While many of the artists showed up for the opening ceremony in a global array of traditional dress, Ms. Johnson wore a piece of contemporary Indigenous art. It was a Chicago Blackhawks jersey on which Carrie Allison , a young Métis artist, had replaced the embroidered team logo, which is widely seen as offensive among members of Indigenous communities, with one created in beads.

Several of the works in the exhibition were entirely created or finished at the gallery — a process that involved, among other things, tanning animal hides over open fires in its forecourt.

Four Māori women who prefer to be only known as the Mata Aho Collective, took traditional hand-weaving to a monumental scale with a 14-meter, or 45-foot, high cylinder of green, nylon marine rope that now dominates one of the gallery’s spaces. The group, which often mixes traditional techniques with industrial materials, started the work at a university laboratory in New Zealand normally used for volcanic ash studies. But its ceiling topped out at 10 meters, forcing them to finish the job, which was commissioned by the gallery, in Ottawa.

It was worth the globe-spanning effort. Their sculpture is spectacular.

The exhibition, which runs until April, is the second show in what the gallery promises will be a continuing series.

“It has to be a series because of the number of amazing artists, truly great contemporary artists who are Indigenous, around the world,” Christine Lalonde , one of the exhibition’s three curators, told me. “So next week we’ll start working on the next one.”