Press Release – Federation of Newfoundland Indians – November 4, 2004

The exhibition The Mi’kmaw People of Newfoundland: A Celebration  opens in St. John’s

The exhibition, The Mi’kmaw People of Newfoundland: A Celebration will open at the Provincial Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador, 285 Duckworth Street, on November 15, 2004. The exhibition, created by the Federation of Newfoundland Indians (FNI) in partnership with Parks Canada, is a first-ever gathering together of Newfoundland Mi’kmaw portraits, artifacts and oral histories. The exhibition was curated by Edward Tompkins and funded by ACOA and Heritage Canada.

 The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of three notable members of the FNI: Mary Webb (1881-1978) a medicine woman, Mattie Mitchell (1846-1921) who discovered many of the Province’s ore bodies, and Chief Larry Jeddore (1922-1998) of the Glenwood Indian Band Council.

On display will be sixteen artifacts (moccasins, snowshoes and baskets) from the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec which were collected by Frank Speck in 1914. A spectacular one-hundred year old beaded buckskin coat from the Provincial Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador will also be exhibited.

The highlight of the exhibition is the six earliest known portraits of the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq lent by Library and Archives Canada. These photographs were taken on the west coast of Newfoundland in 1859 by a French naval officer, Paul-Émile Miot. Miot’s light-sensitive albumen photographs are amongst the finest portraits in the vast portrait collection of that institution. FNI chose Miot’s image of the three Mi’kmaw women as the signature image of the exhibition because Brendan Sheppard, President of  FNI, felt that “it speaks to us across the generations about our presence and life as Mi’kmaw people here in our home, Ktaqamkuk, out name for Newfoundland”.

FNI commissioned the Onondaga photographer Jeff Thomas a produce a series of forty-seven contemporary portraits of Newfoundland Mi’kmaq and FNI acquired four lithographs by the Newfoundland Mi’kmaw artist Jerry Evans. When the exhibition finally finishes touring Newfoundland and Canada, FNI will donate these works to the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. As Sheppard said “We are doing our part to ensure that the record of our presence is available for future generations”.

Sheppard elaborated on the importance of this exhibition by stating that, “Our history is of no interest if it is locked away in secure vaults of big museums and archives. Our history is a living and essential element in our lives and of our growth as people. Our people: the people in the Miot photographs, the people who made the artifacts that Speck bought from us in 1914 or the coat that a Mi’kmaw hunter wore, are pleased that these objects and photographs were made available to the people who created these objects in the first place.

Brendan Sheppard cuts the ribbon at the opening of the Mi'kmaq Exhibition in St. John's with Tom Rideout, Minister responsible for Aboriginal Affairs and Tom Foran, Vice Chair of the Rooms Corporation.