“While I stood next to the Indian figure at the Samuel de Champlain monument, I tried to imagine where this guy would go if he was liberated from this spot? Maybe he would begin a journey to find his tribe–but what would they look like today? So much time had passed, would he even recognize them? I imagined following the Indian on his journey and making a record of the places where he found his tribe.”

“If you could leave this place, where would you go?” Jeff Thomas

The Scout Relocation Project was funded by Bodies in Translation with digital design and production assistance from the Carleton Immersive Media Studio.  We are grateful to both teams for their support.

Jeff Thomas’ (jeff-thomas.ca) vision has been to move the figure of Anishinabe Scout to the shoreline of Victoria Island. Also known as Asinabka, the island is located in the middle of the Ottawa River between the Ontario and Quebec sides. When at the shoreline, one has a unique perspective of the Parliament Buildings as well as other government buildings that Jeff has used as locations for his Postcard for Indians series.

Asinabka has also been an important site for Indigenous activism. In 2012, it was the site where Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation occupied while on her hunger strike, bringing more awareness to the Idle No More movement and reactions to Bill C-45. As with Nepean Point and Major’s Hill Park, the island is also under National Capital Commission (NCC) custodianship and has recently had its own revitalization program and as now reopened to the public.

The Scout has become an avatar for Jeff in the way he has metaphorically inhabited the figure of Scout in order to conceptualize the landscape surrounding him in what became his home over thirty years ago. With the 3D rendering, it becomes possible to produce digital environments where Scout can become an avatar for others, to see the landscape through the figure’s ‘eyes’ and through an Indigenous perspective. This has been a pedagogical device that Jeff has used throughout much of his practice, presenting a proxy – whether through an architectural frieze, monument or plastic figurine – to represent what is the experiential reality for Indigenous people in spaces where they have been, and continue to be, erased. Through Jeff’s travelogues and journals, his discourses with the archives, or engagements with the public, there is a constant positioning of the Indigenous experience as the starting point.

View The Scout Relocation Project speculative relocation project here.

SCOUT by thecimslab on Sketchfab