Kent Monkman’s Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: a Portrait (profiled in the May issue), left me wondering what has changed in how Canadian society imagines the Indian* (huh?)Just to be clear: The Indian here refers to Daniel Francis’s definition of “the Indian as the invention of the European . . . [and] anything non-Natives wanted them to be,” and is not to be confused with First Nations people living in Canada today. since Paul Kane’s majestic braves captivated British North America in the mid-nineteenth century.
For the last three months, on my daily, three-kilometre stroll from Trinity Bellwoods to The Walrus office, the Indian has greeted me twice. Across the street from the Meeting Place, a drop-in frequented by addicts and the homeless, including some First Nations people, a bare-chested Indian stands on a tree stump. Leather straps, a shade darker than his bronzed skin, are knotted around his bulging biceps, a matching leather bag filled with tobacco drapes across his chest down to his green, fringed suede pants. He gazes up at the grotty Reverb nightclub, feather headdress tilted back, right hand blocking his eyes from the perennial sun. Red paint marks his handsome chiseled face like battle scars. His lips are perfect. At “West Side OPEN LATE Tobacco” the cigar store Indian kept a daily vigil (the store mysteriously closed up shop and left, with its Indian, last week). But no fear: the made-in-the-Philippines, cigar-store Indian marks a number of Toronto tobacconists. (Yorkville’s classy Thomas Hinds Tobacconist keeps its wooden Indian tastefully indoors.) (more…)
