First American Art Magazine No. 0, Spring 2013 | Page 10

Recent Developments
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) celebrated its 100th
anniversary. To honor this occasion, the Royal Canadian
Mint released a 99.99% gold collector-coin featuring an
owl shaman designed by the late Joannassie Nowkawalk, an
Inuk carver from Inukjuak, Quebec.

Gatherings
WAG hosted a symposium “Inuit Art: Trajectories of
Transformation,” which explored contemporary Inuit
art’s history and place in the art world. Organized by
Darlene Coward Wight,WAG’s curator of Inuit art, this
symposium was held in conjunction with “Creation and
Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art.” With
115 artworks chronicling the history of Inuit art from the
1950s to the present, “Creation and Transformation” is the
WAG’s largest exhibition of Inuit art to date. The gallery is
building a new Inuit Art and Learning Centre, which will
showcase items from its 13,000–piece collection.
The 11th Congress of the Ecológico Indígena que
Organizó la Corporación Autónoma Regional del Tolima
(Indigenous Ecological Regional Autonomous Corporation
of Tolima) met in March in Tolima Department,
Colombia. The meeting included dances, songs, and
plays addressing water pollution and global climate
change, presented by 300 children from 36 Indigenous
communities.

Projects
For three years, Matika Wilbur (Swinomish-Tulalip) will
travel across the United States in car and RV to photograph
all federally recognized tribes across the United States,
part of Project 562 (of course, there are now 566 tribes).
Matika Wilbur is a documentary photographer who has
already completed several major projects photographing
Indigenous peoples in North and South America. More
information about Project 562 is online at matikawilbur.
com/blog.

Venues
Indigenous protesters, including Guajajara and Pankararú
people, occupied the Museu do Índio in the Botafogo
neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in late March. The
protesters have been displaced by the closing of Aldeia
Maracanã, their village, and are negotiating with the
government to restore their land.

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Pre-columbian petroglyphs in Amambay
Department, Paraguay. Photo: Solar Map Project
“The horizontal line of the cross is actually a type
of horizon, that divides heaven and earth, but also
it’s a line of time, from the beginning to the end.
The vertical line is the link between God and man,
where God lives outside of time in heaven, and
man lives inside time on earth. Man’s soul must
have a good connection with God, if not, upon
death the soul gets recycled,” writes Frank Weaver.
“The shaman then went on to explain that the
section on the solar map at the bottom of the cross
represents the different eras of man.”