By Akokatssini (Steven J. Black Weasel)
This is my final for my honors art course at school intitled Painting and Drawing 1. The assignment was to use three mediums that you have not used all year. Kind of outragious because you have to experiment, but I’m glad she did it. I couldn’t use pencil or pen and ink lol so..that meant..work in stuff you;ve barely touched before for your final. So I went for it, and did this Oka Crisis Mohawk warrior, the same criss used for my “The Oka Warrior” pen and ink drawing. Here in this, I symbolized both the constant fight for respect and freedom, from the first contact and wars with Europeans in the late 1600’s, as well as all the way to modern day 1990 and today. This warrior has a traditional Mohawk hairstyle which was styled during the French and Indian War in 1754-1763 when the Iroquois allied with the British against the French and their Native allies, and strapped around him a wampum belt which on it has the symbol of the unified tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, which included the Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, and Cayuga.
Modern day, I gave him a camo jacket and bandanas, as well as the red one, which were worn during The Oka Crisis of 1990 where the Kanesatake Reservation Mohawks were involved in a stand off against Quebec province police/military and Canada, to defend a piece of their reservation from being demolished into a golf course, which in that piece witheld a sacred and old burial ground. This 73 day standoff was not only to protect the last lands the Mohawk own, but for centuries worth of frustration and anger from all Native people against the modern day white-empires of the United States and Canada. Also strapped to his chest under the wampum belt are bullets, used in the rifles that the warriors had held so close to them, waiting for that one moment Canada opened fire on them. The well-known warrior look from The Oka Crisis wore a bandana around his face (usually camo) to protect their breathing from tear gas that was shot at them by Canadian forces. The background, using red, yellow, and black acrylic paints, and using my fingers to scrape the design, I wanted to symbolize the chaos, tension, frustration, confusion, and vengeful feelings many Mohawk warriors has that year, and still have…the feeling of seeing those armed Canadians walking towards them, and storming the barricades…as hopeless as the situations got, they are still today a prideful people, and as a famous Canadian Native activist bluntly stated to the Canadian government in a conference “Native Americans of all nations will always be a nuissiance, and cause disturbances in your white world, until you are ready to sit and listen to us!”
In this project, I used fabric, turkey feathers, acrylic paints, oil and chalk pastels, prisma-color markers, and some gesso. Of course as all deviants know, putting artwork online doesn’t do ANY justice for your hard worked on piece, for the online picture does crap for this. In real life, this piece is hard to carry, because its used on an entire poster board, which are used for presentations of projects.
My art teacher loves this piece, and she in her opinion sees it as my most expressive, powerful, and efforted piece I have done all year. In some ways I believe her, but all my power comes from not my pride as an artist, but for all our message as Native Americans that we are still here..and yes…we are still fighting the “white man”.