A message of reconciliation going out to the masses, describes Jessica Somers
Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
Many in West Nipissing will know Jessica Somers as the Indigenous artist with two murals raised on the walls of the Michaud & Levesque building on the northwest corner of Main St. in 2021 and 2022. The local artist, who resides in Lavigne, is about to gain some serious recognition as a piece of her art has been chosen by major retailer Walmart as the graphic to grace their re-usable shopping bags this coming June. It’s a major coup for Jessica Somers, and it sort of came out of the blue.
“It’s they that reached out to me,” she recounts. Somers conjectures that her Instagram account has reached a wide variety of people across Canada and the USA, and came to the attention of a Wamart executive. “She’s a buyer to Walmart and their initiative is to do a reusable bag depending on which month it is. (…) They’re launching this one for Indigenous Peoples Month, which is June.” It’s expected that the shopping bags will be launched by June 1st and possibly in both countries. “The contract is for Canada but I think some of the States will also be getting it.”
It’s pretty exciting for Jessica, especially since it was totally unexpected. “Yeah, most of my contracts, I don’t really reach out to people. It’s not like my marketing strategy is just social media. I have a website, but it’s so bad, it’s terrible and I’ve really got to work on it. You know, as an artist, I just want to create. So the marketing aspect is not my strength.” Somers iterates that she put up the website to make her work more legitimate and to let people know who she was in order to avoid scams. Her artwork is often stamped on social media so it can’t be stolen and potential customers are directed to her website and online secure payment system. Still, despite her self-admitted lack of marketing skills, her art caught the attention of this particular buyer. “I just randomly got this e-mail, which was really cool.”
The email led to a phone call, which led to a big opportunity, all within 24 hours. “We talked. They have done this initiative with other Indigenous artists. I think this is their second year.” Walmart switches out their reusable bags to promote different months such as Black History Month for February, March dedicated to International Women’s Day, but this particular initiative is going to be larger than normal, according to Somers. For those initiatives, “They don’t do it as big. They just do it for local stores or stores within Toronto, but this one, it’s going to be pretty big. I believe they’re doing 180,000 bags, with my image, and that could change.” Somers says the Walmart buyer has indicated they may purchase even more bags.
These reusable bags are the ones a shopper can purchase as they are exiting the store. Somers thinks the price will be in the $2.30 range, “I believe they’re selling them for $2.27, but that might change as well. Last year they sold them for $2.27, so I’m assuming this year they might just go a little bit more. I’m not sure what their whole thought process is, but I did a little bit of digging within Walmart Canada to see. (…) You have to do your due diligence and make sure you’re not taken as a ‘token Indian’ (…because) you’re setting a precedent for other artists that are coming through the pipes.”
The piece is a strong image. It is a depiction of a bear, representative of healing in Indigenous traditional cosmology. “Their whole thing was they wanted [the] healing aspect. They wanted something more about the reconciliation process. I showed them a couple of images (…) of bears because the Bear is considered a powerful and sacred animal, is revered as strength and wisdom and connection to the natural world (…), the symbol of healing and transformation, associated with the concept of medicine, spiritual energy and power. It possesses a unique and potent medicine that can help individuals overcome illness and trauma.” The artwork was initially created and donated as a gift for a fundraiser for Valley East Days in Val Caron, and was raffled off. “This whole piece, I never made money off of it,” she says.
Jessica shares her thought process for the various elements included in her painting. She says the whole piece embraces traditional medicines, the sweetgrass braid, tobacco, sage. “Then it has little handprints of Every Child Matters (…). For me it was all about reconciliation, and how do we get there?” The buyer she was dealing with asked Jessica what her top choice would be, and she chose this particular bear. And while the original painting is in private hands, the image itself is going to be in many hands and homes in the not-too-distant future. Somers says that owning a piece of her art is more than what the average person can pay, so for her this is an especially nice way to share her art with a wider community in a positive way, “especially when it’s all about the history of our people, because the history is so, so heavy.”
Her bear looks strong and defiant. Somers explains, “The Bear has that strength and that possessiveness for the medicine and our story. When we’re talking about our history, when I painted it, it has that protectiveness for our people (…) The piece is called Coming Home. So we’re calling our kids home. We’re calling our missing and murdered. All those people that we’ve lost, we’re asking them to come home at this time too.” That calling people home is happening in real time as well. Jessica Somers’ ancestry is Abenaki. She relates, “A lot of our chiefs in our Nations are calling our people for this (…). I was just on a call with my chief yesterday and he was like, ‘Come home. Put your feet on our land, ancestral land. You know, you come home, we’ll make accommodation for you to stay.’ All the Nations are asking those that have been displaced to come home and visit their lands, to visit their ancestors, to visit their stories. So coming home is very powerful for our people, for my people, so this piece is a connection that I have with those that have passed on as well.” Jessica’s ancestral home is the town of Odanak in the Abenaki territory of Quebec. “Odanak” is the Abenaki word for Village.
