Dr. Joane Cardinal-Schubert, RCA, (born 1942 in Red Deer, AB; died 16 September 2009 in Calgary, AB).
Award-winning Kainaiwa (Blood) artist Joane Cardinal-Schubert was also a successful and influential curator, lecturer, poet and director of video and Indigenous theatre. Her artworks and writing often addressed contemporary political issues such as Indigenous sovereignty, cultural appropriation and environmental concerns. She supported other Indigenous artists as a curator and activist, while also questioning methods of displaying historical and contemporary Indigenous artworks. She was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, the Commemorative Medal of Canada and the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in Art.
On behalf of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts she travelled across Alberta to meet with other Indigenous artists and identify artworks from various phases in their careers that were not represented in the Foundation’s collection. Her support of Indigenous artists was a common thread that ran throughout her career. For several years, she was a lobbyist for the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry (SCANA). Her writing has been included in many exhibition catalogues and other texts, including her keynote speech for the conference Making a Noise! Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community (2004).
Cardinal-Schubert received numerous awards, particularly in the last two decades of her career. In 1986, she became only the fourth woman to be made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts In 1993, she was awarded the Commemorative Medal for her contribution to the arts. In 2002, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, and in 2003 she was granted an Honourary Doctor of Laws from the University of Calgary.