Brown Bag:Rock Paintings and Anishinaabeg Iconological Sovereignty

Speaker: Dr. Christopher Watts

This talk explores ancestral Anishinaabeg rock paintings of the Canadian Shield with the aim of moving beyond conventional analytical frameworks. By foregrounding how contemporary Anishinaabeg communities engage with and interpret these paintings, it highlights epistemic commitments such as dreamwork, slipstreaming, and what may be described as “narrative ekphrasis.” The presentation critiques the authoritative gaze of what Damien Skinner terms “settler-colonial art history” and advocates instead for an iconological sovereignty grounded in Anishinaabeg temporalities and ontologies. It demonstrates how an Anishinaabeg iconology recenters Indigenous interpretive frameworks while decentering settler-state approaches. In doing so, the talk shows how rock paintings actively participate in ongoing Anishinaabeg lifeways, serving both metaphysical and political purposes. Moving beyond colonial discourses, this approach reveals a dynamic engagement with the past in which rock paintings generate new understandings in the present and inspire future relations.