Exhibition aimed at government, corporate ‘redwashing’

As Manitobans eye the 2025 federal budget’s sometimes-grand nation-building promises, one activist warns we’re conveniently overlooking the real baggage for the environment and First Nations.

Clayton Thomas-Müller — among the province’s most noted Indigenous and climate advocates, and curator of the politically fierce Red Wash Stand opening at the Graffiti Gallery tonight — never raises his voice as his intensity mounts, his logic and words tightening like fists.

“We’re talking about (billions) in cuts to social programming, and you bet Indigenous and Northern Affairs is going to get a huge hit,” he says.

While the Prime Minister’s Office is promising $2.3 billion over three years for clean water in First Nations, it is decreasing the budgets for Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada by an equivalent amount by 2030 — and making significant cuts elsewhere across the public sector.

“And all the money that goes to Native people, you watch, it’s going to go to the ones that said ‘yes’ to major infrastructure projects under Bill C-5,” he says.

As he speaks, artist Jedrick Thorassie walks through the warehouse gallery on Higgins Avenue, barely visible behind the massive painting he carries, showing a bulldozer labelled “Bill C5” ravaging a pristine landscape.

Passed by the federal Liberal government in 2025 to allow Canada to fast-track large-scale infrastructure projects in the “national interest,” Bill C5 is seen by some as an expedient measure to safeguard Canadian sovereignty in an era of aggression from south of the border.

Its critics argue the bill empowers the feds to ride roughshod over environmental regulations and Indigenous consultation and consent.

Thomas-Müller — a Mathias Colomb Cree Nation member who has been on the front line of climate activism for decades as a key organizer with groups such as 350.org and Idle No More — is among such critics; many of Red Wash Stand’s works have Bill C-5 in their crosshairs.

As well as featuring paintings and murals adorning the Graffiti Gallery’s wall space, the exhibition he oversees abstracts from some of these protests’ arresting banners, logos and slogans, and sticks them in the exhibition space.

His one-two punch aims not just at government but the corporate sector and its sponsorship of Indigenous education, arts and culture — giving them, he argues, social licence while masking their ongoing environmental destruction and unjust treatment of First Nations on the most crucial issues.

He and others call the phenomenon “redwashing.”

“Weaving this inevitability narrative, which is what corporations do, is a form of modern-day glass beads and smallpox blankets. Why are we letting (oil and gas) companies into our children’s classrooms? We don’t let tobacco companies come in and talk about the lucrative opportunities working for Du Maurier in our children’s high school classrooms,” he says.

In July, Thomas-Müller — author of the memoir Life in the City of Dirty Water — penned a sharp opinion piece for The Globe and Mail criticizing what he sees as the ecologically dangerous approach taking form to revive the Port of Churchill, one of Canada’s so-called nation-building projects named by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The article incited a small war of words between him and Premier Wab Kinew.

Notwithstanding, he appreciates the acute dilemmas faced by Indigenous leaders, communities, artists and social enterprises when it comes to “partnering” with corporations and a federal government that may not have their best interests at heart, he says.

When it comes to government grants, he indicates there are generally fewer strings attached.

“I’m not against economic development. Being able to run your own food systems, your own water security and housing … community self-determination is the solution to climate change,” he says.

Behind Thomas-Müller works Raul Gonzalez-Mictlan, a Mexican muralist who grew up in Los Angeles and is another lead artist in Red Wash Stand.

He’s all too familiar with the question frequently put to politically populist artists like him about whether they’re instrumentalizing art when it should be for its own sake, beautiful and apolitical.

“All images are propaganda. No matter what it is, every single image is propaganda,” he says.

“But images started as information for survival. Now, we have information for consumption, not consumption of just ideas, but consumption of trash products. So yes, it’s political, but I want to focus more on information for survival.”

He’s working on a mural that excoriates Syncrude, one of Canada’s largest oil producers, and its attempts to gain “social credit” by positioning itself as an ally to Indigenous communities.

“This is using images as a tool for education, like, what are we leaving to the future generations?” he says.

“You could be a billionaire or you could be a bum — you’re (still) a meat bag. You’re not taking nothing with you, so what are you doing?”

The Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition is hosting a march from The Forks to Graffiti Gallery at 109 Higgins Ave. from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. today. The exhibition opening is free with the donation of a non-perishable food item. An artist talk takes place at 8 p.m., with music by DJ Majuice.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca