Artist keeps Cree traditions alive
In Neepin Auger's colourful acrylic on canvas, Connection to Home, she places two teepees beside each other. Both feature the same imagery of running rabbits.
In the Cree culture, teepees belonging to the same family would often bear the same images. The two teepees represent one family, one home.
“The painting is about home,” says Auger. “It says no matter how far we travel in this life, we will always have a place we call home, where the water is clear and the teepees are warm.”
Auger is one of 36 artists showing and selling work at the Western Oasis in the BMO Centre on the Stampede grounds this year.
It is the first time she has participated in the Artists Studios, which has been a tradition of the Calgary Stampede for three decades. But she has been going to the exhibit for as long as she can remember.
As the daughter of renowned Cree artist Dale Auger, the Stampede art show was always a chance to see her father surrounded by his contemporaries and celebrated for his art. His vivid work inspired a new generation of artists and found its way into the collections of movie stars such as Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt, and former prime minister Joe Clark.
Dale Auger died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 50.
“Every summer, we knew that dad did the Stampede and it was his time to work,” Auger says. “The Stampede for our family was more of a working 10 days than it was a fun 10 days. But we would for sure always come down here and get to see him, and it was a big moment for us.”
Like her father's works, Auger's paintings are heavily influenced by Cree culture and imagery. Healing, a stunning acrylic on canvas, offers a semi-abstract depiction of a sweat lodge. The Offering features eagle feathers.
“Eagle feathers are the highest blessing, the highest offering you can give,” Auger says. “They say the eagle is the thing that gets closest to the creator. So he can fly the highest. When you are giving prayers in our culture, you always give an offering. You always give of something that is meaningful to you, to the person who is praying for you, or even to the earth.”
Auger previously worked as an art teacher and will begin a new role as vice-principal at Tsuut'ina Manyhorses High School this fall. After finishing Grade 8, she and her two siblings were home-schooled by their father, who had a PHD in education from the University of Calgary.
It allowed the children to be immersed not only in Cree culture and history but also the language, which he spoke fluently.
Alongside her work as an artist and educator, Auger has also written and illustrated a series of children's books in the Cree language.
Growing up in Calgary and later Bragg Creek, art was an accepted part of family life, though it wasn't something she thought much about. In the summers, the family would visit the Cold Lake home of world-renowned artist Alex Janvier, a pioneer in contemporary Canadian Indigenous art in Canada.
“I never really understood who he was,” Auger says with a laugh. “He was just a fun guy. Then you look back on your memories and say, `Wow, that's not normal.'”
Her father's studio was the front of the house in Bragg Creek. His work was always “the heart of the home,” she says. She loved watching him paint and figures she naturally picked up some of his style and themes.
But it wasn't until she was an adult that she realized his effect and how focused he was on celebrating his culture.
“We saw it our whole lives because it's what our dad did and how important it was for him to share Native people in a positive light and in a cultural and powerful light; to know that Native people are so much stronger and we have so much to offer,” she says.
Auger says she hopes her own art continues the tradition. It's one that has taken on an added urgency these past few years as Canada attempts to acknowledge and atone for some of the more shameful periods of its history with Indigenous people.
“Some people need to know the truth and need to have it in their face, to know that there are these burials or these things that were hidden for so many years,” Auger says. “Maybe now that people see the truth, they are going to have a better understanding or get a better education of what Native people are all about.
“For me, personally, that's how I use my work and that's how I use my platform here at the Stampede: to share who I am as an Indigenous person and show that we have so much to offer through our culture and through our art.”
The family tradition of attending the Stampede art show did not stop in 2008 after Dale Auger's death. In 2009, he was inducted into the Western Art Show Hall of Fame. Ever since, the family has been making their annual pilgrimage to Hall E of the BMO Centre where there is a plaque honouring him.
“All our kids come and we always get a picture. It's a really good place for us,” Auger says.
“Just to know that he is always here, that he will always be a part of the Stampede, is special.”
The Western Showcase takes place every day of the Stampede in Hall E of the BMO Centre from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Artists present from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.