Art as Part of Aboriginal Program Orientation by Amy Horne

The Aboriginal Upgrading program is a classroom dedicated to supporting First Nations, Metis and Inuit students. Our main goal on Orientation Day is to have the students become familiar with one another. In doing this we also took advantage of the first day of classes as an opportunity to create some artwork for the classroom.  We are lucky to have several students who are artists and enjoy creating works in their own spare time, so taking advantage of that natural talent is always a good idea. Our main challenge was to choose a project that appealed to adults and that captured our students pride in their shared – yet diverse- aboriginal heritage.  This is how our beautiful “Buffalo Mosaic” watercolour came to life.

Traditional Aboriginal belief reinforces the idea there is no distinction between art and life, similarly, there is no word that exists in the hundreds of Native American languages that comes close to our modern definition of art. In many indigenous cultures, art, beauty, functionality and spirituality are intertwined – creating art for “art’s sake” just doesn’t exist.  This project, although aesthetically beautiful, had the underlying motive of creating community within the classroom. Throughout the semester we witness people who meet and become good friends because they sat together on the first day of class.

For our watercolour mosaic project Kiarra and I searched for an image relevant to our classroom. We discovered a colourful Buffalo painting by Native New Mexico Artist John Nieto. He had several paintings that fit our requirements – colourful, an animal, by an aboriginal artist. We chose the Buffalo because of its meaning. The Buffalo represents honour and generosity, and is associated with strength, endurance and protection.