Artist, activist Shirley Bear mourned, remembered as Indigenous trailblazer

Artists and members of the Wabanaki community are paying tribute to an elder from Tobique First Nation, or Neqotkuk, who is described as a pioneer, a hero, and an important cultural figure.

Shirley (Minqwôn-Minqwôn) Bear died Saturday at the age of 86.

Bear was many things, including a Wolastoqi multimedia artist, writer, political activist, feminist and traditional medicine expert.

"She's a hero to our nation," said Mi'kmaw artist Alan Syliboy.

"She really helped us as a people."

Syliboy said he became friends with Bear in 1969, when she recruited him to do workshops in First Nation communities in New England.

She became his first painting teacher and a mentor "for life."

Artists are the movers and changers of the world. They have always been the revolutionaries, creating change in thought and style within their societies.- Shirley Bear, Virgin Bones (McGilligan Press/2007)

Around the same time, Bear won a grant from the Ford Foundation and went on a spiritual quest across the continent meeting other Indigenous artists, according to former Beaverbrook Art Gallery CEO Terry Graff, who interviewed her several times for a career retrospective exhibit in 2009.

"I don't think I would be an artist if I hadn't met her," said Syliboy.

He's especially grateful to Bear for introducing him to a book of petroglyphs — images found on rocks that had been etched by Wabanaki people thousands of years ago.

"We as a people didn't know about them," he said.

The petroglyphs became a subject that gave purpose to his work and life.

As they were to Bear's.

She found in these images, said Graff, in a lengthy tribute on Facebook this week, "an ancient story which continues to be my strength and a sense of foreverness on this continent. It's this fortitude that has been a lifeline for me."

Syliboy credits his experience with Bear and her second husband, the award-winning Mi'kmaw writer and basket weaver Peter Clair, for leading him to a great life as an artist, "reclaiming what was lost."

"She was a pioneer," he said. "And I was so happy to be part of that."

It was an exciting time, said Syliboy.

"When we started out there was nothing — really very little left of our culture. We had to research and fight for every bit we could find. And she was a big part of that. That was extremely important."

Bear was "very driven by native rights," he said, "women's rights especially, and she made all kinds of contributions," Syliboy said.

"She had a strong heart and she was not afraid to protest and stand up for herself."

She was at the forefront of a group of women from Tobique who successfully lobbied for a change to the Indian Act in 1985, so that Indigenous women didn't lose their status when they married a non-Indigenous person.

"Forcing women to live off-reserve meant the loss of ties with their families and communities," said Graff, and "the destruction of their culture."

"It was the women who traditionally passed on cultural knowledge to the next generation."

Her feminist activism began after the end of her first marriage, said Graff, when Bear realized she was in an abusive relationship and became determined to reclaim her name and her life.

A lot of Bear's artwork gives representation to Indigenous women and their traditional strength and values, he said.

It conveys nonviolence, consensus-based decision making, gender balance and respect for nature.

She visualized the Wolastoqey way of life before colonization, "to remind us that our present-day political system is not inevitable, and that society without structures of oppression is possible," he said.

Bear was many years ahead of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the MeToo movement, according to Graff, challenging colonialist and patriarchal narratives and illuminating a space for healing and empowerment.

Her mother was a major influence in her early years. She, too, was an activist, he said, and cared a lot about her community. She helped young girls who'd been abused. 

Bear's art education was "sporadic." She "followed the beat of her own drum," he said.

Validated by knowledge of the land and stories from her ancestors, she created art that resonated with many people from the substance of her own "deeply lived life."

We have no desire to produce work that either looks like or is connected to any European tradition or movement. It is not our way.- Shirley Bear, Virgin Bones (McGilligan Press/2007)

From humble beginnings sketching portraits for a few dollars each and showing her work in public parks in Massachusetts, she became "an important and major cultural figure," Graff said.

Her art has been shown across North America and is included in many collections. Her writing is featured in several anthologies. She was invested in the Order of Canada in 2011.

"Shirley Bear lived an extraordinary life," said Graff, "one that inspired many other artists, poets, and political activists by her example."

Bear's name and influence can be seen and heard "everywhere," said Syliboy.

"She lives on."