Tales from the Smokehouse
Published in 1974 by Hurtig Publishers, Tales from the Smokehouse paired the ethnographic writing of Dr. Herbert T. Schwarz with the visionary artwork of Daphne Odjig, one of Canada's most celebrated Indigenous artists. The book gathered thirteen traditional and contemporary stories drawn from Ojibwa, Mohawk, Naskapi, and other First Nations, framing the smokehouse (or sweat lodge) as the storyteller's stage. Frank in their treatment of desire, transformation, and the supernatural, these tales offered a rare window into an aspect of Indigenous oral tradition long overlooked in mainstream publishing: candid, unguarded sexuality.
Working in her distinctive style of bold outlines, flowing curvilinear forms, and a palette that moved between earth tones and jewel-like colour, Odjig translated the book's oral narratives into images that are at once ancient in spirit and strikingly modern in execution. A year later, the artist reworked several of the book's most striking compositions into limited-edition serigraphs, translating her original drawings into the vivid, hand-pulled medium of screenprinting.
These editions, including Nanabajou and His Daughter, The Medicine Dream, The Squaw Man, Big One and the Bad Medicine Woman, and The Evil Spell, extend the mythic power of the legends into a fine-art format, each print capturing a pivotal moment of desire, danger, or transformation from the original tales. Today these serigraphs are sought after both as important examples of Odjig's printmaking practice and as artifacts of a landmark, if little-known, chapter in the publication of Indigenous storytelling in Canada.
