A Prelude to Buffalo Boy’s The American Indian Returns

This exhibition tells many stories.

One is of Adrian Stimson (Chair of Board of Governors and BFA ‘03, Painting) discovering La Rochelle during the Les rencontres décoloniales1 residency in January 2023. La Rochelle is a small yet prestigious port city on the Atlantic coast of France known as “beautiful and rebellious,” a reference in part to the XVIIth century, when the wealthy Huguenot city declared its independence from the King of Catholic France 2 . Then the city amassed its wealth through transatlantic commerce, beginning with New France and further expanding its market across the world to include, amongst other commodities, the slave trade. By 1927, its influence was great enough to host a major Colonial Exhibition.

Within this rich colonial context, Stimson stumbles upon an event that sparks his idea for a performance—Buffalo Boy’s The American Returns. In 1905, Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show performed in La Rochelle. Buffalo Boy, Stimson’s alter ego, would therefore take his turn: landing in the old port from the ocean leading a parade through the streets to the old Jesuit church where a final feast would take place. This is how Buffalo Boy would claim France in the name of love.

As relationships and partnerships are being built 3 , Stimson is now embarking on the creation of a site-specific Pow Wow Opera with collaborators from Siksika and La Rochelle. In this participatory multi-media music hall, Buffalo Boy invites the voices of La Rochelle’s diasporic communities to tell another story of colonization, inspired by love.

This exhibition also includes a prophecy. In 2011 Buffalo Boy was photographed by Haudenosaunee artist Jeff Thomas in Ottawa. The resulting Seize the Space series acts as a precursor to Stimson’s current project, capturing Buffalo Boy in front of the Samuel de Champlain monument (1918). In the photographs he is both cavorting and pensive as he confronts the monumental colonizer.

In this exhibition, Stimson develops a range of artistic strategies, moving from photography to painting, where he charts Buffalo Boy’s transatlantic route to and his arrival in La Rochelle. Through word play and parody, he flips history on its head: in Bison Bulla, for example, Stimson inverts Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 Papal Bull Inter Caetera—a key document in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Finally, with the Bull Boat at sea, Buffalo Boy sets out on his transatlantic crossing, surrounded by the fish and sea animal friends who entertain him on his journey.

This project is important from an Indigenous perspective because it acknowledges both the historical and contemporary dimensions of Indigenous presence on these lands and waters.