I am a Material Girl, Living in a Material World

A couple of weeks ago I went home and decided to go to the Eiteljorg Museum in Downtown Indianapolis. I don’t usually go to this museum, but since I hadn’t been there in such a long time, I felt it necessary to go. I came across the Contemporary collections and found a piece that particularly tickled my fancy. This piece is a canoe made by an Algonquin Indian. The title of the piece is “History in Two Parts”.It is particularly interesting because it is not made out of regular canoe materials. In addition to the normal wood used for canoes it also consists of birch bark, cedar, ash, spruce root & gum, aluminum. In a way, it is blending the new with the old. The Algonquin Indians were famous for their birch bark canoes. They used them to fish and also as a way of transportation. Today, they use cars. Cars are made out of a bunch of different metals, including aluminum. By combining the wood with the aluminum, the craftsman is showing how their culture has adapted to modern day society. These Indians live in Canada, more specifically in southern Quebec and eastern Ontario. They used to use birch bark for their homes as well, but now just build with that material for fun. The move from birch bark to man made materials also shows the struggle that the Indians were going through in order to stop companies from clear cutting their forests. In recent years, this has been a very big problem.

The meaning of this piece of art work goes much deeper than face value. The struggle of the Indians against the rest of North American society has always been a problem. While this canoe is beautiful and very interesting, it shows the huge struggle that Indians went through, and still go though with trying to retain their original identities. Nadia Myre, the craftsman of the boat, is an Algonquin Indian who I am sure understands the meaning of her boat completely. Upon googling her name, I found that she has her own website with past pieces of artwork that she has done. Her pieces are representative of her life and how tribal communities relate to others near where she lives in Canada.

I’ve seen other pieces of art that try to combine the new and the old and convey messages of struggle, but this is the best one I have seen. At first glance, one might not think that it would be significant, but with further investigation, and reading of the name of the piece, all sorts of thoughts start flowing. I find it more interesting that this piece of work does not invoke feelings of dislike towards others, like other pieces I’ve seen. I would be interested to see more of her artwork and see if it is similar in nature to this canoe.

This is in response to the Material Culture (object) project.