A new five year mission statement for Trent University was approved on May 11, 2010 by the by Senate and again on June 24, 2010 by the Board of Governors. Within this mission statement is the commitments to, “Remain at the forefront of Indigenous education and scholarship”. With Indigenous issues built right into the university’s mission the school must now begin to implement actions to support these objectives. We hope that everyone involved in their formation and execution will remain aware of the following as they move forward.
The heath, identity and public image of the Indigenous Studies Department and Indigenous students will benefit greatly when its cultural symbols are recognized publically to their fullest capacity. We believe that the public display of Indigenous art has an invaluable role to play in the achievement of this aesthetically charged public recognition of cultural symbols.
Space needs to have meaning and significance for the people interacting within them in order to function with the highest possible levels of appreciation and respect. Indigenous Peoples at Trent and the Indigenous Studies department have inherited a system of representation that causes considerable tension. The original spaces that compose the Trent University campus were modelled academically, aesthetically, and administratively after the postsecondary institutions in Europe. For instance, the architectural designs for the space were complied after eight universities in England that the head architect, Ron Thom’s visited prior to the commencement of construction. The university’s public symbol of the sword piercing a river also associates with a European history and imagery. The sword is representative of the explorer Samuel de Champlain who travelled through this area in the early 1600s. In addition, the residential college system that physically and conceptually organizes the students and campus environments was also borrowed from an English community development model that first emerged in the Europe during the Middle Ages. As a result of these spaces and the symbols that construct them, the public image offered by Trent University began as a type of colonial portrait, one not inclusive of Indigenous knowledge or reflective the daily learning realities of Indigenous students and faculty.
Despite this past, Trent’s spaces have and continue to undergo a transformation that has been accomplished, in part, by public displays of Indigenous art. Art enhances, and often even creates, the meaning and significance of a place. This perspective asks us to learn to recognize that artworks themselves are places and do not merely belong to a place. The Indigenous Art Collection displayed at Trent University’s Enweying building should be approached as places of Indigenous knowledge and that together build larger more elaborate learning spaces. This art can be employed to influence interactions between people, inform behaviour, and guide dialogues. Art works inspire and maintain communities. The situation of art in an environment can provide us with the opportunity to rediscover and experience the space in unexpected political, emotional, historical, intellectual, and cultural ways.
Curatorial art practices largely determine how the impulses and desires of collecting relate to and affect the Indigenous Peoples they are engaging. The history of institutional displays of Indigenous artwork has been marked by a lack of involvement of Indigenous Peoples in the curatorship, presentation and, interpretation of their works. The donated portion of the Indigenous Art Collection in Enweying was largely build through existing relationships between Indigenous artists and members of the Indigenous Studies department. Many of the works that entered into the university collection were offered to the Indigenous Studies department or specific individuals within the department. These relationships help to instil the support structures necessary to foster the creation of partnerships between the Trent Art Collection Presidential Advisory Committee and representative of Indigenous Studies department.
Once a piece is admitted into the collection, the Trent Art Collection Presidential Advisory Committee has the authority to undertake the exhibition planning of the pieces in any way that they see fit. The curatorship of the Enweying building was not approached in this way. A partnership was created between the Indigenous Studies department and the Committee that introduced encounters based on more equitable terms. The power dynamics of this relationship moved in multiple directions rather than being established in fixed mutually exclusive positions. A desire to share knowledge and put those multiple sources of knowledge into practice was at the core of curatorial practices. The members of the Indigenous Studies department who were involved in the project brought with them understandings of the meanings of the art pieces and understandings of what type of spaces could be created by their placement in order to best represent and support the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge. The Trent Art Collection Presidential Advisory Committee brought to the relationship awareness of the spatial limitations imposed by the works mediums and monetary value. Each group stepped into the role of expert when their knowledge was required and then back into the role of novice when the other group was needed as the expert. The collaboration ensured that the agency and voice of Indigenous artists and Indigenous Peoples has been represented in the institutional interpretations and demonstrations of the cultural symbols used to form the public image that is being presented on a day to day basis. This has created an effective space for Indigenous knowledge sharing and learning.
Work Cited
Duncan, Carol .Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. New York: Routledge, 1995.
