Book on Metis clothing takes home two awards

Page 13

The annual Saskatchewan Book Awards were handed out at a gala event held at the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts on Nov. 29, and when it all was over, Cheryl Troupe and the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI) walked away with two awards.

The wins, in the First Peoples Publishing and Publishing Education categories, came courtesy of the book Expressing Our Heritage: Metis Artistic Designs, written by Troupe, the curriculum developer with the GDI publishing department.

In the First Peoples Publishing category, the book beat out The Great Gift of Tears, a collection of four plays by Aboriginal authors edited by Heather Hodgson and published by Coteau Books; and Glass Teeppe, a book of poetry by Garry Gottfriedson and published by Thistledown Press. Other nominees in the Publishing in Education category included a duo of entries from the Canadian Plains Research Centre-A Prairie Memoir by Glenys Hanson and Building for the Future by Gordon Barnhart-as well as Diseases of Field Crops in Canada, published by the Canadian Phytopathological Society and edited by K.L. Bailey, B.D. Gossen, R.K. Gugel and R.A.A. Morrall; and The Great Gift of Tears, which was also nominated in both categories.

Expressing Our Heritage: Metis Artistic Designs isn't just a book. It also features a collection of 50 gallery-quality study prints as well, sturdy 11 by 17 inch posters that feature colour images on the front and descriptions of the items pictured on the back, including any information that's available on the item's origin, which collection it can be found in, what the item pictured was used for, and how it was contructed.

The book works alongside the study prints, acting as a resource manual for more information on traditional clothing and accessory design.

"In the book, the first section is straight text on all the different types of clothing, different types of beadwork, that kind of thing. So it really explains what the pieces were used for, how they were made. All the research that was done is basically in the book," Troupe explained.

"And all throughout the book there's black and white photographs of different pieces. Then in the centre of the book, there's a section of about eight or 10 pages of colour photographs of more pieces. And then the back section of the book is a resource for teachers. And its got key terms, questions, activities for students, all that kind of thing. And there's activities for different grade levels, but it's really up to the teacher to take the material that's been provided and adapt it to their classroom. So they can adapt it to whatever age group, and there's some hints on doing that type of thing. So we really wanted to target teachers with that part. And at the very end, there's a series of maps about where these pieces were collected and different Metis types of movement patterns and that kind of thing."

The idea for the Expressing Our Heritage project grew out of the GDI's experience with a previous series it had put out in the late 1980s, dealing with Metis history and culture, Troupe said.

"They went over very well in the classroom. And we had printed them so many times that we thought, they're such a popular resource, we should do another set. And so staff at the time came up with the idea of developing another set, and we were going to do a series. And the first one in the series was going to be on material culture. So we looked at that and then, when I came on board, then we decided that we were going to, instead of do a series of four different sets, we would concentrate on this one set on just material culture, and it kind of just grew from there"

The original plans called for creation of about 25 study prints, with all the information to be included on the back of each print. But once she started researching the project, it didn't take Troupe long to see that the size and scope of the project would have to be increased.

"Once I started doing the research and collecting the photographs rom different museums and archival institutions and cultural institutions, we decided that there's so much Metis material culture out there that to really do it justice we really have to expand the project. And so then we started talking about the idea of actually developing it as a book, rather than just the information on the backs of the prints," she said.

"We still do have information on the backs of the prints, but the information there is specific to the pictures that are on the front, what it was used for, if we knew the maker, the community it was from, that kind of thing. And so the book is really the expanded version. It has all the historical information about what the pieces were used for, how it was worn, if there was specific uses for it, if we knew the maker, that kind of thing. Just to really fully do the work justice, like the pieces that are held in collections. Because there's so much of it out there."

Putting the book together took Troupe about two years, much of that time spent searching for traditional items of Metis clothing held in private collections within families, as well as in the collections of museums and archives across Saskatchewan, across North America, and in Europe.

"There's a lot of Metis material culture that ended up in European collections as a result of collectors or Hudson's Bay Company employees that would come here, or people in the late 19th century that were coming here to look, to explore and that kind of thing, they would take pieces back with them. And so a lot of the work that is in European collections is made by Metis women," Troupe said.

One thing Troupe discovered was that many of these Metis items have been mis-identified as having First Nations origins, because First Nations artifacts were more sought after at the time than Metis items.

"So most of the work, the Metis material culture that's ended up in museum collections, has been mis-labeled. And it's been labeled as sub-arctic or as Cree or Dakota or lackfoot, or whatever. But it's never been really labeled as Metis. So that's one of the things that we really tried to do with this book is really tried to say that, you know, these pieces are Metis pieces. They're not First Nations pieces, they're Metis pieces, but all these years they've been mislabeled. And that these are Metis designs and they're distinctive Metis community."

While a number of the museums housing the mis-labeled items suspected that this might be the case, they had never had the resources to do the research necessary to find out for sure, and welcomed the opportunity to be involved in the project, Troupe said.

"The museums that we worked with were just wonderful about letting us have access to their collections and really working with us to do the project. Because then if we can do the research for them, then we can give it back to them and they can use this to develop their collections and to develop exhibits and that kind of thing."

While Expressing Our Heritage provides a valuable resource for museums that have Aboriginal collections, the real reason the project was done was to provide a resource to the Metis community, Troupe explained.

"What we really tried to do was because these collections are held in Europe, across Canada, across the United States, the Metis community doesn't have access to them. And so one of the big pushes behind this was we need high quality photographs that are accessible of these pieces so that the community can have access to them and can see them. We really wanted to show them that the pieces that they may have hanging in their closet are very similar to pieces that are held in museum collections ... and the work that these women have done with these pieces, it should be treated as art," Cheryl Troupe said.

"I think it's important that the community sees that these pieces are there, that they're in museum collections. They're important to the community for a sense of identity and a connectedness between Meis communities. Because all across North America, Metis people were wearing various versions of the same type of clothing and the same types of designs. And so the community may not know that. And I think it's important to show that there is such a continuity in the community."

The book can be ordered directly from the Gabriel Dumont Web site at www.gdins.org. It can also be ordered through your local bookstore.