Norval Morrisseau CM RCA (March 14, 1932 – December 4, 2007),[1] also known as Copper Thunderbird, was an Indigenous Canadian artist from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation.

[2] Known as the "Picasso of the North," Morrisseau created works depicting the legends of his people, the cultural and political tensions between native Canadian and European traditions, his existential struggles, and his deep spirituality and mysticism.

Fearing for his life, his mother called a medicine-woman who performed a renaming ceremony: she gave him the new name Copper Thunderbird.

There he met his future wife Harriet Kakegamic with whom he had seven children, Victoria, Michael, Peter, David, Lisa, Eugene, and Christian.

His influence on the Woodland school of artists was recognized in 1984 by the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibit Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers.

[18] As Morrisseau's health began to decline as a result of Parkinson's disease and a stroke in 1994,[19] he was cared for by his adopted family of Gabe and Michelle Vadas.

[20] The National Arts Centre, urban ink co-production, Copper Thunderbird, premiered on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) on Monday, February 4, 2008.

He is acknowledged to have initiated the Woodland School of native art, where images similar to the petroglyphs of the Great Lakes region were now captured in paintings and prints.

He also produced art depicting Christian subjects: during his incarceration, he attended a local church where he was struck by the beauty of the images on stained-glass windows.

[23] The cover art for the Bruce Cockburn album Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws is a painting by Norval Morrisseau.

Two of Morrisseau's paintings from the mid-1970s appear in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining including The Great Earth Mother (1976), and Flock of Loons (1975).

[24] The prevalence of fakes and forgeries was of deep concern to Morrisseau, particularly during his later years, and he actively sought to remove these from the marketplace.

This committee, not affiliated with any commercial gallery or art dealer, comprises highly respected members of the academic, legal and Aboriginal communities working on a volunteer basis.

The NMHS is currently researching Morrisseau art, provenance and materials and techniques in order to complete the task assigned to them by the artist.

[26] The NMHS continue their work and in 2008, were in Red Lake, Ontario, to research additional information and art by the artist.

Morrisseau also engaged in more direct intervention, identifying fake and forged works available for sale, particularly those purported to be painted by him in the so-called "70s style".

[26] More than ten sworn declarations [28] were directed to at least seven dealers and galleries during 1993–2007, requesting that fake and forged works be removed or destroyed.

:[29] “The (previous lower court) trial judge erred in failing to find that the Gallery’s provision of a valid provenance statement was a term of the purchase and a warranty, not mere puffery,” the new appeal decision states.

Mr. McLeod's assertion that the painting was genuine was only matched by his elusiveness in demonstrating that fact, which can only be explained as deliberate,” said the appeal panel.

[35] Police estimated the total number of forgeries at between 4,500 and 6,000, worth tens of millions of dollars, and described the crime as one of the biggest cases of art fraud anywhere in the world.

[35] Others charged in the case are David John Voss, Diane Marie Champagne, Linda Joy Tkachyk and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau (the artist's nephew), all of Thunder Bay.

Also charged are Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill.