Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba)), The Pariah, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 36 in.
The Pariah, a nineteenth-century style portrait of Kent Monkman’s shape-shifting, genderfluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, tells an untold story behind Canada’s confederation as a nation. In an attempt to advocate for Indigenous people and turn Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s greedy mind from colonialist pursuits, Miss Chief strategically choreographed an affair with the power-hungry politician. “In Europe,” said Miss Chief in her Memoirs, “I had learned that men like him were so simple, blinded by greed; they saw the world only as that from which they can profit.” She was disgusted by Macdonald, and “while his lumpy, large-nosed face was not to my liking and his sour milk body odor, alcohol and vomit-tinged breath quite repulsive, his relationship with the bottle was a weakness I could perhaps exploit to help my people. It would be easy to let a man like this think I was giving him what he wanted and perhaps in time shift his thinking, for he had power to influence others of his kind.”
Miss Chief became Macdonald’s “country wife,” but to her, he was nothing more than an okı̂ skwêpêsk, a drunk. Mercifully for Miss Chief, Macdonald’s consistent failure to perform in the bedroom ensured this affair would remain a mere pantomime. She came to Picton where he was practicing law to implore him again for fairness in his dealings with her people, the Cree. When he rebuked her she threatened to expose their affair to the community and his wife. Hoping to keep her quiet, he lavished gifts upon her, installing her in a magnificent house of her own she dubbed Château Miss Chief. The centerpiece of the lavish necklace she wears in The Pariah is La Peregrina, a pearl that passed among generations of Spanish royalty before ending up in the possession of famed actress Elizabeth Taylor. However, Macdonald could not silence Miss Chief with imperialist gifts, and her love for her people could not be contained by mere wallpaper and gilded moldings.
In the end, not even Miss Chief could sway the mind of a man like John A. Macdonald. Despite her efforts to teach him Cree ways of miyowı̂ cêhtowin, living in harmony together, and wâhkôhtowin, kinship, “not one whisker of Macdonald’s chin had I changed.” She finally left him in disgust on July 1st, 1867. Macdonald would go on to orchestrate the construction of a railroad through Indigenous lands, the reservation system, and residential schools. Miss Chief considered her time with Macdonald “my greatest performance and my worst failure.”
More works by Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Compositional Study for The Examination, 2021
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Máh-To-Tó-Pah (Four Bears) with Indian Dandy 19, 233, 2008
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Study for Section 69 of the Indian Act, 2021
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Compositional Study for Song of the Hunt, 2022
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Study for They Walk Softly on this Earth, 2022
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Die Indianer, 2014
Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba))
Watercolor Study for Miss Chief's Tipi Dress, 2019
