ABSTRACT
In one panel of her provocative installation, Preservation of a Species: DECONSTRUCTIVISTS (This is the house that Joe built), the Canadian artist Joane Cardinal-Schubert arranged, as if on a chalkboard, photographs of herself, her father, and other members of her family. In the midst of the photographs—often displayed in multiple copies—she chalked in the question, “What does part Indian Mean? (which Part?)” (see Figure 6). Which part, indeed for, as she wrote, “you don't get 50% or 25% or 16% TREATMENT WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE RACISM—IT IS ALWAYS 100%.” Stamped across her own photographs were scarlet letters that exemplify this racism, branding her “GOVERNMENT ISSUE/NON STATUS”—a reference to the Canadian classification for persons of mixed ancestry excluded from the recognition and rights accorded to “Treaty” or “Status” Indians (Boldt and Long 1985; Peterson and Brown 1985; McMillan 1988). Another panel featured Cardinal-Schubert's brother Douglas Cardinal, the designer of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Chalked notations stated, “He is an architect and a non-status Indian,” but across his duplicated portraits Cardinal-Schubert stamped not his non-status designation, but the way he defined and distinguished himself, as “Architect, Brother, Father, Uncle, Nephew, Son, Son-in-law, Friend, and Colleague” (McMaster and Martin 1992, 134). Joane Cardinal-Schubert (Métis), Preservation of a Species: DECONSTRUCTIVISTS (This is the house that Joe built), 1990 (detail). An installation displayed in the Indigena exhibition, Canadian Museum of Civilization. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315636047/9402d77d-384e-47a6-9e62-856fa7a8e71d/content/fig6_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Photography by W. Jackson Rushing. Reproduced with permission of the artist's estate.
