I decided on making an art piece portraying a phoenix shooting out of its ashes. The phoenix represents the First Nations people as a culture. In mythology, a phoenix would live its life for thousands of years. Once a phoenix dies of old age or gets killed, it is then reborn within its ashes a few days or even years later. I felt like the symbolism would be quite fitting, the connection between the First Nations people and the phoenix is within the life, death, and rebirth of the mythology. Before colonization, the First Nations people had this land for their own. Their communities were full of different people that would pass down knowledge through stories and experiences. Some of these ways to hand down knowledge would be through the teachings. These teachings would be about many things like how to hunt, create clothing and baskets, how to cook and create pottery. They appreciated everything that “Mother Earth” would give them. To relate this to my picture, this would have been the life of the phoenix before its death. But once the colonizers came across the sea and called this land their own; everything changed. And so, started the avalanche of loss, pain, and death that the First Nations people must struggle through.
While having to cope with the loss of their land, the sexual assault and murder of thousands of their people. They quickly became introduced to—what I believe— is the biggest event in the genocide of Indigenous people and that is residential schools. This is where the death of their culture I feel happened. In 1880 the first residential school opened, and the government started to systematically remove children from their homes and force them to reside within these schools where they tried to “remove the Indian” from them. Children were punished, starved and beaten if they were to break rules such as speak their language, practice their religion or spiritual traditions or even be up past curfew. They were not allowed to use the knowledge that they grew up with but instead became forced to learn the “western ways of knowing.” They were forced to learn and only speak English; even when talking to other children and were also required to convert to Christianity. But sadly, many children had to go through much more than that. Many children were sexually abused by members of the church, this information was not known until recently when many people came forward to talk about their time in residential schools. If the children were to survive the school system, they came home unable to communicate with their family and would live forever with an emotional divide between them and their loved ones. This constant abuse from the government and the attempted assimilation of the new dominant culture is what I would call the death of the First Nations’ culture. And the death of the phoenix.
Many First Nation people today are still struggling with the intergenerational trauma caused by these events. However, I feel that within our school system and the way we have started to implement Indigenous ways of knowing into our teachings, along with the new strides from the government with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada; we are finally on track to restoring the people and the culture that the government has abused and abandoned. In my eyes, we are seeing the rebirth of the First Nation culture. Even though it will be a long road ahead, I’m glad to see these steps being made. And now I feel we are witnessing the rebirth of the phoenix and soon it will take flight
For the actual creation of my art piece, I used an art program called Krita, it’s basically a free version of photoshop. It has a wide variety of brushes, so making the grass and the textured sky was simple but getting things to stay simple was a challenge. I wanted to make the phoenix resemble an arrowhead, this can be seen as the entire bird is in a triangle shape while the wings and head also resemble arrowheads. I wanted to use the arrow design since it harkens back to the past where Indigenous people were mighty hunters. I also did this to give the impression that the rebirth is of an ancient civilization and culture; seeing how arrows are not often used today I felt it was fitting. The bird itself also has the four colors of the Indigenous medicine wheel to further the connection to Indigenous people. I tried to keep everything simplistic to resemble a similar style of art that is common in First Nation culture. I feel that I have become more understanding of the trauma that many of my friends and family have went through. I am driven and proud to learn more about the history of First Nations people and I feel it is my responsibility to better inform my students friends, and even myself about their culture history and their trauma so I can do my part in truth and reconciliation.