Dr. Carmen Robertson, an Indigenous scholar of Lakota and Scottish ancestry from the Qu’Appelle Valley, is a professor of art historian in the department of Visual Arts in the MAP faculty. Her research centers on contemporary Indigenous arts with a specific focus on the art of Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, constructions of Indigeneity in popular culture including the National Film Board, and investigatiions of the pedagogy of art histories.  Her SSHRC-funded research resulted in two books published in 2016: Mythologizing Norval Morrisseau: Art and the Colonial Narrative in the Canadian Media (University of Manitoba Press) and Norval Morrisseau: Art and Life (Art Canada Institute, University of Toronto, e-book, www.aci.ca). Robertson has published widely with numerous essays in edited collections, including “The Beauty of a Story: Toward an Indigenous Art History” in The Routledge International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research (2016). She has published in such scholarly journals as the Review of Canadian Art (RACAR), the Journal of Canadian Art History, Media History, the American Indian Quarterly, and the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education.

Robertson also co-wrote Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canada’s Newspapers (2011) with Mark Cronlund Anderson as part of their SSHRC-funded project examining Indigenous representations in Canada’s print media since Confederation. Seeing Red, used in classrooms across Canada, received a number of Sask Book Awards and has been favourably reviewed in such scholarly journals as the American Historical Review, The Canadian Journal of Communications and the Canadian Journal of Native Studies.

An independent curator with a recent exhibition at the Art Gallery of Regina called Anxieties, Robertson is also the author of a number of curatorial essays both regionally and nationally.  Land as an agential force has impacted Indigenous arts practices of the Plains. Thestark prairie ecosystem demands of artists past and present a delicate negotiation predicated on mobility and adaptability. Such concepts, in concert with cultural narratives, impact aesthetics and help shape art histories of the prairie flatland.

Dr. Robertson was awarded an HRI Fellowship in 2016-2017 for her project, Land and Identity: Shaping Art Histories of Indigenous Women of the Flatland.  Examinations of art produced by Lakota, Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis women, reveal how such nuanced aesthetic traditions in both abstract and figural expressions endure.Analyzing early examples of Lakota, Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis quillwork and beadwork found in the permanent collections of the Glenbow Art Museum, MooseJaw Museum and Art Gallery, Royal Saskatchewan Museum of History, and theManitoba Museum of History, in relation to examples of contemporary art by Lakotaartist Colleen Cutschall, Plains Cree artist Ruth Cuthand, Saulteaux artist Mary Longman, and Métis artist Sherry Farrell Racette. This program of research interrogates how the land persistently exerts itself in particular ways. Considering land as an active character in interplays of cultural, artistic, and colonial narratives offers an opportunity to re-situate such art histories.