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Storytime Tapestry Newsletter
The newsletter devoted to
spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.
Famous People Column ? An
open Column for all writers
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September 23, 2007
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FAMOUS
PEOPLE
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Benjamin Chee Chee? -? (Canadian,
1944-1977)?
Although continually cited by the United Nations as
one of the best places in the world in which to live, Canada has proven
deadly for many Native peoples.
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Born in Temagami, Ontario, Chee Chee
largely taught himself to draw and paint. His father died when he was two
months old and he lost track of his mother. One reason behind his drive for
success as a painter was his ambition to be reunited with her. He met her in
the last year of his life.
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He was a prominent member of the second generation of Woodland Indian
painters, a native art movement that began in the early nineteen-sixties and
has since become one of the important art schools in Canada.? Benjamin was a unique Ojibwa artist. Unlike
other young Woodlands artists he chose to work with the negative space and
created beautiful and powerful art with a few simple curved lines against a
white background. Less is more.
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Unlike many of his contemporaries, he painted in a
style influenced by modern abstraction. While most of the young Woodland Indian
artists were content to follow the style of the movement's founder, Norval
Morrisseau, in depicting myths and legends by direct and "primitive"
narrative means, Chee Chee pursued a more economical graphic style, a reduction
of line and image more in keeping with the mainstream of international modern
art.
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It is unfortunate his life was so short. After only
four years of national prominence he hung himself in an Ottawa jail cell.
He was only 32.
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"On March
11, 1977 Chee Chee delivered the 18 paintings he had promised
his agent, a collection now known as the Black Geese Portfolio. He then went to
Jimmy's Restaurant on Bank Street, a tavern he frequented. Police were called
to find a window had been broken and Chee Chee "boisterous and
intoxicated." He was placed under arrest and secured at 6.50 P.M. in police cell no. 10, which was a bare
cell for uncooperative prisoners. Minutes later Chee Chee was found hanging
from the bars of his cell. He had hung himself with a noose fashioned from his
shirt. He died in hospital three days later." - excerpt from Chee Chee - A
Study of Aboriginal Suicide written by Al Evans, published by McGill-Queen's
University Press 2004.
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Benjamin Chee Chee, is
important as a Native Artist for the complete joy of the visual impact of his
created images; yet on a different level he, too, was an innovator. Chee Chee
worked, not on the vision of the myths of his Woodland People, but
on the visual impact of the line. With the single stroke of a line and little
more, he could create the fierce motion of the woodpecker shooting into the
green mass of a tree; with three simple lines he could create the impact of the
Mother-Canada Goose with her three children. He was a master of the simple
line. So much so, that an entire body of artists, from Thunderbay right across
the Prairies to the Rockies, employ his technique of direct importance of the
line to the meaning of design. The visual impact of one of his silk-prints or
originals remains with the viewer forever. Once, having seen a Chee Chee, you
could not mistake his work for any other artist.
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To learn more - Read this Book ? ?Chee Chee?? -? A
Study of Aboriginal Suicide
Author - Al Evans
McGill-Queen's
Native and Northern Series ?
Cloth (0773526870)
9780773526877
Release date:?2004-04-26
CA $34.95 ?|? US $34.95 ?|
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Benjamin Chee Chee lived with anger and frustration
for more than thirty years before he took his own life. An Ojibway artist who
killed himself just as he was beginning to gain international recognition, Chee
Chee is one of the thousands of aboriginal peoples in Canada who have
committed suicide. Noted suicidologist and former RCMP officer Alvin Evans
explores Chee Chee's wild, reckless, creative life to reveal how the clash
between Native and White society has affected the suicide rate of young Native
men and women, now among the highest in the world.
Using his in-depth understanding of Native self-destructive behaviour and
information from interviews with Chee Chee's mother, close friends, and fellow
artists, Evans shows that understanding Benjamin's suicide requires moving
beyond psychological analysis to include the damage that contact with White
society has caused to Native culture, heritage, status, and meaning of life.
Evans argues that White society needs to understand these dynamics to be
involved in the healing process of Aboriginal peoples in Canada - or to at
least avoid hindering their recovery.
Alvin Evans is professor emeritus at St Paul's United
College, University of Waterloo.
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Hartson S. Dowd
hsdowd@telus.net
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