The Globe and Mail - 22.02.2020

Arts &

Books

SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020 | GLOBEANDMAIL.COM

H

istorian Bill Waiser was flipping
through files at the RCMP’s ar-
chives in Regina one day when
he extracted a manila envelope
from a filing cabinet, opened the flap and
discovered a piece of a human skull.
The remains were from Almighty Voice,
a Cree hero whose life and eventual death
at the hands of the Northwest Mounted
Police in 1897 have inspired stories, a
movie and a forthcoming book by Waiser.
The piece of Almighty Voice’s body had
ended up in the archives because an

unknown officer had taken it from the

battlefield as a war trophy. It had been on

public display for decades, but was moved

to the backrooms when the RCMP up-

graded its facilities in 2007. Now the

RCMP – after prompting in recent weeks

by Waiser and the descendants of Al-

mighty Voice – are talking to the One Ar-

row First Nation about giving the remains

back.

The RCMP Heritage Centre on the

grounds of Depot Division in Regina is

now set for its biggest upgrade yet, as the

federal government preparesto elevate

the institution to the status of a national

museum. The new designation will mean

an influx of new funding and the promise

of thousands of new visitors a year.

The increased stature will also bring a

renewed focus on reconciliation. The sto-

ry of Almighty Voice and what happened

to his body after he died shows both how

the RCMP’s relationships with Indigenous

communities have changed over the

years, and also how the RCMP continue to

grapple with how to tell their own story –

warts and all – to the Canadian public. It

reflects a larger conversation going on in

museums and galleries across the country

and around the world about reconciling

the narratives of Indigenous and non-In-

digenous peoples, and the repatriation of

Indigenous cultural artifacts, some of

which were given freely and some of

which were taken by force.

“I just don’t see how you can, in Sas-

katchewan, build a museum about the

RCMP, unless you deal with the truth-tell-

ing about the history of the police and

First Nations,” said Mary Ellen Turpel-La-

fond, law professor and director of the In-

dian Residential School Centre for History

and Dialogue at the University of British

Columbia.

“While some things may be seen to be

in the past, the reconciliation piece has

not been done,” she said.

RCMP, R3

ReconciliationplaysoutinrealtimeatRegina’sRCMPmuseum

CHRISHANNAY

L

ast year, at the age of 58, Julian Dix
fatefully put aside his 30-year career
as a goldsmith to paint full time. He
felt that if he didn’t commit to art, it
might never happen.
So the jewellery maker, who began
painting after receiving an easel one
Christmas more than a dozen years ago,
enrolled in a course this past September at
the local university where he lives in Sur-
rey, B.C. There, he produced fervently, in-
cluding a series he calls his “best work yet.”
But at the end of the semester, when Dix
went to retrieve the artwork from the
painting racks in his classroom at Kwan-
tlen Polytechnic University, he discovered
all 13 of his canvases had gone missing.
And, curiously, only his work, none of his
classmates’, was missing.
First, he went to his instructor, Robert
Gelineau, to ask whether the paintings had
been moved somewhere for safekeeping.
Then, after the instructor confirmed they
hadn’t been misplaced or garbaged mis-
takenly, Dix thought up other reasons the
paintings might have vanished: A fellow

student – innocently or not – took his art-

work to reuse the canvases; someone liked

the paintings and saw the opportunity to

grab them; it’s also conceivable they were

the target of a jealous or embittered class-

mate.

Or perhaps – and this is only conjecture,

Dix recognizes – the paintings were stolen

because of his famous surname. Although

he says he never advertised to his class, Ju-

lian Dix is the grandson of Otto Dix, the re-

nowned German Expressionist painter

whose artwork lives in some of the world’s

most hallowed museum collections. Otto’s

paintings were included in Hitler’s infa-

mous Entartete Kunst exhibition, which

denounced so-called “degenerate art.” Ot-

to’s son Ursus, Julian’s father, moved

across the Atlantic, taking a job as a con-

servator at the National Gallery of Canada.

While an Otto Dix has sold for as much

as $8-million, the heist of paintings by Dix

the Younger won’t make its perpetrators

rich. The most Julian Dix has sold a paint-

ing for is $2,000. Value in the art market

might be determined peculiarly, but it is

not conferred by bloodline. Not generally,

at least.

PAINTINGS,R4

SurrealcanvascaperinSurrey:

Paintingswithafamoussurnamevanish

CHRISHAMPTON

KAROLINAKURAS/NATIONALBALLETOFCANADA

DANCE

Crystal-itereturnstothe"ationalBalletforthefirst

timesinceäöö¤withanewwork,Angels’Atlas R5

BOOKS

A<Abookwithbroadappeal,ancelandiccrimenovel

andmoreonMargaretCannon’sthrillerroundup R9

MUSIC

SarahHarmertalkswithBradWheelerabouthockey,

thelateGordDownieandherfirstalbumin10years R8

MeganRooney’sHushSkyMurmurHole,seenatToronto’sMuseumofContemporaryArt.

TONIHAFKENSCHEID/MOCATORONTO

TORONTO’SMOCAHASFOUND

ABIGVOICEOFITSOWN

Anumberofexhibitionsatthecity’s!useumofContemporaryArtformthegallery’s

mostsuccessfuleffortsyettostakeoutterritorythatisallitsown R6