Plurilingual Realities Reflected in a Neon Sculpture by Joi T. Arcand

The term for dance in Nēhiyawēwin is the subject of this work, presented on its own in Plains Cree syllabics/ᒐᐦᑭᐯᐦᐃᑲᓇ/cahkipēhikana. Arcand belongs to the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty Six Territory, central Saskatchewan, and her artistic practice focuses on cultural memory across generations with a particular emphasis on the revitalization of the Nēhiyawēwin language.

Arcand’s first artistic experience working with cahkipēhikana was in Here on Future Earth (2009), a series of digitally composed photographs of seemingly everyday street scenes and buildings in various cities and towns in Saskatchewan (specifically, Saskatoon, North Battleford and Prince Albert). For this project, Arcand worked with Nēhiyaw language worker and developer Darryl Chamakese from Chitek Lake. All the signage that appears in the series has been symbolically and visually “returned” to a place and time where cahkipēhikana predominates. The ubiquitousness of the syllabics implies that spoken Nēhiyawēwin has found pride of place in this alternative timeline, flowing from a new generation of fluent speakers across the Plains.

For the artist, these photographs are not intended as an imagined Indigenous future but, rather, as depictions of an alternate present. The images serve as a way to reclaim her own territory and make it visibly (and audibly) Cree. As founding editor of the Indigenous art magazine kimiwan (2012-2014) and participant in the 2017 Indigenous art criticism residency Journal,¹ Arcand knows that a powerful design intention can reveal solutions to structural gaps in the representation of Indigenous languages, histories and aesthetics.

In 2016, these works expanded from photographs to site-specific works, with the integration of LED, vinyl and neon signs into various architectural and public spaces. Composed of short phrases, they represent an affirmation of Indigenous existence and futurity. They encourage fellow Indigenous peoples to reclaim their ancestral visual and verbal languages as part of their cultural inheritance and specificity – something that was systematically oppressed and taken from them through colonial processes such as the Indian Act, Indigenous residential schools, the sixties scoop, the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people and, closer to home, the discriminatory treatment of Indigenous peoples in Quebec public health and education settings.

Refusing to always provide English translations is a strategy used by Indigenous artists the world over to assert their narrative self-determination and encourage viewers to educate themselves on Indigenous histories, languages and aesthetics. Furthermore, this approach of Arcand disrupts the narrative of French and English being Canada’s sole founding cultures, as written into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the constitutional protection of minority language rights is essential for Canada to flourish as a bilingual country). She also offers audiences the opportunity to consider what language rights aimed at ensuring fluency and vibrancy of Nēhiyawēwin and other Indigenous languages of Canada might look and feel like.

In confronting the ongoing legacy of colonial processes banning Indigenous languages, Arcand uses neon in order to reach audiences near or far and highlight the importance of widespread visibility and of legibility for those learning or relearning Nēhiyawēwin.

With this acquisition, the Museum is expressing support for the United Nations’ Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) and recognizing the multiple Indigenous nations, including the Nēhiyaw, who have long visited and spent time in the island-metropolis of Montreal that we know and love today.