Selwyn Dewdney - Rock Art

Rock Art

During the 1950s, his ongoing exploration of Northern Ontario introduced him to the ancient native pictographs painted in red ochre on the rocks. He always maintained a profound interest in native culture, so recording the little-understood drawings was a logical next step. A chance meeting with Kenneth E. Kidd, the curator of the ethnology department of the Royal Ontario Museum, led to an opportunity to join Kidd and help record the pictograph sites. By 1957, 11 rock-painting sites were recorded in Quetico Provincial Park. Between 1959 and 1965, with two of his sons as field assistants, he discovered and recorded rock art from the foothills of the Rockies to the Atlantic coast. By 1978, he had visited 301 sites in Canada and the U.S.. In 1962, the first edition of Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes was published, with Kenneth Kidd as co-author.