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Ursula Johnson, nscad University alumna (2006) and former Cape Breton University artist-in-residence (2013-14), captured the attention of Halifax's broader gallerygoing public with Elmiet, a performance first staged for Nocturne, the city's "allnight" arts festival1 in 2010. Wearing an ash splint basket she'd made to cover her head and eyes, Johnson aroused the curiosity of passersby as she was led along downtown streets to Grand Parade Square by a couple of parkour practitioners. From the assembled crowd, a man stepped forward in response to her call for a volunteer. Johnson explained to him that a proclamation offering a bounty2 for Mi'kmaw3 scalps was never rescinded in Nova Scotia and asked if he was willing to help her enact the final "scalping" in the province by removing the basket from her head. "Yes," he managed to reply.4 And so the "scalping" occurred, and spectators learned a detail about the history of Aboriginal-settler relations in eastern Canada. Yet, because this particular facet of history isn't entirely historical (the bounty is still "in the books"), the audience couldn't shrug it off as something that wasn't their responsibility to address. This symbolic scalping thus encouraged spectators to acknowledge a wrong that ought to be righted and to agree collectively that the bounty and the act that must be done to receive it are both unacceptable.
After Elmiet, Johnson's reputation in Halifax gained momentum with new work building on earlier themes and concepts, from spectator-participant engagement to Aboriginal identity issues. Even her non-art performances seemed designed to encourage new points of view - namely, in non-Aboriginals unfamiliar with anti- or de-colonization strategies and with Aboriginal culture in general (and with Mi'kmaw culture in particular). For instance, in 2012, while artist-in-residence at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Johnson gave an artist's talk for which she introduced herself first in Mi'kmaw, then English. In Canada, our notion of bilingualism tends to comprise English and French, so Johnson's introduction was a reminder that Mi'kmaw was spoken here long before either European language, provoking questions about the systemic privileging of settler cultures and languages, and the erasure of Aboriginal cultures and languages; why Aboriginal languages are so rarely allowed any "official" space; and how entire Aboriginal communities are silenced, both literally and figuratively. Attendees...