THUNDER BAY – Indigenous artist Joseph Sagaj says as teen, he was always interested in art, but coming from a remote First Nation community, opportunities to hone his skills were few and far between.
It’s one of the main reasons he accepted an offer to visit students at the Matawa Education and Care Centre this week to help them create a mural that allows them share their own stories through painting.
Sagaj, a member of Neskantaga First Nation who now calls Toronto home, said he let the students guide the mural’s artistic direction, everything starting with a conversation at the beginning of his week in Thunder Bay.
“Originally we were thinking of a theme and a concept. Most of the students who came to speak were talking about the Sleeping Giant and were talking about the clans and talking about our story, our narrative,” Sagaj said on Wednesday.
“That inspired me to think that the Sleeping Giant is always kind of packaged in the tourist form. So I said we’re going to abandon that thinking and we’re going to tell our story, claim our story, our history and how we relate to it.”
It’s why he’s focused the mostly teenaged students on the clan system, the Indigenous system of governing themselves.
“There are stories that reflect through legends and colours symbolize different nations in unison. There are all those components that we brought together through conversation. It wasn’t like a compositional piece, that we had to follow a diagram,” Sagaj said.
“We had our own blueprint in our heads as to how we were going to do it on the fly. And that’s kind of how we’ve been doing it the past couple of days. It’s been fun.”
Art teacher Jessica Buzanko said the theme is storytelling, adding everything added to the mural tells a story of its own.
“When people come up to it, they might get all of the stories, they might get some of them. It’s just what speaks to you and what lessons you need that day,” Buzanko said.
When completed, officials plan to display the finished artwork outside the Lillie Street school.
