Racists are poseurs, according to Wayne Ashley.
"I'm six-foot-one," says the St. Albert and Driftpile artist, "I'm native, I have tattoos … to some people, it may seem intimidating." He gets a lot of strange looks when he goes into restaurants, he says, and hears many disparaging remarks about First Nations people.
But focusing on race is idiotic, he says. "We all pray to the same God, and he made us all in his image."
If you're a true racist, he argues, you'd stick to your beliefs and avoid associating with anyone outside your race. "You stick with that world and see how long you last."
Ashley, a creator of large tile monuments, plans to tell the world this message with his latest work of art. Entitled Unity, the nine-by-10-foot steel-and-tile wall will be delivered to the Driftpile First Nation later this month. He's dedicated the $500,000 piece to aboriginal communities across Canada, including St. Albert, and is giving it away for free.
Racism is still a problem in Canada, Ashley says, and this is his way of fighting it. "If we don't look within ourselves and heal this problem as individuals, we're just going to be passing it on to future generations."
One big plaque
Ashley, who used to live in Alexander, has previously created monuments in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Edmonton City Hall and the City of New York. Each has been done for free and funded through donations.
Ashley says he had received many requests for monuments to unmarked graves after he made the one in Holy Cross Cemetery, and didn't have time to meet all of them. He decided to make a single, giant piece dedicated to all aboriginal communities instead.
Most of the piece — a large, tile-covered monolith — will be covered with the names of Treaty 8 communities plus one from each of the other treaty regions in Canada. (St. Albert is one of them.) The back will feature three large aluminium crosses, while the front will have four large tile panels depicting a buffalo, an eagle bearing a cross and a woman with eagle wings.
The central panel on the front depicts the common origin of humanity, Ashley explains. In the middle is a teepee with a turtle on it, he says, the latter of which represents wisdom and the origin of all life from the sea. The teepee morphs into a tree of life, the canopy of which resembles the mythological thunderbird. Etched in the sky above it are faces representing ancestral sprits, above which sits a cloud shaped like an eagle and a bear.
A man and a woman guard either side of the tree. They're covering each other's back, Ashley notes, and love each other despite their differences. "That's what life is about — love — and that applies to all people across the world." The piece expresses his belief that people will eventually learn to put aside their differences and work together.
Members of the Alberta Job Corps in Edmonton built the frame for the piece, says supervisor Kathy Zwart. The corps, a provincially funded agency that helps people build skills for work, also helped construct Ashley's last work, The First Law of World Peace.
"It's a beautiful work," she says of his current project. "It all has a story to it."
Art with a message
Ashley says he plans to place the finished work by the church by the highway that runs through Driftpile, which is in the rough centre of Treaty 8. He estimates that he's given away about $1.5 million worth of art with this project.
Ashley says he feels driven to get these messages out through his art. "If I do my part, when I die and I know I gave 100 per cent of my time towards [fighting] racism and bigotry, then I figure I did what I came here to do."
The finished work will be unveiled in Driftpile this September.
