WELLNESS ARTIST

WELLNESS ARTIST LOU-ANN IKA'WEGA NEEL

KEALY DONALDSON

Lou-Ann Neel, from a long line of Kwakwaka’wakw

Artists originating from Alert Bay, works at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. For the last two and a half years she loved her position as Indigenous Repatriation Specialist. In August, Neel was promoted to Curator of Indigenous Collections for a week. Much to her surprise and delight, she was asked to step into Acting Head of Indigenous Collections and Repatriation Department and is still there, until another change is made. “With all the work going on in Colwood and most of our resources focused on that project, it’s been a learning curve that came fast and is still coming but I love it, I truly love it!” she says.

When asked what her biggest highlight has been working at the Royal BC Museum, Neel explained that one of the silver linings of Covid is that they are deep in the process of digitizing the Indigenous Collections. The collection hosts approximately 35,000 photos plus audio pieces as part of Repatriation. So far, 16,000 photos have been uploaded to the online database. The work continues behind the scenes, but you can search online within the uploaded museum archives now. The decision to move forward and continue with this project, especially if Covid continues for any length of time, is beneficial as people won’t be prevented from searching through the collections. The department oversees the entire Repatriation Project— there is ongoing outreach in process with in-person meetings, prior to Covid, encouraging key Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers to go through this online database so they can be ready for the meeting. This will allow for specific items in the collection to be identified and organized to be returned to their originating First Nation communities or Indigenous Organizational bodies.

The project has been video-documenting the entire collection with 15,000 cultural pieces – from small to large, including totem poles. Video documenting will allow communities to review all the items to assist in memories and identifying these pieces. Neel enjoys working with the Elders and youth, who also get an opportunity to connect and learn from each other— fluent Indigenous speakers teaching their youth, helping each other in connecting with culture. It’s just another amazing positive spinoff from this project. The museum is partners with First Peoples Cultural Council through Language Initiative Programming.

As for the museum, they will still have a record of the collection once it’s repatriated through their permanent video record. The video documenting will be on-going and in the future, the project will travel back to each of

the Nations to discuss the repatriation, documenting the entire repatriation from beginning to end. There are eight communities involved to date.

For remote First Nations communities, this framework is working well and the grant program is with the British Columbia Museum’s Association; Royal BC Museum ran it for the first year, and BCMA has now taken it over. The grant will be used to cover the costs of travel into Victoria to review the massive collection and transport repatriation pieces back into originating communities.

Neel loves the part of engagement with communities. The Haida Gwaii Museum was contracted to assist in building a Repatriation Guide Book. Neel created templates and samples for them to build upon. You can now find their guide book on the Royal BC Museum website for download. There is a hard copy to come in the future. As the collection pieces can only be given back to organizational bodies, such First Nation Bands or Cultural Non-profit Societies, these communities were asked to form committees with the support of each Nations’ Administration. Also, the video documenting will include the arrival of collection pieces and the interaction of communities surrounding the pieces. These will be publicly available in the future.

“I am lucky to be in this position to advocate for Artists," Neel reflects. "I ran around this museum as a child, staring at the totem poles.” We touch on what is to come in the future and Neel adds, “There was a carving studio here, occupied by Mungo Martin; it burnt out and was rebuilt. It was deemed unsafe in 2014, then torn down. Janet MacDonald and I held a series of consultations with First Nations Artists – including those who worked at the carving studio. Richard Hunt and Tim Paul were the last Artists to be formally employed there. It was a place of learning, building cultural apprenticeships; for Artists who were away from home, the open concept allows them to stop in and learn while they were in Victoria.”

Neel explained further that “so what was agreed upon, from a dialogue started in 2018, was a new space to be created and it could go back to the original location. A smaller footprint which would be same size studio but it was concluded that all Indigenous Art Mediums should be included. It will become part of the new museum building with full time staff running the operations to oversee the studio. This would be an Artists Coop.” Neel has been working on setting up an Artists Coop; once the Coop is created, it would oversee and apply for the project funding to run the programs directly – not the museum, but definitely as a partnership.

As an Artist in these unprecedented times, Neel continues to produce art in her ‘spare time’. Saturdays are her artist days and as people are rethinking Christmas and focused on supporting local, she has four online shops – she was able to get her online presence amped up when Covid hit. For Neel, sales increased heavily for art cards and prints which had her working closely with local printers. Neel really misses being able to connect with other artists and family members.

Neel was recently awarded the Fulmer Award in First Nations’ Art. She is thrilled about the award; it qualified to her that she is a real Artist. Her first credentials are in Public Administration and she has always worked a day job with art on the side. With more and more online exposure opportunities and people getting quite stressed, Neel uses that as inspiration for her daily art and shares through her social media channels. She shares in the hope to just be able to make someone’s day and it truly is a highlight to see what she shares!