An exhibit depicting how Europeans colonizing the New World virtually wiped out the bison population kicks off an annual festival at the New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) studio in South River.
The exhibit 'Forced Migration' is this year's launch to the 22nd annual Deep Wireless Festival of Radio Transmission Art.
See: 22nd Annual Deep Wireless Festival now on
Forced Migration was created by Michelle Wilson, an artist from London, Ontario. Wilson's sculpture is a framed, woolen fabric that resembles a land mass in Canada and the United States that stretches from the Northwest Territories to Texas.
Wilson says “biological historians tell us this would have been the original range of North American bison”.
Embroidered bright orange threads run throughout the fabric and Wilson says these “are the lifeblood of the land and represent the waterways” in both countries. And positioned in key areas on the fabric are grey threads.
Wilson says each of the threads represents the lives of each bison as it was forced to move from one location to another over many decades in both countries. Occasionally there are broken threads and these represent the bison that died at various points during the forced migrations thereby ending any further generations of future bison.
Wilson's story of the forced migrations and depopulation of bison herds comes to life through the threads.
Wilson says touching the threads triggers a sound recording of her voice recounting specific segments of the migration during the 19th and 20th centuries. Touching the thread a second time turns off that particular audio segment.
Wilson's partner Angus Cruickshank put together the exhibit's music and sound design.
Wilson's threads tell numerous stories about the bison which numbered between 20 to 60 million before European contact. Visitors can follow the audio by picking up a poster at NAISA which has a transcription of Wilson's bison story.
Wilson has a Phd in Visual Arts from the University of Western Ontario. It was while carrying out an artist residency at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba during 2016-17 that she was inspired to create the exhibit people can now see at NAISA.
“I was recording the bison as a way to know and understand them,” Wilson said.
Afterward, she talked to the park employees, community members, and First Nations people to get a better understanding of how the national park came to be and how the bison ended up there “after being (almost) eliminated”.
What Wilson learned was that bison living today in conservation herds can trace their ancestry to a handful of calves that were collected after a hunt.
“My sculpture attempts to simplify a story that shows we can follow a bison through their familial lineage to a hunt that took place on the Saskatchewan Plains near North Battleford,” Wilson said.
Wilson says around 1870 a Metis leader named James McKay brought back five calves after a hunt and raised them on the outskirts of Winnipeg. At the time of McKay's death, the bison population had grown to 12 and his estate was bought by the Warden of the Stony Mountain Institution during the 1870s and the bison lived on the prison grounds.
Wilson said it's while on the prison grounds that the bison population begins to grow a little more. The threads on her sculpture depict this growth starting with the thread count at the McKay property.
There are actually six threads at the beginning because McKay brought back six calves but one died so one of the six threads is cut to represent the death of one bison.
Later the bison are moved from the prison to Kansas and again the exhibit depicts this migration with more threads where some again are cut.
Rancher, hunter and conservationist, Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones was the buyer of the Warden's bison. Jones also acquired the bison in the Texas Panhandle to form one herd.
Wilson said at one point Jones went bankrupt and the bison found their way to the Flathead Reservation in Montana where the herd thrived and the exhibit depicts that with dozens of threads.
Over time Canada acquired the herd but the question was where to put the bison.
In 1908 the federal government created Buffalo National Park southwest of Wainwright, Alberta and in 1912, Wilson says 748 bison arrived at the new site. By 1922 there were nearly 6,800 bison in the park but the land's resources became strained as the bison shared the area with large populations of deer, moose and elk.
Wilson said the land quality degraded under the strain and tuberculosis broke out among the bison.
The Canadian government began to slaughter thousands of bison to preserve the land quality.
Wilson said the slaughtering ended when the public intervened and the remaining bison were relocated to Wood Buffalo National Park which straddles the Alberta and Northwest Territories border.
It's from here that the bison at Riding Mountain National Park came.
In 1931, 20 bison were taken from the Alberta park and reintroduced in Manitoba.
Today Riding Mountain National Park, where Wilson's story starts, has about 40 bison in an area known as the Lake Audy Bison Enclosure.
In a small way the story has a happy ending in that Wilson says the remaining bison are “nurturing new herds of bison on ancestral land” and that the “free-ranging bison are re-establishing their ecological relationship with the land and other species”.
But Wilson adds today's bison population is a far cry from the original numbers only several hundred years ago.
The exhibit is on display until April 3rd.
'Forced Migration' is one of two attractions at NAISA during the sound festival.
Darren Copeland, NAISA's Artistic Director, says on February 18th at 7:00 pm, Geronimo Inutiq of Montreal will perform an audio experience using a laptop and other electronic devices.
Then on February, 16th Inutiq will hold roundtable talks at NAISA at 2 p.m. and at the Capitol Centre in North Bay at 7 p.m.
During the roundtables, Copeland says Inutiq will listen and record people's conceptions of home and how their surroundings help form that conception.
He will then collect the recordings and turn them into an audio collage of multiple voices as people describe what home is for them.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
