Indigenous Artist James Darin Corbiere
A
rtist, James Darin Corbiere, Waab Shki Makwa (White Bear) is an Aa-nishin-aabe (Odewaa, Bear Clan) from the Great Lakes region of Canada. “When I was a child, I used to be able to see colours around people. I thought that this was a normal thing, that everyone could see this way. Church abuse began when I was seven years old and it was then the “sight” was lost, and with no frame of reference or context, I didn’t know any different. I speak openly about the abuses at the Church because most people believe bad things only happened in the Indian Residential Schools. I never attended one, but when the schools were
shut down, the people who ran the schools moved into indigenous communities where they continued terrorizing and traumatizing survivors and now had access to their families too – right in their own home town.” Throughout his career in policing (city of Sudbury and later with the Wiky Tribal Police) and as an elementary school teacher James struggled with the effects of the church trauma and at the age of 50 he decided to face the demons. “I was tired. Tired of running.” The answer came to him during a profound “Vision Quest” experience which lasted 3 days and nights in the bush without any food or water and changed his life. “Something cracked. I still cannot define it, but I can say with certainty that this is where and when things in my life began to change.” shares White Bear. “A month later, I went out and bought a bunch of White Ash with the goal of building a big wooden boat, just like the ones I saw growing up as a kid on the
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James Corbier Ink on Ash 44
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Island (Manitoulin). Then that August, after 43 years of wrestling with Church demons, I crashed completely. Then one night in November 2015, when returning from a flashback, I noticed a pen broke and the ink leaked onto the Ash I had stacked in my basement. Images began to appear as the ink spread across the grains of the wood. And I just kept adding to it. This is when my artwork began and it has always been healing. I think the spirit of the Ash and I connect as we have both experienced devastation and de-population as a result of colonization, and so it speaks to me.” Since he began his signature series of ink on ash he has created roughly 200 individual pieces, Some can be found embellished with recycled copper. “The stories are embedded in the wood. The planks of Ash tell me what they want to be and they choose their colours. I then “treat” the wood with a little bit of ceremony, maybe a smudge with sweet grass, an offering of tobacco, or juice from berries or lake water from sacred places like Nakal Bun (Stuart Lake) in Fort St. James. The stories they tell are their own. Some stories are memories, others are reminders from the spirit world about how we conduct ourselves here in this world. Some are whimsy, comical, catchy, sarcastic. Others are painful, sorrowful
and make you want to cry. And lately, with the Revelations of the Catholic Church actions in Kamloops and others, the artwork I have been producing is brutal. Honest but brutal, and what I am being shown is but a small portion of the experience those spirits lived when they were here. I add a base colour if needed, if not then I sketch what I am told to. When the sketch or outline is complete, I add colour a bit here and there, layering the ink as it soaks in to the wood, often blending colours to create new ones. This combination of inks and the natural colouration and grain of the wood create unique characteristics in the artwork, characteristics that can never be duplicated, meaning each piece is unique. Aa-nishin-aabe artist James Darin Corbiere, Waab Shki Makwa (White Bear) is showing in August at Bluenose Marina, Odyssey’s End 1769 Cowichan Bay Rd. waterfront. Cards, prints and originals also available at Little Bird Cards and Gifts 163 Station Street, downtown Duncan. easternwoodlandart.ca Image above;Mother Earth Takes A Vacation - Ink and Copper on White Ash - 30 x 70 x 15 cm (in her base)
