Daphne Odjig

(1919-2016)

Odawa-Potawatomi First Nation

Daphne Odjig was born September 11, 1919 on the Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron. Internationally recognized, Odjig is the first artist of the First Nations, as a woman, to be shown at the National Gallery of Canada. She is one of the founding members of the Indigenous Group of Seven. Two additional founding members are also represented in this Art Path: Norval Morrisseau, and Carl Ray.

We had no one to show our work so we had to do it ourselves. We acknowledged and supported each other as artists when the world of fine art refused us entry…Together we broke down barriers that would have been so much more difficult faced alone. – Daphne Odjig

In 1986, Odjig was made a member of the Order of Canada, and in 2007 she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Daphne Odjig died in 2016, in Kelowna, British Columbia, at the age of 97. This year, September 2025, the Royal Canadian Mint has announced the new $2 commemorative coin will honour the life and work of the “Grandmother of First Nations Art.” Odjig’s Folk Singer, which hangs in the Great Hall, will be represented in colour on the coin. 

Further Reading:
An interview with Daphne Odjig is published by the National Gallery of Canada. 
Published three years ago, the video below by Museum of Toronto, tells the story of Odjig’s legacy.

Works at Huron