CHEYENNE RAIN LeGRANDE

2023

Aug 25

Mullyanne Nîmito, 2022
single channel HD video
16 minutes

Kamloops Art Gallery
Above the entrance to the TNRD building

Mullyanne Nîmito explores concepts of protection, movement as healing, ancestral knowledge, traditional practice, and Nehiyaw fashion. Here, Cheyenne Rain LeGrande dances in a “Bepsi” tab shawl made of beer and Pepsi can tabs that she and members from her community collected over the past five years. Weaving the tabs and pastel ribbon together, LeGrande created a long shawl with fringe similar to the fancy shawls worn at powwows. Translated from nêhiyawêwin, Nîmito means “she dances.”

LeGrande draws inspiration from her ancestors, who were innovative artists and artisans. Just as her ancestors would create garments out of everything around them, LeGrande was also moved to use everyday materials. She states, “creating this garment was an act of reclamation and when I wear it, it feels like armour, it feels like protection.” LeGrande is known for an ever-growing collection of attire which incorporates traditional techniques, materials, and forms with contemporary approaches, including her signature sky-high wooden platform moccasins. As Métis filmmaker, writer, dancer, and curator Justin Ducharme notes in the exhibition text for LeGrande’s exhibition of the same title at grunt gallery, it is in the “details where iconography has the chance to be born, and in the context of this work, where the connection to both traditional and contemporary ways of expressing Indigeneity meet.” 1

Mullyanne Nîmito is also the artist’s singing debut. The soothing, airy cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams was translated by LeGrande’s kokum (grandmother) and mother from English into nehiyawewin, illustrating how familial collaboration is continually woven through the artist’s practice. The song is also reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a video of a carefree, longboarding Nathan Apodaca, of Mexican and Arapaho descent, went viral, with Dreams as the soundtrack. This video brought some joy during a hard time, just as LeGrande’s work emphasizes celebration and affirmation of nehiyawewin ingenuity, care, and iconography despite the continual erasure and violence endured by Indigenous people and lands.

Artist Biography

Cheyenne Rain LeGrande is a Nehiyaw Isko artist from Bigstone Cree Nation in the area also known as Alberta. She currently resides in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). LeGrande received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2019. She was awarded the BC prize for the BMO 1st Art! emerging artist competition and has received the Moment Factory Award for her work Nehiyaw Isko. Her work often explores the interconnection between history and the body. She works in multi-disciplinary ways, moving through installation, photography, video, sound, and performance art.

1. Justin Ducharme, grunt gallery catalogue for the exhibtion “Mullyanne Nimito”, Dall, 2022.