KITCHENER — This is how revolutions begin: quietly, discreetly, without pomp or circumstance, on rainy July weekends when few people are around.

“This is us telling our stories and showing that we’re here,” says Thomas (“Tom Tom”) Sinclair, one of several Indigenous artists showcasing their work at the Neebing Indigenous Art Fair through July 16 at Bingemans.

“It’s so validating for us that our stories are going to be told, to be heard, and that we have friends helping us. It’s such a big deal for us and so humbling, and we’re so overwhelmingly grateful for it.”

Despite the fact the room is all but empty, with only a reporter and a handful of visitors on this lonely Saturday afternoon, the 40-something organizer says this with genuine gratitude, his voice breaking with emotion.

It has, after all, been a long road, stretching back to the Truth and Reconcilation Commission’s 94 “Calls to Action” in 2015 and the advocacy efforts of Gord Downie, the Tragically Hip frontman who championed Indigenous causes before his death from brain cancer in 2017.

For Sinclair, being here — in this space, supported by this community — is a milestone not to be taken lightly.

“When he had the very last Hip concert I’m absolutely positive every single Canadian had their chequebooks out to write out a fat donation to Sunnybrook (Hospital) for cancer research,” says Sinclair, an Ojibway from Couchiching First Nation who grew up in Thunder Bay.

“But he spoke about Anishinaabe people and the problems we have in the north, and because of that, it made our stories known.”

People don’t understand the devastating impact the residential school system had on generations, he says, or the “cultural genocide” that inflicted pain, “but what Bingemans has done — I’m going to get emotional here — this is truth and reconciliation!”

The pain, the resilience, the hopes for the future: it’s all here, in brightly coloured acrylic paintings of turtles and deer and bears and canoes sweeping down vast rivers in a timeless dreamscape of Indigenous symbols signifying life, hope and resilience.

“This is one of our oldest writing styles and oldest forms of communication,” Sinclair says of pictographic works that, in ways large and small, celebrate the Grand River and local Indigenous landscape.

“Our elders would write in symbols and draw animals in the dirt as they were telling stories, kind of like mnemonics. And those same stories are being related here in our artist’s vision.”

Co-organizer Autumn Smith agrees.

“People say Indigenous people didn’t have a written language, but our art was our written language,” says the 26-year-old self-taught Ojibway-Odawa artist from Magnetawan First Nation.

“It was used to convey messages and share knowledge, so that’s what we’re doing, continuing that tradition our ancestors have been doing for thousands of years.”

Ultimately, it’s about sharing with people who, until recently, had little interest or awareness.

“I don’t care about money and I don’t care about sales,” insists Patrick Paul, who struggled with alcohol and substance abuse before discovering the rejuvenating power of art.

“The most important part is being able to show our culture and places it hasn’t thrived before, where it’s been shelved to the background of society. For us to be able to share this in the forefront of Kitchener-Waterloo is really important.

“We’re doing something that Indigenous people weren’t allowed to do before.”

With bright colours and impressionistic symbols, many paintings intertwine with their creators’ painful pasts, exerting a healing power they say is redemptive.

“This one explains how I’m the first generation of my family in four generations that didn’t have to attend residential school,” says Sinclair of a stark, vibrant work he calls “Surviving the Sex Offender.”

“But that also means that after all the things that happened to me in my childhood, I didn’t have the church or the residential school or the government to be angry at.”

His story — about abuse victims inflicting harm on future generations because it’s what they know — is painful to hear.

“I had people who were teaching me how to hunt and fish, coming over for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners,” he says, noting abuse at the hands of his own people impacted his mental health and resulted in time living as an addict on the streets.

“They were the ones who hurt me. It was like people who were traumatized trying to help traumatized people.”

Art helped save his life, he says, because it validated his existence.

“It was finding peace within myself, and love. It was letting go of the shame, those hurts, and finding pride in my culture, my people, in who I am as an individual.”

Smith left her job as a child and youth worker when she realized the key to broader connections — and healing — was sharing her culture through art.

“When I was a kid, nobody knew anything,” she says.

“Their ideas about native culture were based on movies and television and things they would read in books. But those things put us in the past as people who wore buckskin all the time and lived in teepees.”

The post-2015 emphasis on the trauma of residential schools was a reality check for many, she notes, but misleading in a different way.

“We hear so much about the truth and reconciliation stuff, about residential schools and the Sixties Scoop and day schools, but there’s not so much talk about the beauty of our culture and what we kept and what’s still here.

“That’s what we want to share. We’re not just our trauma. We’re also a really beautiful and colourful people.”

Indigenous paintings are alive, she says. They have spirits.

“There’s an Anishinaabe belief that things a lot of us think aren’t living actually are: rocks are living, water is living. That’s what we’re trying to show with these paintings, the relationships between living things that still exist today.”

It’s an optimistic view, and eight years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its momentous report, a welcome change.

“There’s definitely a shift that’s happening and it’s going to change the way Indigenous art is presented,” agrees Paul.

“A lot of us are still on the powwow trail selling art at markets, but I really deeply believe we have gallery level material here.

“This is our culture. It deserves to be at the forefront.”

The Neebing Indigenous Art Fair runs through July 16 in Bingemans Embassy Room, 425 Bingemans Centre Drive, in Kitchener. For more information go to www.indigenouswr.ca

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