Reona
Brass (Saulteaux) was born in 1966 and raised both on and off her
reservation in Canada. She was trained at the Ontario College of
Art (Toronto, Ontario) and the University of Regina (Saskatchewan)
from 1985-1992. A performance installation artist whose work explores
the changing modes of Indigenous survival, ritual, and politics
of identity, Brass has exhibited across Canada and in the US since
1993. The coordinator of a Native artist-run centre in Saskatchewan,
Brass has been the recipient of numerous awards from The Canada
Council for the Arts and was recently a guest panelist at the first
Indian Acts Performance Art Conference in Canada.
LS: How does the Culture of War or domination of the “Empire”
inform your work?
RB: I suppose I have to define what culture of war or domination
of an empire is. I think of the story of Star Wars actually. Seriously,
I don’t think that what’s happening today in which America
plays a central role, is different than what’s been happening
for thousands of years. It’s a difference of worldview that
different people have felt around the world. I happen to come from
a worldview that doesn’t entail a conquering of another. So
within my world that I find myself, within my culture and within
this larger worldview, I’ve identified as being another way
of being, of having another way of expressing our humanity. My response
to that worldview that does not include the conquering of the other
or the converting of the other is one of constant resistance. It’s
a life style, it’s a philosophy, it’s a spiritual journey.
Its something that I incorporate, try to incorporate into every
aspect of my life and every aspect of my identity. It’s not
something that you can incorporate now and then, it something that
you have adopted whole-heartedly. That’s my response to the
culture of domination.
LS:
In the face of media regulation/censorship and propaganda, how do
you consider visualart/performance
as a medium for expression, change, activism?
RB: I have to say that I’m a Canadian so my concerns are a
bit different, but in relation to authority figures per se…
although I am speaking from a place of privilege because of the
way I look. So I’m not going to attract the attention from
police that the darker skinned native people are going to, and do,
attract from racist police (because Canada does have some racist
police, some aren’t). But thinking about your question in
relation to the media and how that relates to my work as a performance
artist, I automatically want to take it to a larger context, which
is written history. As a native person, living in Canada, my first
concern is addressing the written history of me and my people in
the textbooks that we used in school and finding the real history
of our people, the real stories of our people which are still not
printed in our culture. So my work as a performance artist is addressing
a written record whether it’s in the media, because the written
record to me is still incorrect, or the written records in the history
books… All that written history. That contemporary record
that continues in the media is something that I will always want
to express in my work.
Performance is something that I chose because it is not based on
a written narrative. I know there are performance artists that do
their work with written narratives, but I specifically chose it
as a visual art form that would be able to automatically cross that
border and speak to people who cant read, cant read very well, or
don’t even speak my language. For me it’s a universal
language so that why I do performance. And so I guess that’s
my interest in trumping the media, whether its Lord Conrad Black,
who if you know is the media mogul in Canada, very anti-Canadian,
he would really like to see us become Americans, but I wont comment
on that. There are independent media outlets in Canada, some are
better than others. But I would say in general, I find there is
always a danger when we move into the written record of any people.
As a Native person, I see that record as being notoriously incorrect.
LS:
What tools (of performance, of resistance, of assimilation, etc.)
do you feel are the most useful in fighting or responding to the
Empire and/or the culture of War?
RB:
I think going back to the way I was raised as an indigenous person,
in an indigenous community, I would say that whoever you are, we
all have a wellspring of knowledge that comes from many, many generations
of people from many different cultures. In my culture we go back
to the elders if we have a question of how we should proceed. I
think that it’s really important, whoever you are, to make
a connection with those from your past. Because what the culture
of war depends on, relies on, is a disconnect within those that
they want to conquer or convert, but all that you know is better
than what they what they are presenting.
I say that with a little bit of hope because I consider myself a
person who has survived a history that my ancestors went through
and sacrificed along the way so I could be here and know what I
know. The very fact that I have survived is proof that regardless
of how much we lost, which we lost a lot, we had so much to begin
with that enough has remained. And I think that enough has remained
of a lot of cultures and ways of knowing and knowledge bases. But
what many of us have bought into from those that come from the culture
of war is that all of that is gone- all of that is not as good.
Because it comes from this idea of progression. For war to progress
you have to have a mentality of progression and it becomes a whole
linear take on time, and that’s not how time is. The indigenous
worldview is a holistic, circular view of time and that way of seeing
time exists in many, many cultures. For me, I know where I can go
to reconnect with the past so that I can see the future more clearly.
But I think that option exists for many, many people and I would
say that’s something we have to remind ourselves to do. |
