Featured Galleries: Allen Sapp

The artworks by Allen Sapp from the University of Saskatchewan Art Collection represent the struggles of the Indigenous people on the Red Pheasant Reserve at the time of his childhood in the 1930s and 1940s. It was a time when he witnessed his family and neighbours mourn the traditional Indigenous lifestyle that existed before the time of Treaties and experienced the difficulties of having to adapt to an agronomical lifestyle on the government designated reserves. They had to face the systemic racism inherent in government enforced restrictions that limited the use of the land for their own survival, and suffer the cultural genocide of children being assimilated to the white man’s way of life in residential schools. This was compounded by the Great Depression where poverty, illness and drought pervaded. The paintings exhibited here belie those difficulties while revealing resilience and Indigenous knowledge. Sapp captures a moment in time where his family and their neighbours are hard at work, struggling for survival, but honouring the traditional Nehiyaw way of life, both spirituality and values, that were instilled in Sapp and his people by their Elders such as his grandmother Maggie Soonias. Sapp depicts an agronomical way of life featuring respect for the animals, hunting and gathering, collecting wood and water, washing clothes and fixing houses. Sapp also paints people gathering together to play at games and attend social events. Images like these celebrate the importance of community, and act as a testament to his peoples’ ability to overcome those difficulties that were thrust upon them by the colonial expansion of the ‘white man’s world.’ This online exhibition of Allen Sapp’s work has been curated by Kathleena Chief Calf. The biography and extended labels draw on the existing literature and web presence of Allen Sapp, namely the Allen Sapp Gallery ( https://www.allensapp.com/ ), the Virtual Museum of Canada ( http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/allensapp/ ), and the book “Through the Eyes of The Cree and Beyond. The Art of Allen Sapp: The Story of a People” by Dean Bauche, Lyndon Tootoosis, Lorne Carrier, L. Whiteman, D. Masqua.