Native women back arts organization

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When Sandra Laronde, founder and head of Native Women in the Arts (NWIA), was starting the organization 10 years ago, she spent many late nights writing grant proposals to boost NWIA's initial grant of $15,000. She recalls one early morning in particular when, in a haze of fatigue, she called it quits.

"I'd had enough of the whole thing. I'd poured my guts, my entire life, into founding this organization and I was sick of it. Right at that moment, I heard a crash in the other room. I ran in to see a picture we had of a Native woman standing staunchly on her own land lying shattered on the floor, in a hundred pieces. I realized then that I couldn't quit; I had to keep going for that woman and for the thousands of others like her in Canada," Laronde told a capacity crowd at NWIA's tenth anniversary gala.

Held at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto on May 28, the gala evening called Igniting the Spirit featured a star-studded cast of women.

NWIA, which encourages artistic and cultural expression through creativity, activism and social responsibility, now has a membership of more than 3,000 women and arts organizations across Canada. When Laronde was a student of social philosophy at University of Toronto, she recalls being shocked by the absence of Native art forms in Canada, especially those of Native women. The situation has experienced a dramatic change for the better since then, in part because of NWIA's encouragement for women artists to take the reins of their own careers.

"It's an exciting time to be an Aboriginal artist in this country, because it is just starting and beginning to flourish. The art has always been there, but the recognition is starting. And we are hearing voices that are more positive ... less filled with suffering," Laronde said in a recent interview with the Scarborough Arts Council.

The proliferation of Native artists was evident at Igniting the Spirit, as a line-up of fresh young talent appeared alongside more well-known names, such as two-time Juno Award winner Susan Aglukark, two-time world champion hoop dancer Lisa Odjig, and documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, a member of the Order of Canada and winner of the Governor General's Award.

Inuit throat-singers Emily Karpik, a 17-year-old from Baffin Island, and Kendra Tagoona, a 20-year-old from Nunavut, were riveting as they uttered urgent, guttural animal and nature sounds imitating the wind, a river, geese, seagulls, a saw and two mosquitoes competing with one another. The goal of this ancient female art is to be the last one to laugh, something which the two did frequently.

The very first act of the night, the team of Karen and Matthew Pheasant, a mother and son from Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, honoured motherhood and the power it holds.

Karen, a jingle-dress dancer, and champion grass dancer Matthew performed traditional numbers together.

Karen created her jingle dress as a result of her dreams in which she discerned the dress would be used to heal people.

Matthew recently performed in Red Sky's Dancing Americas, and he danced in Mexico at the 500-Year Indigenous People's Celebration and in Tom Jackson's Dreamweavers at the 2002 National Gathering on Aboriginal Artistic Expression in Ottawa.

Aglukark sang a track from her soon-to-be-released album Big Feeling, which focuses on the women in her family line, and Odjig demonstrated her world class hoop-dancing prowess. The gala also featured clips of Obomsawin's documentary films.