ABOUT ME....

I am a self-taught American Metis Artist. I reside in Sault Sainte Marie, the city through which the first Canadian Voyageur in the BOUVETTE Family traveled on his way to establishing a long family history in the Red River Valley and beyond. I am exploring the woodland style of painting, taking clues and cues from my peers in the Metis Culture. My Maternal Heritage is RR Metis, Salish, and English. I am 4th generation Eldest Daughter, direct female line from a Native Woman of the Okanagan Valley in B.C. and I carry her Native MtDNA. (Native Heritage Info here) I have always known of my Aboriginal heritage, and in the 1990s I moved North to further investigate and reclaim the Native Heritage my Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother were taught to repress. I am a proud Metis Woman, a North American Native Woman. I am signing these paintings with the Metis name BOUVETTE, that has graced my family for many generations. (Bouvette Genealogy, off site, opens new window)

I hope you enjoy viewing my Art as much as I enjoyed creating it.

The pleasures for me include the beauty of color, the flow of the paint along the lines of definition, the feeling of being connected to something Greater than myself while working in the Native style and on subjects from nature. I am bringing back to my family the truth of what we are, as I continue to explore my Metis heritage and express it through my Art.

There rests in my heart a certainty that more exists in all the world around than what our intellect & senses can tell us. Giving thanks to the sun just for coming up, offering tobacco to Lake Superior, honoring creation through my paintings, these things bring back answers from all my relations, the Dancing Cedars, the Flittering Woodpeckers, the Whispering Winds.....

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My Grandma was born the the OKANAGAN VALLEY in British Columbia, the Daughter of a Red River Metis father, and a First Nations mother. Her father was Frank BOUVETTE of early Kelowna history. She was taught not to even TALK about being Native. She married an Englishman and moved to Michigan. Her daughter, my mother, was taught not to go out in the sun and get "dark as a wild Indian". My mother married a descendant of New England's Colonial Immigrants, and I look like him.

But I often wonder, when I see pictures of the Okanagan, my Grandmother's homeland, how could she spend her whole life away from such beauty?? I wonder if someday I will be able to return there, with my Daughter and Granddaughters, to honor my Grandmother, and the Native Women of my family who came before her.

I am using my Grandma's last name on these because I am Matriarchal at heart, and because it represents that rich, natural part of myself I am growing to understand and value. Since moving North, and growing older, I have become more and more convinced that being Native has deeper roots than genetic heritage, and cultural bias. We are the expression of a Great Spirit, revealing itself in our hearts, and in the hearts of all living things across North America. I cry at PowWows here among the Chippewa (Anishnaabe) because so many look like my Mother and Grandmother. When I take courage and go round the circle, I feel connected to the ancestors, I feel like I am dancing for all the women in my family, back so many generations, who COULD NOT. 

Ayla