Giant Bear 

Curator: Look at this vibrant painting, "Giant Bear" by the renowned Indigenous-Canadian artist, Norval Morrisseau. It is an acrylic work dominated by striking colours and bold, black outlines, very characteristic of his style. Editor: It’s visually arresting, that's for sure. The composition feels quite flattened, and the colour palette is bold. I immediately think about ideas of protection and vulnerability with the juxtaposition of the bear overseeing what looks like a family unit inside the wigwam. Curator: Morrisseau’s work is deeply connected to his Ojibwe heritage, and often incorporates elements of pictography and woodland style painting. We need to look at this in the context of the history of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous communities in Canada, particularly the ways in which cultural traditions were suppressed. He used art to reclaim and celebrate those traditions. Editor: The bear looms large – not just in size but as a visual symbol of spiritual power within many indigenous cultures. Even the sun at the top of the canvas pulses with the vitality, each ray stretching outward like a beckoning signal, the land marked and altered through symbolism and storytelling, through the layering of pictorial elements like the sun, or the families rendered along the canvas plane in simple gestures. Curator: Yes, and note how the vibrant green of the land and vivid red-orange of the dwelling almost vibrate against the stark blue mountains and sky. We should acknowledge here that it’s not just a literal representation but a symbolic landscape rooted in Indigenous ontology. Editor: It feels very layered too—landscape, dwelling, the protective symbol overhead and each of those rendered with simplified, declarative imagery that, despite seeming ‘primitive,’ carries immense weight. Is it about surveillance, power, ancestry? So much is hinted at, so little explicitly stated, yet all so powerfully visualized. Curator: Ultimately, the painting speaks to the enduring resilience of Indigenous communities and cultures in the face of adversity. It encourages viewers to question power dynamics. Editor: Right— the ways we see the landscape, and our own places within those layered cosmologies—not as something monolithic but as a field of charged and actively speaking symbols. It makes you aware of looking and how images form not just stories but active, vibrant worldviews.