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Cobiness grew up on Buffalo Point First Nation’s Indian reserve in southeast Manitoba. Like the other members of the “Indian Group of Seven”, Jackson Beardy, Alex Janvier, Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray and Joseph Sanchez, Cobiness was a so-called “Treaty Indian”. He belonged to a tribe which Canada has signed a treaty under the “Indian Act of Canada”. Cobiness has taught painting himself. He was a graphic designer who began drawing pictures of birds in sand, snow or on cardboard, in his childhood. In the 1950s, during his military service years, he discovered working in watercolour. He studied colour and composition.