Mark Zelinski photos invoke peaceful wonder
By Kelly Anne Smith
WATERDOWN— The photography of Canadian Governor General medal winner Mark Zelinski instills wonder and calm.
As viewers, we’re invited to meet people of the world’s cultures through his artful eyes and heart.
Zelinski’s explains his life has been interwoven with Indigenous culture around the world.
“I’ve travelled with my work around the world. I’ve done books on experiential education in every continent. I’ve travelled to remote areas and wandered into Indigenous communities around the world, in Africa, in Asia, South America and North America,” he explains. “My first actual powwow was in 1992 at Mississauga’s of Curve Lake First Nation. I had a very good friend, James Whetung; he’s well-known as a wild rice expert. I went with him to the powwow. I found it to be an incredibly inclusive and really a healing experience.”
“Backing up a little bit, in the early 80s, I was hired by the Ministry of Correctional Services. I was 26 years old and was hired to photograph a lot of the penal institutions in Ontario. I found that there was a disproportionate number of Indigenous people in those jails. I ended up talking to a lot of the people who were in very unfortunate conditions. And It seemed they’d been unfairly accused of things and treated badly by the justice system here in Canada. I found them all to be extremely kind and a very open people,” he recalls. “Later on, in the 80s, I was working on a book with Outward Bound Canada and ended up in the Canadian Arctic on Baffin Island in what is now Nunavut. I ended up going on a dog-sledding expedition with dog teams on skis with a lot of young Inuit people from all over the Canadian Arctic from Ellesmere Island and from Baffin Island. Many of these young people were survivors of suicide attempts. I learned very quickly, spending this time with these people, the shock upon their culture that the European culture had on them and most of these young people – their grandparents had never been in a modern city or town. All of the young people had never left the town. Two generations apart, that kind of abrupt change was very devastating to their communities. It was very inspiring to see these young people reconnecting with their own culture and heritage. And living out on the ice and in a very traditional way. It was a great experience.”
“It was always my goal, a dream of mine really, to photograph an Amazonas community somewhere in South America. Through an anthropologist in Peru, I managed to get permission from a Chief who was a female Chief of an Ashaninka community in the Amazonas region in the upper tributaries of the Amazon. They were living a very traditional life on the river with the intention to preserve their culture. I lived with them for about ten days. I think it was the best experience of my life that ten days,” he shares. “I learned that experience about being part of the community. This is really a model for how everyone really should be living. In small communities where everyone is loved and respected and valued and everyone has an important role to play in the community, whether they’re the smallest children or Elders.”
Zelinski released a book in 2010, Untitled, comprised of over 140 photographs and no text.
“That is a book on people from different cultures around the world. And that book is not for sale in book stores. I printed 3,500 copies. Most of the books were donated to charities, worldwide and in Canada. The books have been distributed around the world and going back to the villages where I took the photographs. That book is mainly of Indigenous people from different parts of the world including Turtle Island, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, even Antarctica. That was a life long project that started in 1975. It was photographed in about 80 countries.”
Zelinski’s next book would be more local. He lives in Waterdown, on the Niagara escarpment.
“I’ve loved the escarpment geology, the land, and the cedar trees. I’ve always been inspired by these lands. So, I decided I’d do a book on the Niagara escarpment. Originally, it was intended to be more a book on the lands itself – the waterways, the birds, animals and trees, but I quickly realized that the very important part of the history of the escarpment is the people who settled their communities on the escarpment. When I realized how many Indigenous communities there are on Manitoulin Island, Saugeen Penisula, and even in the southern regions of the escarpment, around Brantford and Niagara, I realized I needed to focus on Indigenous communities who were the original people here,” he shares. “The further I got into this book, which took five years to do, I realized there were so many different Indigenous communities to do one chapter. It had to be a chapter on each community. I did a chapter on the Anishnabek of the northern regions of the escarpment, so Saugeen Penisula and Manitoulin Island. That chapter was written by Lenore Keeshig who is from Neyaashiinigmiing also know as Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation.”
Educator Nancy Rowe wrote a chapter on the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. She runs Kinomaagaye Gaamik Lodge. The third chapter is about the Haudenosaunee – the Six Nations of the southern regions, into the United States. Writing about the oral history of the Haudenosaunee on the Niagara escarpment, Richard Hill is a Tuscorora man and a scholar at McMaster University.
“During that time from 2012 to 2017 when the book was finished, I had the opportunity to visit several powwows in Ontario. I did the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation Powwow. They actually asked me if I would drone the Grand Entry and they wanted to use the photos as well. That was a very unusual request because normally the Grand Entry is forbidden to photograph. It’s in a beautiful Carolinian forest. It’s enclosed by this forest. It was difficult to drone it because of all the trees. It’s a circle in the middle of the forest,” he recalls. “The first one I photographed for that book was the one at Neyaashiinigmiing, the big powwow at Cape Croker Park. During the day, I took a couple of my relatives and my wife, and a relative that had been experiencing difficulties from trauma. For all of us, it was an extremely healing experience. It was a wonderful experience and I got a lot of great photographs from that powwow which ended up in the book… One of the most powerful parts of it was the slow march for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls which ended up being the title photograph for that chapter… Then I went to Manitoulin Island in 2016 and photographed their big powwow, the Wikwemikong Annual Cultural Festival. The people who ran the powwow asked me also to drone that one. So I have some aerial photos of the powwow and it is quite beautiful with all the regalia.”
At that powwow there was a speaker who came on, Isadore Day. At the time, he was the Ontario Regional Chief. Zelinski was standing, watching the powwow and turned to notice Day was standing right beside him. He told Day he was doing Heart of Turtle Island: The Niagara Escarpment and asked if he would consider writing the foreword. He said yes.
“He provided a foreword for the book which is a very beautiful foreword; talking about the importance of these lands historically to the history of Canada and also to the many Indigenous peoples that live on the escarpment or near it,” he explains. “That book came out in 2017 and I’ve been working almost exclusively with Indigenous people since then.”
Zelinski has worked with Plenty Canada, an Indigenous Charity based near Ottawa on several projects. He has also worked with the Niagara Falls History Museum on an extensive exhibit of Indigenous history and culture. Explore more at markzelinski.com.