1. Mi’Kmaq Expression Culture Through Art

2. When you see this symbol write down the information!

3. What is Culture? The accumulated habits, attitudes, and beliefs of a group of people that define for them their general behaviour and way of life; the total set of learned activities of a people. www.geographic.org/g lossary.html www.geographic.org/g lossary.html

4. What is art? a form of human activity created primarily as an aesthetic expression, especially, but not limited to drawing, painting and sculpture. myrlejohnson.tripo d.com/id12.html myrlejohnson.tripo d.com/id12.html

5. How can art show us what people believe, think or feel? Depict in drawings Functional use of items Design Color choice Medium Concept Messages

6. Pre-Contact Art: Purpose Important messages Legends – Oral to symbols Instructions Later - Treaties

7. Pre-Contact Art Functional Clear Purpose “Obvious” messages

8. Pre-Contact Art Handed down Textures/textiles obtainable from environment Useful in someway

9. Pre-Contact Art Function Design based on obtainable resources

10. Materials in Mi’Kmaq Art: Traditional Materials Reeds Porcupine Quills Voice Leather Feathers Stains/Natural Dyes

11. Materials in Mi’Kmaq Art: Modern Materials The same materials you would expect in any art Messages tend to be culturally relevant to the Mi’Kmaq experience

12. Tradition, Change and Survival: Mi'kmaq Tourist Art - Musée McCord Museum

13. Pre-Contact Art Art had a purpose Not just for the sake of creation but for a message, a meaning

14. Why do you think art was not for expression? Why do you think it had a purpose?

15. Mi’Kmaq Art Shows history Brings history alive Shows legend, stories, myth and reality

16. Mi’Kmaq Art Meaning may be subtle or obvious

17. Meaningful Art Art is representative of the experience: historical, legends, stories, shared histories (drawings, sculptures), useful or resourceful in it’s creation (moccasins, baskets, canoes…)

18. Art is More than the Obvious Art is … Words, Music, Drama, Poetry, Literature Read the poem by Rita Joe (I Lost My Talk)

19. I Lost My Talk – Rita Joe I lost my talk The talk you took away. When I was a little girl At Shubencadie school. You snatched it away: I speak like you I think like you I create like you The scrambled ballad, about my word. Two ways I talk Both ways I say, Your way is more powerful. So gently I offer my hand and ask, Let me find my talk So i can teach you about me.

20. Frank’s Song – Rita Joe Someday my dear I'm going away The other place my home is there I'll be around where lovers they play In your dreams I love you every day Someday my dear I'm going away Not meaning to but Niskam* say Then so true it happens that way He went away and now I am so blue. Chorus: So true are words of love We take them all, not knowing when they will end So true of what we say We build it in our heart, for now it is so good. Someday my dear I'll be seeing you The words I say they are so true Someday my dear, the stars they will shine Together then, our love will show for all the time Someday my dear together we'll roam The loving land where lovers go Someday my dear our dreams they will fly When love is true, the dreams we share they do not die. ~ Rita Joe, January 30, 1997 Copyright © 2000 Rita Joe

21. Art is Expression Who we are How we live What we experience How we own experience What we feel Our Life is Art!

22. Aboriginal Dance A dancer gets to collaborate with another indiginous group about their dancing. Kaledioscope

23. Film – Expression in a more modern context Our Lives in Our Hands (You Tube Film)

24. Outcomes 5.1 Explore cultural pride and inner cultural conflicts as elements of Mi’kmaw contemporary culture and community as expressed through First Nations literature, arts, filmmaking, and other venues 5.2 Explore universal themes in First Nations literature through short pieces of literature 5.3 Recommend representations that most strongly represent their understandings of Mi’kmaw culture based on investigations into contemporary First Nations artistic expressions

25. Assignment: Mi’Kmaq Art 1.How did the art you see show you the pride the participants had in their culture. Make sure you use an example from visual art, the film, dance, and written forms of art. 2.Using the two poems we read in class as well as the collection of oral traditions you have in your binder what themes do we see in Mi’Kmaw writing? 3.An alien has landed in our parking lot and you have to show them Mi’Kmaw culture. What do you tell them about culture? What do you show them?