Despite grabbing more and more headlines, the conversation about cultural appropriation has so far mostly failed to transcend reductive, bad-faith dilemmas concerning inclusion and artistic freedom, at least among settler Canadians. Some Indigenous artists are advancing the discourse into rich and provocative terrain, however, and foremost among them is Kaska Dene artist, Joseph Tisiga. Based in Whitehorse, Yukon, Tisiga uses painting, sculpture, and performance to effectively turn cultural appropriation around and flip it inside out. Rather than formulating cultural appropriation as simply a crime perpetrated against Indigenous People by settlers, Tisiga treats it as a field of action, wherein he can exert genuine power and influence. Tisiga has said that his art is motivated by a desire to exercise agency in the face of what he calls \u201csupernatural banalities,\u201d his term for the mythic\/systemic narratives in which we are all subsumed, of which cultural appropriation is an example. In Tisiga\u2019s telling, cultural appropriation is neither one-directional\u2014a version that flatters settler fantasies of the \u201cvanishing Indian\u201d\u2014nor one-dimensional. Rather, it is a contested space, in which settler entitlement can be exposed and undone, and dynamic symbols can speak anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tisiga consistently exploits the way that cultural appropriation is entwined with capitalism. In 2009, he launched Indian Brand Corporation (IBC), originally a conceptual framework for an exhibition and performance series in which he adopted the character of Grey Owl\u2014a send-up of Archibald Belaney, the British conservationist who faked Indigenous identity in the early twentieth century. Tisiga\u2019s Grey Owl was a First Nations man in the role of a corporate executive. The exhibition also included the artist\u2019s large cigarette sculptures, made from the logs of ash trees. These works reference tobacco as a contested product, signifier, and sacred plant that\u2019s used in ceremony and sold tax-free on reserves. Since then, Tisiga has continued to operate under the rubric of IBC, including recent exhibitions of oil paintings that show Archie comic book characters interacting dubiously with Indigenous figures. These works and Tisiga\u2019s narrative watercolour paintings offer droll and nuanced insight into settler colonialism, Indigenous power, and how the persistent vitality of symbols can be used to shift these dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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