Lori Blondeau and Adrian Stimson

When I was growing up in the late ’60s, we had an “Indian” costume in one of our closets. My sister and I hated wearing it, not because it would have been inappropriate for us white girls to don a five-and-dime headdress, but because it was made of burlap and it was itchy. Times have changed. My six-year-old son has a cowboy shirt, vest and hat in his dress-up box, but my neighbours would think I was a politically insensitive boor if we had a Native American costume in our tickle trunk. Then along come Belle Sauvage and Buffalo Boy. They come to the Western Front to set up a photo shoot, complete with a painterly Rocky Mountain backdrop. They wear their own stunning costumes, and they bring costumes for everyone else. There is a white pleather Indian princess dress, beaded suede vests, a ceremonial buffalo robe and (gasp!) an eagle feather headdress! I have died and gone to heaven. All these transgressive fantasies begin to crowd my thoughts: “I could dress like a half-naked Indian princess and they could tie me up and point guns at me. How exciting!”

Lori Blondeau is a Cree/Saulteaux/ Métis artist and curator, and Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta. Both artists currently live in Saskatoon and both spent a part of their childhood on the Gordon’s First Nation and Lebret reserves in Saskatchewan. Lori Blondeau says she became tired of trying to achieve the role of Indian Princess portrayed in wistful portraits of white women in buckskin dresses. She decided to try out cowgirl drag. She created the character Belle Sauvage, and had a buckskin outfit with white fringe custom-tailored to meet her vision of this persona. According to Candace Savage, in her book Cowgirls, Buffalo Bill Cody hired some Aboriginal women to “play” Native women in his shows. However, unlike the white women he hired, they were never given any program credits. The pistol-totin’ Belle Sauvage looks like she could teach Buffalo Bill a thing or two about respect.

According to an interview with Betsy Rosenwald posted on the Mendel Art Gallery Web site, Adrian says he created Buffalo Boy as a parody of Buffalo Bill: “Buffalo Boy is a trickster character. He’s campy, ridiculous, and absurd, but he is also a storyteller who exposes cultural and societal truths.” Adrian describes himself as “two spirited,” a term that denotes and celebrates gender diversity and spiritual giftedness. In one of the photos I posed for, Buffalo Boy stands at my side in his pearls and high heels with his hand on my fringed and beaded breast. I am hamming it up with my tongue bulging in my cheek as I thrust a buffalo skull into my crotch. We both send off a mix of gender signifiers, and the binaries of masculine and feminine, gay and straight, are blurred.

Part of the fun of this performance is knowing a bit about the people who are playing the dress-up game. That gentleman with the thick beard in the Buffalo jacket—isn’t he Cuban? He could easily pass as Métis. Another woman dresses in a black silk chinois robe and holds a rice-paper parasol. She is Native, delighted to “pass” as Asian. My friend K, who has a Celtic background, decides to pose as the Land o’ Lakes butter icon. We try vainly to remember the exact gesture of benevolence she bestows on each package of butter. A local Ojibwayan performance artist takes off her clothes. In the photo, which is developed over a course of a few minutes, she is a smiling, naked blur, holding a bottle of whiskey. Her sister dons a priest’s robe and begins shouting that she will heal everyone. At one point she even mocks taking Buffalo Boy from behind.

That’s when time stops for me: I remember vividly the words of one of the victims of residential school abuse who was sodomized by a Catholic priest. I remember that abused children sometimes act out sexual positions in play. We can’t exorcise the demons of the past, but this is the next best thing; this “playing” at healing is, in fact, part of the healing process. The impulse to walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins can be an exercise in curiosity, empathy and building trust. This performance says: “Let’s trade again. Let’s trade wigs, bras, coats and moccasins. Let’s share our ideas, our curiosity, our lust and affection for one another. Let’s play.” Stimson and Blondeau have given us permission to play dress-up and it feels erotic, transgressive and cathartic. ■

Lori Blondeau’s and Adrian Stimson’s performance piece, entitled Putting the Wild Back into the West: Starring Buffalo Boy and Belle Sauvage, curated by Joanne Bristol, was shown in the Western Front Performance Art Program in Vancouver on October 19, 2006.

Lori Weidenhammer is a performance-based interdisciplinary artist who lives in Vancouver.