Heather Shillinglaw - Indigenous Artist
Heather Shillinglaw is a mixed-media artist that uses art collage to explain her familial oral histories and storytelling within her work. She is an Indigenous Artist , her ancestors were Newyhin/Cree, Dene/Chipewyan, Salteaux/Ojibwe & Scots/French. She was born in Daysland, Alberta and grew up near Cooking Lake, Alberta.
In 2009 she was invited to Buenos Aires, Argentina to talk about how ‘plants are culture’, she explained this through using mixed mediums of paint and collage methods on how art can refine a deeper meaning of the natural world. The Canadian Ambassador to Argentina sponsored her travel to Mendoza, Argentina, to meet anthropologist Olga Rodrigez of Universidad Nacional de San Juan & Universidad Nacional de Cuyo she toured villages and saw how the traditional indigenous art practice used plants as a method to create art, thereby providing sustainability. Later that year, in the Amazon jungle of Paraguay, she worked with a medicine woman, Inocencia Rivera. In Inocencia Riveras village she protects all the residents through plants, trees and natural medicines. Our communication was clear even though we had to translate from my English to Spanish then her native tongue of Tupi–Guarani. Shillinglaw says ‘She offered her medicine basket while examining and talking about healing plants we both understood each other without the translations. I think it was because in our hearts we spoke from the same place, and that it felt like she was speaking to her Nohkom – (grandmother from long ago, great grandmother in Newyhin/Cree). After this experience I began creating panels for Nohkoms quilt.’ Later in 2016, when traveling to the “Budapest Environmental Exhibition” in association with the Hungarian National Art Gallery, Heather’s philosophy was born; Metis Ecological Arts Message, MEAM. When teaching or sharing her art she progressively shares through art how we can create messages in reducing our environmental footprint. The MEAM that is collaged into each panel of Nohkoms Quilt larger works ‘Cowboys and Indians quilt’ has an antique toy from a 1960’s Cowboys and Indian Toy woven into this as a message to explain how the 60’s scoop changed my family in their environment both physical and cultural. These works speak to residential schools and how integral healing plants are and how they can heal my family and others from within and to help remember what used to be commonly known... the toy also gives a hint on how the medicine is used, and the environmental concerns of the plant. This series is also inspired from the traditional harvesting ground of the plants, my mother remembers harvesting and or collecting when she was young with her kookum – grandmother - this land (now lost to the Cold Lake First Nations) is now the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range.
Both series: Nohkoms quilt and Seeds from the past… are created with her ongoing land-based learning. Principal to these teachings her mother elder Shirley Norris Shillinglaw from the LeGoff Indian Reserve, inclusive is knowledge keepers/elders and the sweat lodge. Shillinglaw says her works of Seeds from the past… series ‘within the stitchery had consoled my soul of the change of land with the desire to link my ancestors through the beadwork. This series is titled ‘Seeds from the past…’, through sewing I imagine the seed beads are how the land connects me to the past and in wonder to preserve their memory. Art has a voice and lives on, activating the past present and future to preserve our culture and our land.’