The Great Rabbit Nanabozho (c. 1969) Norval Morrisseau

The Great Rabbit Nanabozho (Untitled)

Norval Morrisseau

acrylic on paper, 24" x 16", c. 1969

___________________________

Through contrast beauty is experienced and consciousness realized. This is the Shamanic path which Norval identified as the "razor's edge".

Without evil, compelling acts of conscience from us, we remain in stasis. Merely ignorant angels. Divine, yet passive, spectators. Where would Christ be without the contrast? I relished studying Buddhism as a science but I don't see the love in it. Love is action. Turn water into wine. Bathe your lover's feet in essential oils. Heal the sick. Rage against shady priests and businessmen. Dream the dream and share your Visions.

Do something....Do anything of the sort and you can count on contrasts appearing on the distant horizon.

Norval Morrisseau was the quintessential Pisces. It comes as no surprise to me that this "grand gesture" of lower astral plane Shamanism would arise from the bowels of the Earth.

Envision the great horned snake, laden with its pouch of magic medicine (karma) purified by the brilliant light (bite) of Copper Thunderbird who "shines like seven suns". Without the snake there is no medicine. There is no need for the "Superman within".

This is the high drama that authentic Shamanism creates. It's so Norval.

This battle between fake and authentic is the trickster in action. This is the shape-shifter transforming reality. This is the great teacher, MC, artist, co-creator and founder of the Grand Medicine Lodge doing its thing. This is the Great Rabbit. Host to the heavenly host. Have a peek at Norval's epic mural, "A Separate Reality". Do you see Nanabozho running the show?

Nanabozho Pictograph

Bon Echo

We must wrap our wings round this forgery duality. When Jesus said, "Get thee behind me Satan".he didn't mean, "Die Satan". He just wanted him put in his place - and so it is with forgers and forgeries. We want them put in their place.

The imminent result of all this is that our special friend, who we are so incredibly proud of, will take his place beside the other great masters, just as Gabe predicted on National TV in 2006.

A large part of the credit for this emergence must go to the moths attracted to Copper Thunderbird's light. By their acts of indiscretion they have incited a potency I call "the Norval Morrisseau effect".

Two years of my life have been devoted to ensuring Norval's work lives on. Far more years of effort and concern on the part of Bryant, Gabe and many others.

As an example, Don Robinson comes to mind. The many battles this man has fought few know about though we all know about the unwarranted abuse he has taken for a decade. The bravery and fortitude of mind to pick himself up after that and create multiple Expert Reports and testify is commendable. He deserves medals, but for his effort and for associating with me he got sued. Not once but twice!

This is the Norval Morrisseau effect. People going beyond the call of duty and common sense to assist. New people with strength of soul arrive with increasing regularity. The truth is coming out. Norval Morrisseau's brand of Shamanism is unstoppable. To a Grand Shaman "Truth" is a very BIG word.

Stardreamer

Interdependence of Nature (1969) Norval Morrisseau - NY Times exhibition review (2001)

Interdependence of Nature

Norval Morrisseau

Ink on paper, 22” x 27”, 1969

______________________

Draw and Tell

The Transformative Lines of Norval Morrisseau/Copper Thunderbird

At the Drawing Center's Drawing Room

40 Wooster Street, SoHo

This extraordinary show is made up of some 50 drawings, on loan from the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, by Norval Morrisseau, who also uses his Native American name, Copper Thunderbird.

He was born in 1932 on the Sand Point Reserve in northwestern Ontario and reared by his maternal grandfather, an Anishnaabe (also called Ojibwa or Chippewa) shaman from whom he learned much about tribal history, visual symbols and the spiritual utility of art. Later, as a painter and printmaker, Mr. Morrisseau combined traditional forms with modernist styles and in the early 1960's he became one of the first Native Americans to have a crossover career in contemporary art.

The drawings in the show, however, stand apart from much of this artist's other work for their psychological intensity. They were made while he was in prison in Canada beginning in 1969 and were executed in pencil on sheets from rolls of paper towels. All are of figures: human, animal (birds, bears, fish, snakes, mythical thunderbirds) or some combination of the two.

The style is fluidly pictographic. Outlines of forms are often drawn with a single continuous line; bodies are transparent, with fetuslike beings visible inside as if by X-ray. A few of the narrative scenes are naturalistic, but most have a keyed-up hallucinatory charge as hybrid beings interact, touching, exchanging energy in the form of quaking ''lines of power'' that radiate from eyes and limbs and pass into and through bodies, as seen in depictions of supernatural beings in Plains Indians ledger drawings.

Overall, there is a sense of a world in the process of relentless, urgent change, with no forms fixed or substantial, with no point of resolution or interval of repose. The results aren't ingratiating or beautiful. Like visionary work in many cultures, they're aggressive, sometimes violent, as much about fearfulness as about transcendence. And taken as a group, in a show, organized by Catherine de Zegher, director of the Drawing Center, and Gerald McMaster, a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, they provide a tense, pressure cooker of an experience.

Holland Cotter

NY Times - March 16, 2001

The Bear Medicine Man (1969) Norval Morrisseau

The Bear Medicine Man

Norval Morrisseau

Oil on cardboard, 28” x 40”, 1969

The Great Ojibway people of North America believed there was one God, Gitchi Manitou, who was their only God and whom they worshipped. The Ojibway believed that there were six layers of heaven. Each Indian went to one of these layers according to the way he behaved himself on earth. Everyone went to heaven no matter what he did.. after all there was lots of room.

Norval Morrisseau

Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways - Herbert T. Schwarz - Norval Morrisseau

Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways

Herbert T. Schwarz/Norval Morrisseau

McClelland and Stewart Limited

1969

"The time has come for us to record the story of our people," writes Norval Morrisseau. "I listened to many of these stories and to our legends and ancestral beliefs as they were told to me by the wise men of the Ojibway. I wrote some of them on paper, and I drew and painted them as best I could for the Ojibway and for all the children of our white brothers to see."

Retold by Herbert T. Schwarz, here are eight legends of the Ojibway, illustrated in the traditional style of the tribe with two-colour drawings by the Ojibway artist, Norval Morrisseau.

Windigo, an Indian trapper, is transformed by an evil spirit into a giant with an insati­able appetite. Three young braves defy the traditions of their ancestors and climb the Forbidden Mountain, where they are be­witched by a Thunderbird Woman. Red Bird of the Ojibways and Medicine Turtle of the Assiniboines, both great chiefs and conjurors, battle to see whose magic is more powerful. Pantenata sympathizes with the strange being Paakuk and hears the eerie story of his sin, which condemned him "for hundreds of years to fly around and around the world, between the moon and the sun, day in and day out, till the world's end." Silver Cloud suddenly becomes a bright red mushroom, right before his brother's eyes. Beautiful Ishka-Maatuk flees from an unwanted mar­riage in her father's village. Whisky-Jack angers the water spirit Mishipeshu with his arrogance, and is swallowed by a monstrous trout. His greed for silver causes the white trader Balthazar to deceive the friendly In­dians, and incurs the wrath of the great god Manitou...

Morrisseau recounted the tales that in­spired his paintings, and from his descrip­tions, Herbert T. Schwarz has built an im­aginative collection of stories for readers, young and old alike. These are tales that will interest those already familiar with Indian lore as well as those discovering the Thunderbird or Manitou for the first time.

Herbert T. Schwarz

Born in England, Herbert T. Schwarz gradu­ated from Sheffield University Medical School and the University of London, then emigrated to Canada in 1950 at the age of twenty-eight. He taught first at Ottawa University Medical School, and in 1952 moved to Montreal to join the University Clinic of the Royal Vic­toria Hospital and the Donner Building for Medical Research at McGill University. He soon became fascinated by French-Canadian history and culture and in 1965, opened La Galerie Cartier, an antique shop in the an­cient residence of Jacques Viger, the first mayor of Montreal. A year later, while con­sultant to the Quebec Pavilion, Dr. Schwarz met the Ojibway artist Norval Morrisseau, and this book began.

Norval Morrisseau

Born at Sand Point Indian Reserve on Lake Nipigon, Norval Morrisseau, whose tribal name is Copper Thunderbird, is descendant of Ojibway chiefs. Morrisseau is a self-taught artist, and he was discovered by the art dealer Jack Pollock who arranged his first show in 1962 at The Pollock Gallery in Toronto. 'Time' magazine (Canadian edition) commented about the event that "Few ex­hibits in Canadian art history have touched off a greater stir."

As well as being the single source of graphic expression of Ojibway legend and myth today, Norval Morrisseau is one of the few initiated members of the tribe who is willing to act as an interpreter of Indian learning and lore. The journals he kept were edited by Selwyn Dewdney and published in 1965 as Legends of My People: The Great Ojibway. When the artist met Dr. Schwarz, he was executing a sixteen-foot-high mural for the Indian Pavilion at Expo 67. They struck up an immediate friendship-which led to Dr. Schwarz's retelling of the Ojibway stories, and Norval Morrisseau's illustrations.

Thunderbird Fish - Norval Morrisseau - 1969

Thunderbird Fish

Norval Morrisseau

1969

I AM AN INDIAN

1969

BY J. M. Dent & Sons

This book was the first anthology of Indian literature published in Canada. It had been written and illustrated by men and women who are called Indians, but who think of themselves as Sioux or Salish, Ojibway or Delaware, Abnakis or Assiniboine. Here is a glimpse into an Indian world - a world of wars and treaties, honour and treachery, wealth and degradation. Indian stories, songs, and poems from all areas of Canada have been included so that others may enjoy some of the fun that is Blackfoot fun, meet some of the heroes that are Cree heroes, and learn some of the wisdom that is Kwakiutl wisdom.

The reader will be able to find out about some of Canada's Indian "rebels" from the "inside". He will be able to share the experiences of a young Assiniboine boy whose parents both die violently in a tragic set of circumstances uniquely Canadian. Included, too, is the story of the young Okanagan who became Canada's first Indian Member of Parliament.

The Indian people here offer to share the experi­ences and thoughts of their Canada - too long neglected - and which form a vital part of the heri­tage rightfully belonging to all who call themselves Canadians.

The upper picture, "Canadian Geese", is by Francis Kagige (Ojibway for "Forever"), a self-taught Odawa Indian from Manitoulin Island, Ontario.

The lower picture, "Thunderbird Fish", is by Norval Morriseau, whose Indian name is Copper Thunderbird. Mr. Morriseau is an Ojibway, born and raised in the area northwest of Lake Superior.

White Man's Curse - Norval Morrisseau - 1969

White Man's Curse

Norval Morrisseau

50"x40" - 1969

"We natives believe in the following saying: "Our God is Native. The Great Deity of the Five Planes is so. We are neither for nor against, We speak not of Christ nor of God. We say, 'Let them be. 'We follow the Spirit on its Inward Journey of Soul through attitudes and attentions. Remember we are all in a big School and the Inner Master teaches us Experience over many Lifetimes."

Norval Morrisseau

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France - Norval Morrisseau Exhibition - 1969