Thanks for chatting with us! Can you introduce yourself for our readers?

I’m Emma Noyes, I’m an artist living in Spokane, Washington. I’m a member of the Colville Tribes and more specifically, I’m a member of the Sinixt Tribe and Colville Tribe, two bands of the Colville Tribes; one of whose traditional homeland includes Nelson and is largely north of the border. I grew up in Omak on the Colville Reservation and I have been an artist most of my life, largely because my father is an artist. He’s a carver of stone, wood, bone, and antler. I didn’t go in that particular direction, but he and my mom made sure I had a lot of opportunities to learn and use a lot of different art mediums. I have a dual career in public health and art; I did my undergraduate and masters level training in public health and I have a background in research and education—mostly work that’s been partnered with tribal communities and native communities. I’ve done a lot of different types of art over the years, but I largely work in pen, ink, and acrylic paints. 

Let’s talk a bit about your art style! How would you describe it to someone who has never seen your art before? Do you usually work in black and white?

Most of my artwork is pretty bold; I do graphic black and white ink illustrations and paintings. It’s usually depicting some aspect of a story or something from the perspective of characters I’m working with. My work is often an examination or representation of relationships within Čaptíkʷł , traditional stories. I look at characters from those stories and their relationships with their material and spiritual environment. Typically when I’m creating them, I’m thinking about that character’s thoughts and what stories go along with them—that I know of. I imagine, build upon, and connect these stories to other stories, along with any relevance and connections to my own life. I’m also interested in the character’s relationship to everything in their immediate environment. 

It’s largely in black and white—not all of my work is in black and white—I just like the super high contrast. While Brian (NIMF mural coordinator) was helping at the wall, we started talking about sight. I recently got glasses and I found out I have astigmatism. I couldn’t believe it when I first got glasses and I was like “Whoa, everything’s so much brighter!” And Brian said “That must be why you work in black and white!” I don’t think that’s solely the reason, but it was a fun “aha” moment during my time in Nelson. The black and white contrast really demands your attention in the same way the Čaptíkʷł  stories do, but it’s also a challenge to represent everything with only the duals of black and white. 

What are some of the major inspirations and influences on your art practice?

Some early inspirations for my work include other artists who were working with Čaptíkʷł characters and traditional stories, like Flathead Tribe artist Fred Roullier whose work is simple line drawings of Coyote and scenes from different traditional stories. He left a really big impression on me. He was fairly young when he illustrated a soft-cover book of these stories that came out in the 70’s. I was really drawn to it. 

I was also really inspired by another artist who would frequently depict Coyote and other characters from Coyote stories, Ric Gendron. Ric painted another mural—completed before mine— in conjunction with the celebration of the Sinixt Supreme Court ruling. Ric is also my husband’s grand-uncle. I first saw his work when I was 11 years old while he was doing a painting demonstration. My dad was doing a carving demonstration and I got to watch Ric paint Coyote playing electric guitar. Something about taking these Čaptíkʷł characters and mixing them with contemporary experience or action was deeply inspiring to me. 

And then the two other artists that come to mind for me are Tove Jansson—who created The Moomins—and Hayao Miyazaki with the Studio Ghibli world. They are both visual storytellers with deeply culturally relevant characters that link to traditional stories. Their work also touches on the qualities, dramas, emotions, personalities, flaws, and positive aspects that one finds in themselves and the people around them. A lot of our Čaptíkʷł help make sense of those things and provide a guide map of what you should or shouldn’t do. The stories help make sense of the aspects of humanness and human selves that we all share. 

One of the most important aspects of my art practice and something that I often gain inspiration from is my daily journal. I’ve kept a daily illustrative and written journal for around 15 years and almost everything, even the mural design, kind of starts there, even if it’s only a little sketch. Because everything starts there, it’s a really big part of my practice that drives some of the inspiration. 

Tell us a bit about the inspiration and the process for your piece behind the Capitol!

Essentially, being a Sinixt person and having the opportunity to create a mural in Nelson—in a town that’s on the traditional homelands of Sinixt people—in a socio-political climate where that very connection has been contested or challenged for 60-some years, that is a whole load of pressure. “What are you going to do? What are you going to create?” I went through a very non-linear cycle of “I should create whatever I want; it doesn’t have to be political” and “Well, inherently whatever I create is a Sinixt thing because I’m a Sinixt person” and it was this whole combination of tensions and conflicts that have been part of my world of creating for a really long time. 

While planning what I wanted to create, I kept coming back to an early draft of a scene that I wanted to paint big. It was something that I’d done in ink on paper and it was representing our winter traditions and our winter dances. The Chinook dances are part of our spirituality through that season. It happens during winter and it is this deep relationship to all things in our environment; making sure that we are taking care of doing those first teachings and dances. I wanted to show one of those winter dances in some fashion, with many Čaptíkʷł characters involved in it. Although I had five other ideas for what the mural could be, I kept coming back to that one. 

As I was creating a draft, I thought about how I might want to build upon the design to further connect this as an image of cultural relevance to the First Peoples of this particular place. I was trying to decide if I wanted to include a Frog Mountain silhouette or something else. I asked my five-year-old daughter if I should have Frog Mountain as a high-contrast silhouette in the background or if I should have an outline that looks somewhat like a mole—because the design has Mole Woman at the centre pole in the dance. When I asked her that, she looked at it and she said “Oh, so it would be Mole’s spirit helper there at the dance?” And at that moment I was like “Yes! That’s exactly how I should depict this.” To me, this moment was particularly meaningful and demonstrated that cultural continuity clearly exists in generations of my family and a lot of other Sinixt families. A five-year-old to be able to say what would be spiritually represented in that image by having a silhouette of a mole there. At this time, I was really thinking “How do I make this at least a little tied to our existence? What visual landscape can I offer in a space on our homelands?” 

Here’s a question we’ve heard a lot from those on mural tours. What does “Extant” mean?

Awesome! That’s exciting because that’s a question I wanted to inspire, whether it means someone then looks it up online or it sticks with them in their mind. While I was in the process of developing the design I was thinking a lot about the 1950’s and setting the course of our history as a people. Our connection to place had been highly disturbed in many ways, but this declaration of extinction played a really big role in our identity, our psyche, and our access to being considered “First Nations Peoples of Canada” or to have any claim to our land. With that declaration of extinction being challenged by the Supreme Court and ruling in Sinixt favor, it was really a moment where I was thinking, probably too much, about what it means to exist and this challenge of extinction. It’s kind of like, we all know that we’re not extinct, because we’re all here. 

So I was curious; what’s the opposite of something that’s extinct? I guess I hadn’t really thought about it before and it was a new word to me. The opposite of “Extinct” is “Extant”. A new word for me is kind of like a new toy so I was like “Okay, what else can we do with this word?” Extant is essentially just the opposite of being extinct; it’s still existing, it’s surviving, it’s something that’s able to be publicly seen, or reached, and it’s tangible. It comes from a word that means something is visible or prominent, which in Nelson and on our homelands, for a lot of people we are not yet highly visible or highly prominent. Or, people are overlooking the ways in which we are, because we have a deep relationship extending back generations to all of these places. People struggle to look upon land and understand that land is not something that belongs to you—that there is land right there and there are people that belong to it. So Extant being embedded in the mural was my way of saying that Sinixt people are not destroyed or lost. Extant also refers to existing from the past, something that has that continuity and connection to the past; something very old. If something simply exists, it doesn’t necessarily denote that “old” connection. Maybe it’s me getting a little too obsessed with colonizer language but I really liked having that big, strong word central to the mural image. 

The word often refers to documents in particular, and so that also seemed appropriate since we had a really powerful and important ceremony when we did our celebration of the Supreme Court decision and in it, people who were Sinixt (and people who weren’t) had the opportunity to symbolically and actively burn a copy of the declaration of extinction. And that document is actually what has become extinct at this point; the document is what is no longer in existence. 

Any notable memories during your painting process and time here?

It was so good to be able to have some little day trips and time to experience an area that I’ve really not spent time in! Both time on the water and time in the woods. 

While painting, my whole family was around, and I was wearing a harness and I was up on the lift. Sitting next to the lift on a cement stoop and nursing my six-month-old baby will probably be a memory for some time, because it was such a moment of badassery, one of those ones that moms have to remember about themselves and about their lives. Likewise, I was able to see my daughter’s reaction to the progress I was making along the way. When I was pretty much done (I had a few hours of work left), we got ice cream and we were walking behind the Capitol building by the mural. My daughter asked if we could stop there for a minute to look at it. She asked if I was proud of myself for finishing it, which was just the dearest, most wonderful thing. She’s only five, but as a parent you get these opportunities to see your parenting through your child, like you almost have them parent back to you. Sometimes it’s like “You’re parenting back to me something that I’m passing to you and I don’t want to keep passing this back and forth” but this was a moment of something like “Oh yeah, that teaching to really reflect and take a moment to feel your accomplishments; I love that.”

Bonus question (because Brian would probably want to know the answer). Name the three best places to eat in Nelson!

Such a good question! I appreciate Brian so much, in part because he introduced me to the Kootenay Bakery. I was probably guilty of eating something from that bakery every single day. I loved it so much. I’m a big fan of bakeries, especially ones with huge menus. I also really loved Red Light Ramen; that is such a gem and was a really good place for our whole family to eat. And I had so much fun going out for lunch with Brian and his mom at the Outer Clove, so I’ll have to add that spot too. Clearly another Nelson gem! But it’s also hard, this is a place with so much good food. 

Anything to add before we wrap up?

So much gratitude to the whole team and to everyone that I had the joy of interacting with. Everyone was so supportive and thoughtful and I feel like NDAC did such a good job of thinking of every aspect they could support a muralist with. I think it’s a model for other cities and places that are also embarking on mural festivals or just expanding the number of murals in their area. I have a lot of appreciation for that. 

Interviewer: Ingrid Love

2022