Norval Morrisseau: In the Shaman's Shadow, part 2

Why would this artist need to prove his authenticity? His work should really speak for itself, but because as it has been loaded with the layers of identity-making, it is assumed to be somewhat more than what takes place on the canvas. Morrisseau wanted to make paintings full of color, that were happy, that made people feel good. Because he had to play at being a shaman, he said he was making art that healed people. Did he? How?

Morrisseau’s grandfather was a shaking-tent shaman, a djessakid. William S. Lyon’s Encyclopedia of Native American Healing (1996) reports that a shaking-tent shaman makes use of the shaking tent ceremony in order to diagnose illness, see into the future, find lost objects, locate game, and talk to the deceased. In European terms this rather fits the description of a ‘diviner,’ rather than a healer, and the djessakids are differentiated from other shamans by being termed jugglers or conjurors, even though their ceremony is very physically draining and takes a great deal of maturity and strength to accomplish. A djessakid also differs from other shamans in that he (for among the Ojibway women rarely practiced this) “learns his skills from his manito, or helping spirit, rather than inheriting the ritual from his relatives. Thus, he cannot sell or transfer his ability to others.” The ceremony is one of the most widely practised among Great Lakes and Great Plains tribes, and in the recent modern era has been attended and reported by outsiders (non-Indians), therefore, the ceremony does not have (or has not always had) a blanket of secrecy around it.

Curiously, I have found no instances of Morrisseau referring to having had any particular shamanic training himself, and his grandfather’s art, as stated above, was not one that could be passed on. In fact, one gets the impression that Morrisseau’s greater childhood influence came from the catholicism of his grandmother. Morrisseau said: "The Grand Shaman is like the Pope of Rome. The Pope is on one side of coin, the Shaman on the other side of the coin." He might have been talking about the place that Catholicism and native Ojibway beliefs occupied in him, personally, equal and opposite. For I really believe that he was of two minds, spiritually, but was generally not allowed, in emphasising and playing-up his proximity to a shaman, to admit the depth of his Christianity. Here he made clear that the Christian influence moved him perhaps even more:

"I have always been attracted to religious paintings, but only the ones that had that mystical or supernatural quality in them, especially Saint Teresa by Bernini. Just looking at Saint Teresa I get some kind of vibrations from it. I can close my eyes and feel them. That's great art, and it brings on that tingling sexual feeling. Other saints, like Saint Sebastian, do that as well. But the Christ figure was always the one that was dominant for me. That's why I say that Christ to me is still the greatest shaman."

Ultimately, there are a couple of foolproof ways to tell whether or not Norval Morrisseau was a shaman. Shamans make a living of healing people, they live it 24 hours a day. It takes a lifetime of healing, or at least a significant pattern of enabling miracles to become someone who others would call a shaman. Norval Morrisseau was an artist who was deeply influenced by his ancestral legends and natural environment who made visually riveting paintings, but he didn’t heal other people. He was human — neither did he heal himself. Shamans with power also display a quality of health and balance in their own lives, and unfortunately, this does not characterize Morrisseau’s personal life. And, Norval Morrisseau was not a shamanic artist. He did not purposefully work with his manito to create his paintings, although he hinted that he did. He never mentioned a specific Spirit helper, he did not articulate how his work could heal people. He made beautiful art, and maybe his ancestral spirits did work through him and onto the canvas. But it was not because he purposefully harnessed any of his own shamanic skills or experience. He seemed as surprised by “some kind of vibrations” emanating from Bernini’s Saint Theresa as anyone else would be. A shamanic artist knows those vibrations are intentionally-aroused spiritual power, and they know how to invite it, cultivate it, and unleash it.

It would have been fascinating if Norval Morrisseau had lived just a bit later or been young in our time, so that he could have been “just” an artist, and been allowed to express himself as an individual, instead of being pigeonholed as an Indian artist, much less burdened with the label of shaman. In his case, his legend has become simultaneously more-and-less than the reality of his work. Fights have erupted over who might call themselves his successor, while work done in his style, direct copies, are frustrating professionals in the art world. I would have liked to see how Morrisseau would have progressed if he had cultivated his heritage-shamanic influences into his art practice, rather than exploiting them as marketing drama. Surely his work would have continued to grow and deepen in method and message.