Brenda Crabtree Featured in Dana Claxton’s New Book Series

Edited by Dana Claxton, the Northwest Coast series aims to “contribute to critical consciousness and justice for Indigenous people.”
Brenda Crabtree, Director of the Aboriginal Gathering Place and Special Advisor to the President on Indigenous Initiatives at ECU, is one of five women artists featured in a new limited-edition book series, edited by Dana Claxton.
The series of five books, published by Or Gallery, is called Northwest Coast.
Each book features a text by a Northwest Coast First Nations artist in which they “reflect on the sociopolitical context for their contemporary art practices and engagement with traditional Indigenous Northwest Coast visual culture,” according to the gallery. Images of each artist’s work accompany their texts.
In her foreword, editor Dana Claxton writes that she hopes “the words and art in these precious volumes contribute to critical consciousness and justice for Indigenous people.”
Brenda, in her edition (subtitled What Becomes of the Broken Hearted), writes with clarity and authority on the ways she sees her own material practice reaching toward some of those same goals.
“My material practice is my vehicle for political activism, bridging art, politics and history,” she writes in the book.
“I am concerned that future generations will suffer from historical amnesia and forget the atrocities endured by Aboriginal children and their families in Canada. Political art examines the complications of our history, cultural existence, and spiritual survival, and there are times when discomfort for the viewer is cathartic.”
Full article by Perrin Grauer: https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/brenda-crabtree-one-of-five-women-artists-featured-in-dana-claxtons-new-book-series