Shawn Hunt, Flipping the Bird, 2014

Flipping the Bird takes the visual language of the Heiltsuk carving tradition and deploys it with sharp wit and pointed critique. Hunt draws directly on the tradition of the ridicule pole, a traditional form of public accountability in which an image was raised to shame someone who had acted unjustly until the wrongdoing was rectified. Hunt adapts this form to contemporary Canada, focusing on the nation’s ongoing failures to address systemic injustices against Indigenous Peoples. The work’s title, with its colloquial reference to “giving the finger,” signals the artist’s embrace of humour and irreverence as tools of critique. Yet, beneath the humour lies a demand for accountability: the work insists that reconciliation move beyond symbolic gestures toward substantive change.

Flipping the Bird also works by holding two audiences at once. For Indigenous viewers, the ridicule pole carries clear cultural resonance, affirming a long tradition of using visual art to speak truth to power. For non-Indigenous audiences, the humour of the phrase “flipping the bird” functions as an accessible entry point, drawing them into the work before revealing its deeper layers of accountability. Hunt skillfully uses this double register to ensure the sculpture communicates across cultural lines without diluting its political edge.

The piece is not static; Hunt has stated that the pole will remain inverted until Canada fulfills its responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples. In this sense, the artwork is conditional and open-ended. It refuses closure or complacency, existing in a state of suspended resolution. Viewers are implicated; reconciliation will not be symbolized by turning the pole upright but by concrete action: land restitution, respect for treaty rights, reparations for residential and day school Survivors, and systemic reform. Until then, the eagle remains upside down, a visible reminder of imbalance.

Flipping the Bird rebuffs the consolations of symbolic reconciliation. It exemplifies what contemporary Indigenous art does best, reclaiming tradition as a living, adaptive practice while speaking directly to present-day politics. It is at once humorous and uncompromising, local and national, culturally rooted and cross-culturally legible. By fusing satire with traditional form, Hunt insists that art is essential to truth telling and accountability. His pole, inverted and defiant, will stand as witness until justice is achieved.