“S
omebody piped up and said
‘Have you heard of Touraine?’ And they
invited me. I had everything in there
from bison to a painting of Jimi Hendrix.
They put a picture of Encore on the
front page of the paper and everyone
wanted to know where to come see it.
White Hawk was there too; they invited
us as a team. We made appearances in
several other pavilions, like the African
American Pavilion; the American
Indian Pavilion asked for some of the
paintings; the Iranians wanted something
in their pavilion; the endangered species
pavilion…The ’74 World’s Fair might
as well have been the Emilie Touraine
show…” 44 paintings were featured
altogether.
It was that same year, while they were still
in our region, that Touraine got a personal
call from a surprisingly human fellow
over at the Department of Defense (“I
didn’t know they had any of those in the
Defense Department…”).
“Is this Emilie Touraine?”
“Yessss…”
“Are you the one that drew the war
bond?”
She’d been making war bonds for the
Kootenai Nation in Bonners Ferry, which
had dwindled down to 67 people after
years of begging the federal government
for aid, and in a last ditch effort to avoid
extinction they had officially declared war
on the United States.
It was not a shooting war; they were
mostly trying to raise help and awareness
because their conditions were so poor.
Touraine and White Hawk had heard their
desperate story and volunteered to display
some of their Symbolic Americana show
in Bonners, in the nicest space the tribe
had to offer — basically a tiny hallway in
a house that was falling apart.
“Look,” said the voice from the DOD,
“We understand where your heart is.
We’re not mad at you or anything, but this
is causing so much heat here we’re having
trouble. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
Emilie Touraine sitting at the bottom right, inside of United States Pavilion Lounge and Receiving Area.
Touraine’s artwork titled Vision Seeker - this piece was part of her Symbolic Americana Series.
Expo ‘74 was the first environmentally themed world’s fair.
It was held in Spokane, Washington, United States and ran from May fourth to the third of November 1974.