Anishinaabe artist exhibit features Knowledge Keepers from Mnidoo Mnising

By Rick Garrick

MANITOWANING — An art exhibition featuring Leland Bell’s depiction of healthy aging teachings through the perspectives of Anishinabe culture was held on June 26 at the Debajehmujig Theatre Group in Manitowaning. Hosted by the Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team and ICARE Community Advisory Council on Dementia Research, the art exhibition featured copies on canvas of Bell’s original paintings of seven traditional Knowledge Keepers from the Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island) area, who had participated in the Access to Culturally Safe and Relevant Dementia Care for Diverse Indigenous People in Canada project. The original paintings had already been gifted back to the Knowledge Keepers.

“I really enjoyed the opening and I really enjoyed visiting with the people,” Bell says. “I got to visit with the people that I did renditions of their thoughts and ideas.”

Bell says he created the paintings after reviewing information about and videos featuring the Knowledge Keepers, who had shared their insights on what healthy aging means in Anishinabe culture, the values, ways of knowing and living, and the activities practiced by Anishinabe people to keep their minds healthy through aging.

“I reviewed them until I understood what they were saying and then I tried to transpose their ideas from my painting style onto the canvas,” Bell says. “I interpreted their knowledge and what they understood about life and how life proceeds.

Bell says he created a seventh painting to summarize the knowledge keepers’ teachings on healthy aging.

“One of the things that I really learned throughout all the interviews was not only were the Elders resilient, but they also all spoke to the notion of being [able] to persevere, they had that ability to persevere,” Bell says. “You need certain tools to be able to persevere, so they had their work, they had their understanding of their teachings around them regarding the land, regarding culture, and the history that they were born into at those times. Basically, I did that [seventh] painting to depict that all of them had gathered bundles, what they call Sacred Bundles of their individual selves, and in those bundles, it contained all that knowledge that they grew up with and how they shared it among themselves because it wasn’t an easy subject that they were speaking of, so I was quite honoured to be able to help with the project in that sense that I could show some of what I think is the beauty of their life and the strength of their life.”

Kristen Jacklin, principal investigator for the project that was funded by the Canadian Institute of Health, says Bell’s art exhibition was one of the outcomes from the project.

“I’ve been working with the communities on Manitoulin for several years on different kinds of research projects and we had the opportunity to create a research project that was community-based, community-driven and focused on dementia,” Jacklin says. “The funding was tied to dementia research and the community had already given us direction that dementia research was a priority for them, so this was with the seven First Nations on Manitoulin, and the funding was flexible enough that our approach to the research and our research questions could be highly directed by the community.”

Jacklin says they had a community advisory group who they met and talked with about the project.

“One of the things that we all wanted to do was interview traditional Knowledge Keepers [about] dementia and what they think can be done to prevent dementia,” Jacklin says.

Karen Pitawanakwat, a community-based researcher, says the project was mainly focused around prevention, awareness of self, and how to incorporate healthy living.

“All the different ideas that these Knowledge Keepers had was depicted in the pictures, in the colours, in the shapes,” Pitawanakwat says, noting that there is a range of people with dementia in the area, including both younger and older people. “What we’ve captured in the research is what is missing, how could we make this picture look a little bit better for all of these different situations in our communities?”