An artist but not one in the traditional sense, Augustine carves animals on the points of moose antlers and fashions musical instruments from their hip bones. But the moose racks are gorgeous by themselves, each raw and wild and twisted like some sort of abstract sculpture.
"What is interesting is that they are all the same, yet they are all quite different at the same time,'' Graff, said this week. "They were never intended to be displayed in an art gallery, and that's what I like.
"This whole show is about that kind of thing. The notion of what is art and what is craft gets blown away. It is really about creative expression, we blur a lot of lines.
"There is no pretense to it."
Works by 20 artists from across the province are included in the exhibition, which is called Ekpahak, Maliseet for "where the tide ends," and runs through Aug. 31. The grand opening takes place at 2 p.m. today, and will be followed three hours later by the unveiling of a retrospective of works by the famous artist from Tobique, Shirley Bear. That show, called The Painting, Poetry and Politics of Shirley Bear, runs until Sept. 21.
A band will entertain visitors with native music during today's opening of the First Nations exhibit, and native delicacies will be served. In addition to Augustine's antlers, the diverse show includes a collection of wooden masks carved by Ned Bear, animal skins, beadwork, birchbark drawings, boxes and top hats, an assortment of drums and dream catchers, smoked moose hide jackets and vests, paintings, porcupine quill work, salmon spears and sculptures.
All but a handful of pieces were accumulated by Graff and Syliboy during visits to reserves across New Brunswick. At times, they simply knocked on doors and asked to see what type of artwork or knick-knacks people owned. The eclectic nature of the show reflects that.
"When we started this, I really didn't know what to expect," said Syliboy, an artist and member of the Millbrook First Nation in Truro, N.S. "But the artwork that I found was much richer than anticipated, and it is really grassroots, too.
"I am really excited. People are going to see a lot more than they normally would at a gallery. It is going to be a very intimate show, like visiting someone's house. You get to know people a lot better that way."
Syliboy's band, Lone Cloud, which is named after a Mi'kmaq medicine man, will perform during the opening. A drum owned by him, made from the hollowed-out trunk of a 600-year-old tree, is part of the exhibit. Photographs he took while visiting First Nation communities will be projected on one wall.
"This will be a visual feast,'' he said.
The entire exhibition is built around the Grandfather Akwiten, the world's oldest known birchbark canoe. The 22-foot craft, which was built by local Maliseets around 1820, was returned recently to the St. Mary's First Nation in Fredericton by the National University of Ireland in Galway.
Shipped overseas by a British military officer in 1825, the canoe was donated in 1852 to what was then known as Queen's University in Galway, and hung from the roof of the university's Quadrangle building, where it was adopted as a home and defiled by pigeons.
Members of the St. Mary's band became aware of the canoe's existence when it was shipped to the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa two years ago for refurbishing, and they were eventually able to repatriate it with help from a researcher at the university in Ireland.
A living testament to the skills and culture of the Maliseets, the canoe was constructed with cedar ribs that were fastened with black spruce roots and sealed with pine resin. It had fallen into such disrepair, however, that it was nearly tossed in the trash until a historian at the National University recognized its worth.
Now, it is at the focal point of the exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, displayed against one wall with the following words, in Maliseet, written above it: "The ancestors have left us their footprints to follow, as we in turn will leave behind our own footprints for our descendants to follow."
Three of the artists participating in the show, Kim, Wayne and Cody Brooks, were among the members of the St. Mary's First Nation who were instrumental in the campaign to get the Grandfather Akwiten returned to New Brunswick. On loan from the National University, the canoe has been displayed at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John for the last year. Earlier this month, the university announced the canoe would be given back to the local Maliseets, and a fundraising effort will be announced today to build a facility to house it on the First Nation on the north side of Fredericton.
"I think it is wonderful that the canoe is going to be here and surrounded by all of this art work,'' Kim Brooks, a skilled artist and university professor, said this week as she installed a display at the gallery. "It is just perfect.
"Every now and then I take a moment to think how grateful we are. "I give thanks every day."
A year ago, when the canoe was delivered to the New Brunswick Museum, Brooks and other members of the St. Mary's Band travelled to Saint John to meet it. They held a welcoming ceremony for the Grandfather Akwiten, and prayed and sang and danced.
"When we opened the top corner of the crate the canoe was in, and I saw it for the first time, it was very emotional,'' she said.
A beadwork artist since she was 13, Kim Brooks is also a talented painter and carver with numerous pieces in the show. The same is true of her husband, Wayne, and son, Cody, who were invited to participate after Graff and Syliboy visited their home at St. Mary's.
"Every square inch of their house was loaded with amazing artwork," Graff said. "Since then, they have been joking with us about just moving their furniture into the gallery and living here."
Together, the family helped build a birchbark canoe in 2004, the first launched by the Mailseets in New Brunswick in 100 years. That craft is also part of the First Nations exhibit.
Wayne Brooks was so moved the day the canoe was launched, that he went to the edge of the St. John River beforehand and prayed. He was overwhelmed with thoughts of his descendants and the remarkable work they did so many years ago with so few resources.
"Tears came over me," he said.
As a child, Brooks remembers lugging birchbark baskets and boxes to the city market in Fredericton for his father, grandfather and uncles to sell. He would make enough money - a dollar or two - so that he could see a picture at the old Capitol Theatre or Gaiety Theatre.
A self-taught artist, Brooks is thrilled that his family was asked to participate in the First Nations exhibition.
"We have been doing this all of our lives, and knew our work was quality work,'' Brooks said. "But to have an opportunity to be in a place like the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and show our life's work, well, it speaks volumes."
Cody Brooks, who is learning the art of birchbark canoe building and forged a salmon spear that is included in the exhibit, is likewise enthused.
"I think it is a great place for aboriginal artists to showcase their work,'' he said at the gallery one night this week. "They don't have enough of these types of exhibitions.
"It's an excellent opportunity."
In 50 years, Graff said, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery has only acquired a handful of pieces by aboriginal artists for its permanent collection. He said the gallery now hopes to buy works from the Ekpahak exhibition.
"This show is a first for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, and it is long overdue,'' Graff said. "And I think we have just scratched the surface. There is probably so much more for us out there to discover."
Surely, somewhere out there, there may be another Peter Augustine, a man who works in the woods and relies on nature to provide, whether it be moose for the dinner table or for the gallery wall.
He has 23 sets of antlers in the exhibit, and more at home, and has probably sold 30 to collectors around the world over the years.
As a kid, he hunted partridge and rabbit, and then later on graduated to hunting deer. But now, he strictly hunts for moose.
"For one thing," he said, with laughter, "It tastes a lot better than deer."
Augustine has been with his wife, Nancy, now for six years. They met when she was working at the health centre at Elsipogtog, and he was a patient. He liked her so much that he went back a few times, feigning illness, until he got up enough nerve to ask her on a date.
In recent years, she has won three contests for cooking moose.
"I can't tell you my secret," she said. "That's how I win."
When he is tracking and calling moose, Augustine gets so close at times that he has to butt them with his rifle. Once, when a moose he shot charged him, he suddenly became the hunted rather than the hunter.
"It was laying down, and I thought it was dead,'' he said. "Then I turned my back for one second, and it was on top of me. It knocked me down, and its antlers were coming down on me, so I took off on all fours.
"Jeepers, I thought I had had it for sure. I thought it was going to crush me.
"I didn't think I could spin on my knees."
Eventually, Augustine subdued the moose with help from a friend, and today the 20-point rack is hanging in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Along with his antlers, the gallery is showing photographs and videotapes Augustine has taken to document his hunts.
"I think if he could live in the woods, he would,'' Nancy Augustine said. "It brings him peace of mind."
The time that the moose charged him, Nancy Augustine said, her husband told her that he could feel its hot breath coming after him.
"If he is going to die, that would be the best way," she said.
Marty Klinkenberg is contributing editor of the Telegraph-Journal. He can be reached at martyklinkenberg@hotmail.com. 'Ekpahak' shows until Aug. 31.
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