A Deep Dive into Adrian Stimson's Canadian Art and Identity

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of the Canadian artist Adrian Stimson, a member of the Siksika Nation Blackfoot Reserve. The essay explores Stimson's biography, his artistic background, and his interdisciplinary approach, including his performance art piece 'Buffalo Boy'. It examines the artist's use of medium, particularly his body, and the chief concepts and messages conveyed through his work, which often critiques colonial stereotypes and explores themes of identity and cultural regeneration. The essay also highlights Stimson's strategies in conveying his ideas, particularly his use of silence and his reflections on the history and trauma of the Blackfoot community. The discussion covers his artistic symbols, like the bison, and their significance in representing both the destruction and the survival of indigenous culture. The essay provides a detailed overview of Stimson's contribution to Canadian art and his ability to express indigenous identity.

Running head: ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
Name of the Student:
Name of the University
Author Note:

2ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
Table of Contents
Artist’s biography:.....................................................................................................................3
Medium and material used:........................................................................................................4
Performing art:.......................................................................................................................4
Chief concepts and message of Adrian Stimson’s works:.........................................................4
Strategies....................................................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................7

3ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
The essay discusses the biography of a Canadian artist Adrian Stimson who represents
the Blackfoot community of Alberta. His works are unique as they carry the traditional
essence. The essay analyses the artist’s background, his messages through artworks, the
medium he used and his strategies to convey his ideas. Buffalo Boy is inspired by Buffalo Bill
of the wild west and becomes a trickster symbol that unreveals and redefines the colonial
stereotypes through hilarity and satire. This performing art has achieved huge popularity in
North America and became the regular occurrence at Burning Man festival of Nevada.
This essay discusses various aspects associated with the artist’s much celebrated
performing art, Buffalo Boy. In this work, people come across a buffalo bill with a Blackfoot
burlesque dancer. The Buffalo Boy is a gender blending persona which reflects upon the
colonial stereotypes as well as identities (canadianart.ca). To the artist it is not only an
identity of the aboriginal Blackfoot people in Canada but a gender identity. Buffalo Boy is the
mixture of human and buffalo, it is also a mixture of man and woman. It has been the epitome
of the artist’s identity questioning art.
Artist’s biography:
Adrian Stimson was raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and a member of the Siksika
Nation Blackfoot Reserve in southern Alberta. Stimson had studied in Alberta college of Art
and Design and received Bachelor of Fine Arts (canadianart.ca). He completed his Master of
Fine Arts from the university of Saskatchewan. He is considered as an interdisciplinary artist
and his works are exhibited nationally as well as internationally. He is an educator, instructor
in University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and curator of the Mendel Art Gallery. In 2010
Stimson was selected to visit to Afghanistan and represented the Canadian Forces Artists
program. In Regina he arranged an exhibition named Holding Our Breath at Neutral Ground
in 2011. The British Museum has acquired two of his paintings for its indigenous collection
of North America.

4ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
Medium and material used:
Performing art: Stimson’s performing art emphasises the identity construction. They
are the representation of his own history, the history of the Blackfoots. In the Buffalo Boy, he
used his body as the medium (aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com). He wore fishnet
stockings, corset like an aboriginal woman. There was a cowboy hat decorated with bird’s
feather. He used blue body paint to decorate his eyes and wore a pearls necklace on his neck.
His hair tied in braid like a Blackfoot woman. Stick on his hand and a buffalo hide on his
back, Stimson turns the performance playfully parodic as well as gut-wrenching. This work
was enacted as testimonies of the treatments of the aboriginal black foots in Canada by the
colonizers (Guyot 105).
Chief concepts and message of Adrian Stimson’s works:
The primary agenda of Adrian Stimson’s art works is to criticise the stereotypes of the
indigenous people of Canada. His symbols are representative of his existence and identity of
a Blackfoot. The Bison that recur in every piece of his artwork is a symbol of destruction of
the traditional life of the aboriginals. It is a central object of his Blackfoot being. The Bison
also represents cultural regeneration and survival on the one hand and disappearance of its
history on the other. It is the symbol of icon as well as food source to the natives. To him, it is
the part of his contemporary life. Therefore, the Buffalo Boy is the own reflection of the artist
(Lycett, Stephen and James 25). He has played back and forth between the identities of male
and female. In the Buffalo Boy, the artist can be found wearing fishnet stockings, corset,
buffalo G-string and pearls necklace. Buffalo Boy’s campy shenanigans and transformations
directly challenge the colonial history which is the story of aboriginal inferiority including
disappearance (Bear 519). His photography, performances and installations always present a
shifted value system that supports the colonialism and marginalizes the aborigines by terming
them as uncivilized. The binary contrasts of dirty and clean, civilized and savage, poor and

5ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
wealthy, power and labour class, excess and limited, man and woman, homosexuality and
heterosexuality that are chiefly structure our current world are upturned in his works
(Oetelaar 104). He destabilizes those value systems with his campy humour, irony and wit
and at the same time creates the images of mourning which marks the trauma of the history of
colonialism that the indigenous people wear in their communities.
Stimson’s Buffalo Boy deals with the intergenerational trauma that originates from
hundred years of loss, abuse and institutionalization. The British government put the
aboriginal children into lifeless prisonlike institutions for changing them into good Christians.
Their land was snatched away from them so as their culture and beliefs. The traditions and
ethnicity of the native people were beaten out from their soul and replenished with Euro-
Canadianism and Christianity. In his Silencing Witness Stimson describes the silencing
method of the colonialists. The native children went to residential schools where their
Blackfoot language was strictly prohibited. They were made European forcibly by punishing
for the slightest display of indigenous behaviour and tradition. This practice therefore made
the Blackfoot generation to communicate volumes without uttering a word. His message
exposes the desperate nature of suffering yet demonstrate the common resilience.
Strategies:
The days in residential schools taught him to express his ideas and thoughts through
looks and gestures, also the art of observing and listening. This silence was used by the artist
not only to reduce the noise but also for speeding up the resolution (Annamma et al 26).
Stimson’s earnest seeking for chronicling his pain found the way through art. His closed pain
of being heathen and savage have been expressed in his every work. He decolonises,
exorcises history and finally gets healed through his artworks.

6ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
Therefore, it can be concluded that Stimson’s work carries his Blackfoot identity. It is
the true representative of the suffering of his community as well as their pride. Through his
works Stimson has successfully presented his indigenous identity to the world.

7ADDRIAN STIMSON AND CANADIAN ART
References:
Aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com. "Aboriginal Art / Vancouver Art In The
Sixties." Aboriginalart.Vancouverartinthesixties.Com,
http://aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com/ (2017).
Annamma, Subini Ancy, David Connor, and Beth Ferri. "Dis/ability critical race studies
(DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability." Race Ethnicity and
Education 16.1 (2013): 1-31.
Bear, Leroy Little. "Traditional knowledge and humanities: A perspective by a
Blackfoot." Journal of Chinese philosophy39.4 (2012): 518-527.
Canadianart.ca. "Adrian Stimson | Canadian Art." Canadian Art,
http://canadianart.ca/artists/adrian-stimson/ (2017).
Guyot, Sylvain. "The Mise en Art of Mountain Areas: Territorial Actors, Processes and
Transformations. An Introduction." Journal of Alpine Research| Revue de géographie
alpine 105-2 (2017).
Lycett, Stephen J., and James D. Keyser. "Beyond Oral History: A Nineteenth Century
Blackfoot Warriors’ Biographic Robe in Comparative and Chronological
Context." International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2017): 1-29.
Oetelaar, Gerald A. "Worldviews and human–animal relations: Critical perspectives on
bison–human relations among the Euro-Canadians and Blackfoot." Critique of
Anthropology 34.1 (2014): 94-112.