Bio:
Debra Sparrow, a Musqueam weaver, searched out a connection to a dormant tradition of Coast Salish weaving which had been sleeping quietly for 82 years. She found a direct connection to Coast Salish wool weaving while speaking with her grandfather about the practice. This sparked an involvement in the revival of Coast Salish weaving that has continued for over 30 years. With her weavings, Sparrow enters into conversations about the narrative of what it means to be a Musqueam person. The Musqueam Village sits alongside the metropolis of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the complexities of this are present when Debra Sparrow speaks on her intentions as an artist. She strikes an elegant balance between honoring the past and embracing the many facets of modern life for a Musqueam person in her weavings, engaging in teaching young weavers in a traditional apprenticeship model and engaging in significant public works in the city of Vancouver, including beginning in 2018 several mural projects across the city titled “Blanketing the City.”
Her work has been exhibited and collected nationally and Internationally, including at The Burke Museum in Seattle, The Smithsonian, The Royal BC Museum, First Nations gallery at Government House in Victoria, The Heard Museum, and the Canadian Museum of History. She was the recipient of the BC Creative Achievement Award for First Nations Art in 2008. Her weavings are a part of the Musqueam Welcome Area of the International Arrivals area, the official welcoming area to Canada. Sparrow engages in design work designing the logo for the Canadian Hockey Teams for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, BC.
Artist Statement:
Excerpts from a conversation between the artist Debra Sparrow, Atheana Picha, and the curator on September 16th, 2002
This blanket that you are going to have to be part of this beautiful exhibit, that’s a blanket that’s really meaningful to me because it belongs and is going to hang in the board room of our Vancouver school board. Way back when I first began to understand how valuable weaving was in terms of an educational resource for schools, it occurred to me that learning whatever I could historically, but then moving the challenges behind mathematics, sometimes in my frustration like I would be sitting there figuring patterns out and then thinking to myself “oh my gosh these women knew mathematics” and why did we never know about it. I would sit back and look at my work and their work and just be in awe of it, and think to myself how wrong everything was. Then to get so involved with the dying process as well and figure out and know that it was science taking plants and pulling the color out of it, it was green and then it might turn purple. Again, being in awe at the work they were doing, and again going to school in a colonial system and being assimilated we were being taught in a certain way and there was no room for other ways of thinking. I always rejected school anyway, I only got to grade eight and then I quit. Walked away. So, this was bringing the education that I felt I needed, that was part of who I was that I missed. So, I was so excited but honored, as Atheana mentioned it teaches you not only about the mathematics, the science, and the social. But the social life around it. Being patient, being respectful.
Years go by so finally I guess just before reconciliation, leading up to it and the conversations were getting deeper. It's called the Reconciliation Blanket but I actually feel it’s not. I feel like it was already there. It’s about our whole journey to us coming back to who we always have been. I said I would never stop weaving till I wrapped the whole city of Vancouver in a blanket. It was kind of like a metaphor for me but that’s what I’m doing now because I’m working murals in a big large scale with Atheana as well, and my grandson and we’re doing that. We’re moving out of our traditional part and into a contemporary world that we can reintroduce the value of this work. It’s not just a textile but we want to wrap people at every capacity, we’re not going to totally just hold everything over everybody about reconciliation. And we’re going to wrap not only our own people but other people who want to walk with us and be with us. So that’s what the foundation of that blanket is. My sister Wendy and I, and the ladies, we talked about that, we talked about this beginning and the ripple effect. I wrote a story about my grandfather called, Know Who You Are, Know Were You Come From, and our roots are planted firmly in the soil that our ancestors are buried, and our roots are steep now and they’re blooming again, and they’re going to spread and the seeds will fall wherever they might, and it comes from your direction, the island direction, every direction, we are now all becoming what we were always supposed to be.
I stand in who I am, and I stand strong, we’ve got all our ancestors behind us.