Woodland Printers & Native Art Gallery

An Anishinaabe, he was born March 14, 1932 on the Sand Point Ojibway reserve near Beardmore, Ontario. His full name is Jean-Baptiste Norman Henry Morrisseau.
In accordance with Anishnaabe tradition, he was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Moses Potan Nanakonagos, a shaman, taught him the traditions and legends of his people. His grandmother, Grace Theresa Potan Nanakonagos, was a devout Catholic and from her he learned the tenets of Christianity. The contrast between these two religious traditions became an important factor in his intellectual and artistic development.
At the age of 19, he became very sick. He was taken to a doctor but his health kept deteriorating. Fearing for his life, his mother called a medicine-woman who performed a renaming ceremony: She gave him the new name Copper Thunderbird. According to Anishnaabe tradition, giving a powerful name to a dying person can give them new energy and save their lives. Morrisseau recovered after the ceremony and from then on always signed his works with his new name.
After being invited to meet the artist by Robert Sheppard, an early advocate of Morrisseau was the anthropologist Selwyn Dewdney, who became very interested in Morrisseau's deep knowledge of native culture and myth. Dewdney was the first to take his art to a wider public.
Jack Pollock, a Toronto art dealer, helped expose Morrisseau's art to a wider audience in the 1960s. The two met in 1962 while Pollock was teaching a painting workshop in Beardmore. Struck by the discovery of Morrisseau's art, he immediately organized an exhibition of his work at his Toronto gallery.
One of Morrisseau's early commissions was for a large mural in the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67, a revolutionary exhibit voicing the dissatisfaction of the First Nations People of Canada with their social and political situation.
In 1972, he was caught in a hotel fire in Vancouver and suffered serious burns on three-quarters of his body. In that occasion he had a vision of Jesus encouraging him to be a role model through his art. He converted to the apostolic faith and started introducing Christian themes in his art.
In 1978, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
In 1979, he created the Thunderbird School of Shamanistic Arts. This "school of artists" was Morrisseau's way of responding to the Woodland School phenomenon, which he claimed was merely a "Media" creation, and not by his design. The Thunderbird School which he envisioned and created consisted of Morrisseau, and his three apprentice Shaman artists: Ritchie "Stardreamer" Sinclair, Carl "Sunshine" Henderson and Brian "Little Hummingbird" Pashigeesic Marion.
In 2005 and 2006, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa organized a retrospective of his work. This was the first time that the Gallery dedicated a solo exposition to a native artist.
In his final months of his life, the artist was confined to a wheelchair in a residence in Nanaimo, British Columbia. He was unable to paint due to his poor health. He died of cardiac arrest—complications arising from Parkinson's disease on December 4, 2007 in Toronto General Hospital. He was buried after a private ceremony in Northern Ontario next to the grave of his former wife, Harriet, on Anishinaabe land.

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