“When you’re doing corpse paint, do you go over the mustache or not…?” Justin Bear L’Arrivée laughs amongst a group of BIPOC metalheads. We were all getting ready for the evening’s events at a table in the back of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art’s gallery space in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, where Justin acts as Artistic Director. The exhibition is titled “Warpaint,” a solo show by Swampy Cree, Dene, and Mennonite artist Brianna Wentz. Everyone at the table (save Justin and Laura Lewis, another incredible Winnipeg artist) modelled for Brianna back in 2022 in preparation for this exhibition: she invited a group of BIPOC women, gender-diverse, and queer metalheads to be photographed for her large-scale painted portraits. Her concerns, among many BIPOC women, gender-expansive, and queer metalheads, punks, and alt-goths, are that we have experienced the ongoing intersections of racism and heteropatriarchy within these music scenes that have been touted to be “anti-establishment” and “anti-status quo.” The irony is that these scenes are dominated by cis white heterosexual men, who are either wolves in sheep’s clothing (if sheep wore studded leather jackets) or complicit in this harm. The purpose of this exhibition was to carve a safer space within an Indigenous artist-run gallery for BIPOC metalheads, especially women, gender-diverse and queer folks, to fully embrace our participation within these scenes without worry of discrimination or ostracization. Brianna went above and beyond with these massive painted portraits of Kayla Fernandez, Jessie Jannuska, Jessica Canard, and myself, all donning our favourite metal regalia and corpse-painted faces. This exhibition resulted in me being the representation I wish I had witnessed in my younger years.

Amongst these powerful portraits, the evening included a performance by Kayla Fernandez’s metal band, Vagina Witchcraft, and a pole performance by me. Pole dancing has played an integral role in my life for the past eight years—I have stripped, danced burlesque, worked as a pole instructor and hell, and even performed on the pole as my drag king character, Randy River (which is a story for another day). I started taking pole dancing classes in 2016 while living in Montréal when I went back to school to pursue Indigenous art history. As I studied the works of Adrian Stimson, Lori Blondeau, Kent Monkman, and Rebecca Belmore, I began unpacking the deeply kinesthetic work of storytelling in connection to the body and movement. For us Anishinaabe, sharing stories and teachings is a profound part of our ontologies and ways of being—it is how we continue the legacy of our oral traditions and languages for future generations. Art and aesthetics are powerful tools in communicating these stories, which can be seen in everything from beadwork to new media. I often argue that dance is a valid form of storytelling outside of oral or literary conventions—the body acts as an apparatus to continue and honour our ancestral narratives (look at Pow Wow, for example). 

Much of my research looks at the connections between Anishinaabe aesthetics, body sovereignty, and the validation of Two-Spirit, trans, and queer Indigenous performing arts, such as drag and burlesque, within and outside of major arts industries. Additionally, I engage with erotics within Anishinaabe storytelling and dance and hope to advocate for the liberation of autonomous Indigenous bodies—to peel away the layers of shame and guilt at the hands of the residential school system, and to fight against the spiritual, psychological and physical harm that colonial violence continues to perpetuate. Using the body, movement, and erotic dance allows me to tell my story and the stories of those who came before me—the ones who married the stars and the tricksters who’d shapeshift into different genders, especially in spaces where historically, people like me were seldom welcomed into.

By dancing on the pole in the middle of Urban Shaman Aboriginal Contemporary Art, wearing nothing but a skimpy bikini and corpse paint, I was not only celebrating queer Indigenous sex and sexuality, I was also bringing that into the realm of the arts where it is rarely invited into, let alone revered. Therefore, being accepted into these spaces to perform as a sexy dancer grants me the ability to share my erotic narratives while tapping into my empowerment as an Anishinaabe Two-Spirit person—hopefully that inspires community members to do the same. The significance of this all happening within an Indigenous-run gallery is a testament to the legacy of these spaces, and acts as a beacon of hope for Indigenous artists who swim against the current of major arts industries.