“My people will sleep for a hundred years and it will be the artists whowill wake them up.”
— Louise Riel, hanged Nov. 16, 1885

London, Ontario. A new art exhibit called “Memory Keepers” with a photographic suite by Mohawk artist Shelley Niro opened this month at theUniversity of Western Ontario’s McIntosh Gallery.

Niro and London artist Bernice Vincent were present along with acrowd of 150 for the opening of the new, two-woman show. The artists’statements says the show “examines the extent to which memorials achieve acollective healing and how they are viewed by white and First Nationscultures.”

Vincent’s work honours the victims of the Montreal Massacre of December 6, 1989, while Niro’s work questions the Statue of Liberty, recalling September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City.

Curator Catherine Elliot Shaw introduced the show, which opened the week of November 11, by saying, “During these particular weeks of remembrance for our war dead, the victims of senseless violence, and even so many months later, the aftermath of September 11th, these exhibitions resonate with an important dialogue about collectivememory. Shelley’s work comes out of a very personal point of view which wesee by reading the text on each on the pieces themselves.”

Niro’s exhibit is a suite of seven photographs of the Statue of Liberty with frames that look like Iroquois beadwork. She reminds the viewer that the statue is situated on lands originally occupied by her ancestors. Niro looks at the statue as a Native person living in North America and her response to her is written in the text on each photograph.

She calls the work, “For Fearless and Other Indians.” Niro explained how she got the title by bringing a personal memory back. “Fearless refers to Fearless Fostick, who was a character in the L’il Abner comic strip. He was a detective who got stabbed in the heart, and they couldn’t pull it out or he would have bled to death. He had to walk around with this knife sticking out of his chest. So, for me, it became a metaphor for Native people living in North America.”

The work, for Niro, is an articulation as well of her response to these huge statues and monuments that are materialistic symbols.

She insists, “I think as artists, as writers, as anybody in creative positions, it’s our duty to keep saying things and reminding ourselves of our history, because our history is not really in books. At least it wasn’t there in history books when I was growing up. So, I’m just trying to remind myself about certain events. And how they affect me and how I’m affected by them.”

Niro’s work is a journey through time that blends cultural themes and contemporary issues in North America. She points out the irony in America’s claim to be the land of the free. She says for Aboriginal people, the statue is a bitter reminder that our ancestors experienced neither liberty nor freedom.

Shelley Niro was the first Aboriginal person to graduate with a Masters of Fine Arts from the Western in 1997. Her work has been purchased by the McIntosh Gallery. She grew up on the Six Nations reserve and currently lives in Brantford, Ontario.