Control

Giclée

Edition 120

Released August 2012
SOLD OUT

Available Exclusively at Hill's Native Art.

I belong to the K’ómoks First Nation and we are (light) years deep into the British Columbia treaty process. I truly have mixed feelings about our involvement in this. By choosing to engage in the process, we enter a world of consultants and negotiators and other strange, scary and wonderful creatures. We partake in a world of borrowing and debt; of meetings and fights. We enter without knowing whether we are journeying into the dark side or are on a path towards the light.

What I do know is that under the treaty process, our community has begun to fracture. Our very future as a people is at stake. Will treaty define who we are or will our culture do that? Will treaty lead us to form a “Treaty Empire” or a “Treaty Rebellion”?

Our ancestors had a system of governance determined by and suited to our culture. It involved hereditary lines that were rooted in families, clans or houses. Everyone had a place in society and leadership roles involved each and every family in the village. Each line within a tribe had the right to determine its own future and its own destiny.

Democracy in the western sense was a foreign concept to our people. While it forms the basis for a passable system on a national level, it is poorly suited to First Nation communities. With the introduction of voting on our reserves, the families with the largest populations began to gain control over the community. We see it all the time on the reserve: parents, aunts or uncles instruct their automaton children, nieces, nephews and grandkids to vote for their family members and they dutifully do. What this means for treaty is that one clan line can essentially wipe out the Aboriginal rights of the other clan lines simply because they have more troopers at the polls. That is control.

“Control” is a limited edition print using the giclée method of printmaking. This print was released in August of 2012 and printed by Andy Everson at Copper Canoe, the artist’s own studio in Comox B.C. A total of 133 prints bear the title "Control” and are signed by Andy Everson: 120 in the primary edition bearing the numbers 1/120 through 120/120; 12 Artist’s Proof; and 1 Printer’s Proof. The acid-free Moab Entrada 100% cotton rag paper measures 11x17 inches. Image size measures about 10x15 inches.