Born on the Red Pheasant reserve in Saskatchewan, Allen Sapp, or Kiskayetum (he perceives it), became known for his authentic records of the Cree people and their activities. Often bedridden with illness, Sapp was an infrequent school attendee and never learned to read or write. After his mother died, he was raised by his maternal grandmother, who encouraged his love of drawing and taught him the ways of the Cree people.

Beginning in the 1950s, Sapp produced portraits of his friends and family. He also painted works that he thought would be commercially viable, influenced by the art he had seen in magazines and calenders. However, in 1966 this changed when he met Dr. Allan Gonor, who encouraged Sapp to paint subjects based on his Cree identity and culture. He also arranged for Sapp to be tutored by Wynona Mulcaster, a Saskatoon painter and art professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Subsequently, Sapp’s sensitive paintings of the quiet and gentle Cree people carrying out such everyday activities as chopping wood, getting water or gathering snow to melt, brought him acclaim.

In 1969, he was awarded a Canada Council Arts Bursary, and in 1971 he was the subject of a CBC national broadcast titled Allen Sapp – By Instinct a Painter. Sapp was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1987 in recognition of his achievements in the visual arts. In 1981, the book A Cree Life: The Art of Allen Sapp was released. Sapp was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, in recognition of both his work as a painter and the part he played in telling the story of the Cree nation. A retrospective of Sapp’s work entitled Kiskayetum was organized in 1994 by the Mackenzie Gallery in Regina which toured across Canada. In 2003, he received the Governor General’s Award for the illustrations he did for the children’s book The Song Within My Heart, a story about a young Cree boy based on Sapp’s memories.