BIO

Installation artist Bonnie Devine is a member of the Serpent River First Nation of Northern Ontario (Ojibwa). Her artwork, writing, research, and teaching are focused on and derive from the land and history of her forebears the Anishinaabe. Devine has exhibited her installation and video work in Canada, the USA, South America, Europe, Russia, and China. She has also curated Indigenous artists since 1997 and produced The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Sudbury and the National Gallery of Canada, which toured Canada and the USA from 2007 until 2010. Devine holds fine art degrees in sculpture and installation from the Ontario College of Art and Design and York University and is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including a 2011 Eiteljorg Fellowship in Contemporary Native Art. She is an associate professor at OCAD University and the Founding Chair of OCADU’s Indigenous Visual Culture Program.

SYNOPSIS

The Tecumseh Papers A solo exhibition by Bonnie Devine Art Gallery of Windsor Ontario September 2013 to January 2014 A presentation to the conference Questioning the Haze of Empires, November 4 2014, Toronto My talk will focus on Tecumseh, a Shawnee (Anishinaabe) warrior who lived from 1768 to 1813 and whose life was marked by the tumultuous events in the region then known as the Northwest Territory, a vast area that encompasses what is now called Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, parts of New York State in the United States of America, and in Upper Canada, the huge land mass now known as western, central, and southern Ontario. In his all too brief lifetime Tecumseh witnessed and passionately participated in one of the largest land transfers in human history, fighting to his last day for an honourable settlement of territory for the original inhabitants of the above mentioned lands. My talk will describe and connect three significant documents or treaties that codify this land transfer and, using images of artwork from the exhibition The Tecumseh Papers, will describe the events and battles that preceded it and the players who contributed to its final unfolding.