Introduction
Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires (PC/Cp) is a national, bilingual, intergenerational 3-year initiative, designed to place Indigenous arts at the centre of the Canadian art system. PC/Cp also asserts that art practices by people of colour play a critical role in imagining Canada’s future(s). In September 2017, PC/Cp hosted a gathering on Lekwungen territory near Victoria, BC. This initiative is co-directed by Chris Creighton-Kelly (left) and France Trépanier (right). In addition to the reflections below, several essays were commissioned and may be read online at Rungh.
Chris: France, you mentioned the other day that the Lekwungen welcoming was an essential part of our gathering. I concurred that we wanted to go beyond a simple land acknowledgement à la “we acknowledge that we are on the territory of…” The “going beyond” is critical so that this now familiar recitation does not simply become de rigueur, or a kind of politically correct, rote formality devoid of any context. Can you elaborate on why we needed to go beyond this formality?
France: Well, for me, the question of the land was central to how we would hold the gathering. That meant honouring the land, its creation stories, and its history. But it also meant recognizing the people of the land—the Lekwungen speaking people—their traditional governance systems, and their powerful protocols.
As an artist and curator of Kanien’kehà:ka and French ancestry, I was acutely aware that you and I were endeavouring to host 130 artists on someone else’s land. So it became imperative to seek the guidance of Lekwungen cultural leaders from the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. We did that, starting 16 months before the event. Thanks to their openness, we were able to develop Indigenous-inspired protocols for the whole gathering. This resulted in a remarkably grounding 3-hour welcome on the first morning.
As we were planning this opening session, I know that you strongly felt the necessity of honouring protocols and ceremonies from different cultures. What were, if any, the challenges of integrating those various elements without disrespecting our Indigenous hosts?
Chris: Yes… its always tricky to give appropriate respect to the land, the people whose territory we are on, and the protocols/ceremonies of their traditions AND to recognize the other artists in the room—Black artists and artists of colour, and also the few artists with settler backgrounds.
Creating space for everyone was inherent in our gathering and the presence of Indigenous elders and artists like Bradley Dick, our cultural carrier and MC, made that easier. I frequently feel the generosity of Indigenous people when I am working with them and it never fails to amaze me. They embraced these artists and the complexity of their artistic visions, their ceremonies, their rituals of welcoming.
The Indigenous artists felt respected, and so in turn, they then respected another group, then another, and another, and so on…it seemed with each cultural welcoming we were building a powerful, collective momentum. When Diane Roberts asked those assembled to “wander” with her and folks accepted to simply sing as they walked in the circle, there were more than a few tears in the room, some from Indigenous eyes.
First Peoples went first, where they belong. No one tried to displace anyone; there was no competition for best welcoming! This 3-hour Indigenous-influenced ceremony worked really well. It grounded all of us on the land, in the place, in jet-lagged bodies.
Yet some of our other plans were a little jagged; you mentioned some artists felt constrained by our discussion topics… how so?
France: From the start, we were committed to designing decolonial methods, even if at times we were uncertain of how to ensure peoples’ buy-in. We focused on reframing the concept of knowledge-sharing by decentering the authority of the “expert.” Participants were also asked to be presenters—“experts”—but without the colonial tools of the trade: no keynotes, no PowerPoint presentations, no panels, no prepared notes. The idea was to pair two artists and ask them to generate and then facilitate a conversation on a specific topic.
As you will remember, for some participants, this process felt uncomfortable. They wanted to know more about precisely how they would be asked to contribute to the conversation.
For this curated event, we spent hours, days, weeks identifying the topics and pairing the right artists who could inspire and guide the exchanges. It was a giant puzzle with over fifty different creation/conversation sessions, each one centering on a specific way of knowledge-sharing: intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual. We chose the topics carefully, inspired by the many consultative conversations in which we had previously engaged in six different regions in 2016. While a majority of participants enthusiastically embraced our “unorthodox,” decolonial methodology for organizing the exchanges, some artists felt uncomfortable with the fact that the topics were imposed.
The other sentiment that was shared by a few people was the difficulty of choosing from all the concurrent sessions. Was the schedule too crowded?
Chris: Depends how you look at, I guess. Some participants were a little distressed, faced with a choice between eight different sessions. Looking back, maybe eight was too many! I would suggest six as a more appropriate choice.
Other folks found the number of choices invigorating, and that selecting was a delight which enhanced the sensation of “abundance” we tried so hard to create with the food, hotel, and many events. Participants could modulate between speaking, feeling, thinking, moving their bodies, listening to an artist talk, or even just walking the land. They felt full.
You are correct to say that a minority of participants felt uncomfortable with no advanced preparation, but this “planned spontaneity” coaxed out improvisational exchanges, which was refreshing! Was it truly decolonizing? I am not sure… but it was a nudge in that direction, encouraging steps that are being taken, however tentatively, throughout the Canadian art system.
We may finally be glimpsing necessary institutional changes on the horizon. Are institutions reformable? Can they really be Indigenized or decolonized? Or are art institutions themselves the problem?
France: You are right to say that this gathering was only an attempt at decolonizing methodologies. When applied to the Canadian art system, terms like decolonization and Indigenization are often misunderstood and misused, not to mention conflated with notions of inclusion. Many of our colleagues would argue that it is impossible to Indigenize institutions—museums, for example—that were an intrinsic part of the colonial project.
Yet, I personally think that these institutions, including universities, must play a critical role in telling all the “truths” about our collective history, while exploring the complexities of who we are and imagining who we can be. Which, in its own way, were the objectives of the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering. For me, it is also about creating a space for conversations between Indigenous artists and artists of colour imagining what (re)conciliation could look like; about how similar histories of colonization can inform the “Canadian” experience; about the ways in which these “other” stories complexify the Canadian narrative.
Do you feel that these conversations were present throughout the gathering?
Chris: Well, I mostly agree, but sort of disagree with you at the same time! I recognize that we urgently need the “space” to which you refer in order to encourage more conversations among Indigenous people, Black people, and people of colour (IBPoC). Too often these dialogues have been mediated by whiteness—for example, Indigenous peoples vs. settlers or Black vs. White discussions about racism. It is as if all conversations need to pass through the dominance of whiteness—of Eurocentricity—in order to be validated. I do agree with you that we need more thoughtful discussions, conversations, meetings, and discourses among IBPoC.
However, I wonder about the phrasing “similar histories of colonization.” As you know, the term “people of colour”—which in the USA includes Indigenous peoples—has been a useful shorthand to describe various folks who live with racism. But this term is clearly inadequate to dig into the particular specificities of colonial stories/scenarios. As you have said many times, this is what Indigenous people on the land called Canada have insisted from the get-go. And now, with the important rise of Black Lives Matter building on decades of Black art practices and insightful scholarship, there is an accurate insistence on seeing “blackness” (for a whole host of reasons including slavery) as a unique, distinct, Afrocentric history within any larger evaluation of the racist, colonial, planet-wide project.
So, yes, the PC/Cp exchanges among us folks who have been the casualties of colonialism are important, generative, and often uncover hidden anecdotal events that are relevant to contemporary Canada. But these exchanges also reveal the stark differences of colonial narratives, the ways in which it is painfully difficult to discuss them, and how necessary it is to approach this delicateness without the cumbersome weight of white fragility.
Hey France, we are approaching our word limit now…any last thoughts?
France: I would like to conclude our banter with a few words about the poly-vocality we have adopted in our reporting. To be consistent with the notion of decentering author(ity), we extended an invitation to all session leaders to write short essays summarizing their personal experience and the conversations they facilitated. This approach allows for multiple, complex, and sometimes contradictory accounts of the exchanges that took place during the 4-day gathering. By respecting, through this series of essays, different points of view, we hope to tell the story of the gathering in a more comprehensive and transparent way.
Nia:wen’ko:wa
Thank you to Shawn Van Sluys (Musagetes/ArtsEverywhere) for graciously inviting these essays to the ArtsEverywhere platform. Thank you to Rachel Collins (ArtsEverywhere) and Breanna Fabbro (PC/Cp) for the complex work involved in making that invitation come to life.
RESPONSES
Anna Binta Diallo
The Language of the Other
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Who is the Other and what language do they speak? …many saw the [PC/Cp] gathering as the beginning of a conversation that must be continued at all costs. We concluded that we need to share information and facilitate dialogue among all these artists from every corner of the country. Everyone present shared the desire to see this kind of initiative repeated in the near future, so that we can continue to talk to each other and better understand the language of the Other.
View Full ResponseAnna Binta Diallo
The Language of the Other
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Anna Binta Diallo at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I had the privilege of moderating a Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires workshop with Wendat artist-poet Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui from Québec. Our mandate was to explore issues of linguistic diversity in Canada. The somewhat provocative title of our session, “The Language of the Other,” triggered a range of emotional reactions.
We began our discussion by trying to answer the following two questions: Who is the Other and what language do they speak? A dozen artists attended the session and we had a lot to say. Francophones in minority situations within Canada feel ignored by Québecers (Québecois), but Québecois sometimes share this same feeling about France. A number of participants pointed out that they spoke one of the two colonial languages of Canada. The discussion then shifted to issues such as bilingualism in Canada, francophones struggling with assimilation in minority situations, and the importance of Indigenous languages.
Our discussion was insightful, stimulating, and rewarding, and evoked a broad range of emotions. Why? Because we had all experienced difficult moments when our own language brought us face-to-face with the reality that sometimes we were the Other. Although we had different perspectives related to our linguistic experiences, we shared common ground. Whether we’re talking about francophones outside Québec, members of First Nations who wish to preserve and revitalize their mother tongues, or Québecois, we all fear that our linguistic and cultural identities will be misunderstood or threatened by the Other.
Two other major issues discussed were Indigenous languages and funding challenges. Many Indigenous artists do not speak one of the two official languages and feel rejected by the Canadian art scene. For example, how can an artist who wants to sing in her mother tongue, such as Inuktitut, get funding in Québec if the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec only funds projects submitted by francophones? Speaking of this new “Two Solitudes,” we also discussed the problem of systemic racism—of political infrastructures that are designed to erase the language, identity, and culture of certain citizens. Many artists feel threatened, misunderstood, or isolated, and so there are cracks in the cohesion of some artistic communities. We tried to come up with some solutions to address such a complex problem, which included: promoting collaboration between artists and communities, striving for transparency between us and the Other, and listening to our fellow artists from across Canada in order to avoid feelings of loneliness and misunderstanding. Finally, many saw the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering as the beginning of a conversation that must be continued at all costs. We concluded that we need to share information and facilitate dialogue among all these artists from every corner of the country. Everyone present shared the desire to see this kind of initiative repeated in the near future, so that we can continue to talk to each other and better understand the language of the Other.
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Anna Binta Diallo
Anna Binta Diallo is a visual artist who investigates memory and nostalgia to create unexpected narratives surrounding identity. Born in Senegal and raised in Manitoba, she’s currently based in Montreal. Her work has been exhibited at La Maison des Artistes Francophones, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Art Gallery of Alberta, MOCA Tapei, and featured in numerous publications. In 2016, Diallo exhibited "palimpseste," at MAI (Montréal), which weaved together collage, painting, prints, drawing, and audiovisual installations.
Rodney Saint-Éloi
Out of Africa
Day 1: September 23, 2017
In the Americas, Haiti was the largest trading post on the slave route and my story begins here. This is perhaps what drives me to travel all over Africa. That is, to truly understand Africa, to get back to Mother Earth, find my lost body, my soul, and immerse myself in my roots. Colonization robbed me of my history and of my very being. This is why I need to return to this mythical place and embrace these landscapes, to heal myself of the violent history that has divided the world into two opposing camps: the conquerors and the conquered.
View Full ResponseRodney Saint-Éloi
Out of Africa
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Rodney Saint-Éloi facilitating Conversation + Creations session D’Afrique/Out of Africa during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I am from Haiti, a country located in the Americas and at the heart of global unrest. I am part of a history stemming directly from Africa. Originally Indigenous territory, Haiti takes its name from the Taino word ayiti, meaning highland or mountain land. The genocide of Indigenous people was carefully orchestrated through colonization; Africans brought over on slave ships became unwitting participants in this colonial initiative. The name Haiti evokes the horrible consequences of colonization, resistance, and violence, all of which have shaped me as a human being.
So I am part of the first great phase of slavery. In the Americas, Haiti was the largest trading post on the slave route and my story begins here. This is perhaps what drives me to travel all over Africa. That is, to truly understand Africa, to get back to Mother Earth, find my lost body, my soul, and immerse myself in my roots. Colonization robbed me of my history and of my very being. This is why I need to return to this mythical place and embrace these landscapes, to heal myself of the violent history that has divided the world into two opposing camps: the conquerors and the conquered.
Out of Africa. The theme brings to mind an exotic film— one I will I choose to ignore—instead diving into my past. A past that shapes me. And as far back as I can remember, Africa has been present. In the steps I take. In the words I write. In my dreams as a human being. Africa is unavoidable; it is an ontological need.
I am a fragmented being, inhabited by different, often even paradoxical dreams. This is why I lend my voice to those of other African authors, such as Léopold Sédard Senghor, Mongo Beti, Mariama Bâ, Tchicaya U Tam’si, Achille Mbembe, Felwine Sarr, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Abdourahman Waberi, Léonora Miano, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Tierno Monénembo, Chinua Achebe, Cheick Anta Diop, and Wole Soyinka.
I hope that you too will join the chorus and, in so doing, discover this call from Africa, which cannot help but strengthen your sense of humanity.
In closing, I would like to leave you with several excerpts of poems that hark back to the “Old Continent.”
Nostalgie – Carl Brouard
Tambour
quand tu résonnes
mon âme hurle vers l’Afrique.
Tantôt je rêve d’une brousse immense
baignée de lune,
où s’échevèlent de suantes nudités.
Tantôt d’une case immonde,
où je savoure du sang dans des crânes humains
Untitled poem by Aimé Césaire
Haïti où la négritude se mit debout
Pour la première fois et dit qu’elle
croyait à son humanité.
Trahison – Léon Laleau
Ce cœur obsédant qui ne correspond
Pas avec mon langage et mes coutumes,
Et sur lequel mordent comme un crampon,
Des sentiments d’emprunt et des coutumes
D’Europe, sentez-vous cette souffrance
Et ce désespoir à nul autre égal
D’apprivoiser, avec des mots de France,
Ce cœur qui m’est venu du Sénégal?
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Rodney Saint-Éloi
Born in Haiti, poet, essayist and publisher Rodney Saint-Éloi is the author of a dozen books of poetry. His work, à l’écoute du monde, is a long journey through cities and faces. Passenger of texts, forms, and memories, he founded the Mémoire d'encrier editions in Montreal in 2003. In 2012, he received the prestigious Charles Biddle Award, which "recognizes his exceptional contribution to the development of arts and culture in Quebec." In 2015, he was accepted as a member of l'Académie des lettres du Québec. His last collections of poetry are Je suis la fille du baobab brûlém (Mémoire d’encrier, 2015) and Moi tombée, moi levée (Le Noroit, 2016).
Navarana Igloliorte
Is Cultural Appropriation Knowledge Extraction?
Day 1: September 23, 2017
As I looked around the room I was struck by the beauty of everyone, I felt blessed to be there. I could see that everyone had multitudes of stories to tell and brilliant thoughts to share. As people entered and found places to sit, there was an intensity on their faces of a need to share their voices.
View Full ResponseNavarana Igloliorte
Is Cultural Appropriation Knowledge Extraction?
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Peter Morin performs in front of guests at the Community Feast on Lekwungen territory during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Myself and Léuli entered our designated room, which I initially thought was spacious. There were many people already sitting, but to my nervousness, more and more people streamed in. We had to find more chairs and kept shifting around to fit everyone. As I looked around the room I was struck by the beauty of everyone, I felt blessed to be there. I could see that everyone had multitudes of stories to tell and brilliant thoughts to share. As people entered and found places to sit, there was an intensity on their faces of a need to share their voices. This is a topic of great importance to everyone. “How will we go about this with so many voices?” I asked myself, and looked over at Léuli. I suggested he start first. Léuli jumped from different topics of his communities’ perspectives on cultural appropriation, whiteness, hope/knowledge extraction, and where we might be going. I found it hard to figure out how I would bridge from his words because of the richness of his experience, knowledge, and how fast he spoke. I was worried about the word, whiteness.
It was my turn and I talked about my background, mainly to explain that my experience in the world is gratefully not just white. I spoke about this because I worried about what people would think of me leading a talk about cultural appropriation without them knowing my unique background. I talked about how I grew up in Nunavut in an Inuit community and then when I was 11 we moved to Labrador where we moved to Sheshatshiu, an Innu community. Still 23 years after my family moved away I get asked to go back by the Innu First Nation government to do work with elders and youth on video projects. I spoke about how I navigate in the community by observation, collaboration, humour, friendship and permission. Sheshatshiu is where I feel I am the most at home.
We opened up the discussion to the room, but I can’t remember the question we posed. A very long minute went by before anyone else spoke.
Two men had dialogue that bounced back between each other. I think they were saying the same things but in different ways, so it took awhile before they reached an agreement. One of the topics they discussed was the flow of technology and the knowledge of different cultures when they meet in history. Often where culture is appropriated in an uninformed and damaging way, it is in the service of capitalism. Some other topics discussed were: Disney’s Moana, power dynamics, and the Palestinian and Israeli struggle. My mind spun with their words of complexity and intelligence.
Close to the end I recall a writer talking about writing a poem and including a sentence in a First Nations language with which she has no relationship, but she wanted to pay homage the land and people where her writing dwelled. Myself and David Garneau offered suggestions to take the time to find an elder to translate the words, instead of using an online dictionary. It made me think it is necessary to have more discussions like this, and more forums for people to reach ways of avoiding cultural appropriation.
Léuli Eshraghi performing at the Deconstructing Comfort opening reception. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Navarana Igloliorte
Navarana Igloliorte is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker who grew up in Nunavut and Labrador. She uses a variety of mediums such as stencilling, short gauge film, video, painting, printmaking, and dance. Navarana’s works are often in collaboration with individuals or groups of people to weave together teachings, stories, movement, and sometimes humour through reflection of our connectedness with each other and the natural world. Her artwork and films have been exhibited and screened across Canada in galleries, as well as international film and media arts festivals. Recently Igloliorte received a Film and Video Artists-Research/Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts toward a solo exhibition at the Owens Art Gallery (March 2018) in New Brunswick. Since 2004 Navarana has frequently traveled back to Labrador to work with the Innu First Nation and Nunatsiavut Inuit to create documentaries and short films in collaboration with community members. Navarana completed her BFA at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (2003) and BEd. from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (2005). She currently lives in Vancouver, BC.
Guy Sioui Durand
Diversity in Québec
Day 1: September 23, 2017
I began by describing the complex nature of cultural diversity in Québec, the numerous overlapping cultural territories, and the need to explore them, to go back-and-forth. I am Wendat, and more broadly a member of one of the 10 First Nations in Kébeq… As I see it, intercultural borders […] overlap a vast territory unknown to city dwellers. I was happy to talk about it.
View Full ResponseGuy Sioui Durand
Diversity in Québec
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Guy Sioui Durand standing outside the Songhees Wellness Centre on Lekwungen territory during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Naomi Kennedy.
I moderated the workshop Diversity in Québec with the magnificent Zab Maboungou, feeling our hot topic was sure to draw a lot of energy. To get to our small meeting room, we had to take a staff elevator to the second floor. Couch, table, a few chairs, and a blackboard—that was it. Enough room for maybe 12 people. And we certainly filled the space.
I was nervous. I had planned to start the discussion on diversity in Québec in a low-key fashion, by making a few open-ended and positive comments. The blackboard would come in handy to jot down a few key words.
I began by describing the complex nature of cultural diversity in Québec, the numerous overlapping cultural territories, and the need to explore them, to go back-and-forth. I am Wendat, and more broadly a member of one of the 10 First Nations in Kébeq—Mig’makw, Wolustuk Malécites, WabanA’kis, Kanien’ke ah :ka (Mohawks), Atikamekw, Innus, Eeyou Itshee, Naskapis, Anishinaabes, in addition to the Inuit in Nunavik. As I see it, intercultural borders—including the growing phenomenon of revitalizing Indigenous languages; the merger of crafts and experimental creation; customary use giving way to storytelling, music, documentaries, the emerging data transmission market, and in-situ multimedia installations—overlap a vast territory unknown to city dwellers. I was happy to talk about it. That’s why I described Indigenous diversity with permeable borders open to exchanges and joint projects among artists (although geographically distant and despite a great deal of ingrown prejudices).
By taking this approach, I set the stage for as many people as possible to share their experiences.
Zab Maboungou, a high-octane dancer and drummer, energetically described the unique multicultural ambience of Tiötià :ke (Montréal), referring first of all, the cosmopolitan mix of migrant artists from all over Yandiäwish, the Giant Turtle (European, African, South America, Asian, and Oceanian), and then to the longstanding split between francophones and anglophones which carries over to cultural institutions and spaces. This background not only weakens the few relationships that Québec institutions maintain with Indigenous artists, but also creates a host of other problems: inequality, lack of integration, cultural appropriation, and the inadequacy of the various arts council support programmes.
The discussion quickly became heated, as did our little room. People kept coming to the door and looking in, no doubt wanting to join the conversation, but there was no space.
We ended up running out of time. We could have filled two sessions with all the passionate points of view flying back and forth. “Indian time” did prevail in that we used up every last minute of our schedule for people to share their experiences—I’m thinking, for example, of the story shared by the Colombian artist, Frida Kahlo.
Guy Sioui Durand
Tsie8ei
8enho8en
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Guy co-facilitated the Diversity in Québec workshop with Zab Maboungou. Her reflection on this workshop is available at Rungh: The Great Welcome: A PC/Cp Reflection.
Guy Sioui Durand
Guy Sioui Durand is a Wendat (Huron) based in Wendake, Québec, Canada. He is a sociologist (PhD), art critic, independent curator, and performer (spoken word). He is specialized in contemporary Aboriginal art and contemporary art. Sioui Durand is curating the project Hommage aux Skywalkers/Ironworkers Mohawks from the event Rassemblement Internations d’Art Performance Autochtone (RIAPA) in Wendake this September 14-16, 2018. He is preparing the exhibition De Tabac, de Sauge et de Foins d’odeurs for the Joliette Museum of Art for winter 2019. Sioui Durand teaches "Initiation to Modern and Contemporary Aboriginal Art" at the Kiuna Native Institution, the only completely Aboriginal post-secondary institution.
Cathi Charles Wherry
Protocols and Transmission of Knowledge
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Transmission of knowledge includes deeper understandings and “ways” that at once guide, emerge from, AND inform the practice. Making a drum is not just making a drum. It also connects to our original languages, stories, songs, dances, identity, and governance models.
View Full ResponseCathi Charles Wherry
Protocols and Transmission of Knowledge
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Cathi Charles Wherry, Louise Profeit-Leblanc and Skawennati Fragnito at the PC/Cp Gathering on Lekwungen Territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Our group of nine people descended to the core of the building, and—with a sense of anticipation—gathered around a small circular table. This felt perfectly intimate, as everyone responded to the invitation to share who they are, where they live, and a statement describing the underlying values that guide their practice. The energy was immediately trusting, generous, and good humoured. To “set the table” my introduction included thoughts to connect Protocols and Transmission of Knowledge, and to inspire a conversation within which we were all learners AND experts of our own experience.
Transmission of knowledge includes deeper understandings and “ways” that at once guide, emerge from, AND inform the practice. Making a drum is not just making a drum. It also connects to our original languages, stories, songs, dances, identity, and governance models. Like all of our traditional practices, the drum carries protocols about respect, gratitude, working together, and social and spiritual responsibilities. For Indigenous people, the impacts of colonization have disrupted our lifeways, and the majority of us are living our way back home. Protocols are not for oppressing each other, but rather, to provide a “container” woven from values and “ways of being.” There is no singular rule book, but there are guiding principles that provide uncomplicated, common sense:
- Relationships – Honouring and remembering our relationships with others in our orbit—all beings, ancestors, homeland, and where we live, now and in the future.
- Respect – Literally, looking again. Rather than making assumptions, listening more and allowing those relationships to infiltrate our beings. Having a good heart, cherishing and being kind to one another.
- Responsibility – The ability to respond to situations and challenges in a good way by remembering relationships—all beings past, present and future, and being grateful for the gifts these relationships bring.
- Reciprocity – Maintaining a balance of giving and receiving with humility and a sense of generosity. It is important to give, but also to allow others to give, to recognize that we need each other, and to have gratitude.
Our conversation launched from this place with ease and trust. Everyone had something to share, question and explore. A few essential ideas emerged:
- When we collaborate, present, or otherwise intersect outside our own communities, it becomes necessary to think about, and articulate our ways and protocols more overtly while educating and negotiating with colleagues.
- When working with a group, it’s worth taking time and energy to arrive at an agreement to shared protocols. This is how we can bring together the best from all, and achieve the best results. It’s not always easy to have these conversations.
- Recognize the specific situation, context, or domain within which you’re working—public, shared, secular, or sacred space? Are you working in the domain of a specific community or culture?
- Although Indigenous people have brought awareness of protocols to the fore, this is relevant to everyone even if they name their protocols “policies,” “expectations,” or “principles.”
Although the exchange was rich, everyone wished for more time.
Miigwech,
Cathi Charles Wherry
Cathi Charles Wherry
Since studying visual arts at Camosun College (’91) and University of Victoria (’94) Cathi has worked as an artist, curator, administrator, and advocate for Indigenous artists and arts. Grounded in the Anishinaabemowin carried in her memory and bones, since 1996 she has served as Art Programs Manager at First Peoples’ Cultural Council, an Indigenous directed, British Columbia organization that supports the vitality of Indigenous languages, arts, and cultures. Cathi shares this wonderful life with her partner Andy Paul in WSANEC.
Peter Morin
A Refraction of Primary Colours
Day 1: September 23, 2017
A roundtable. In the middle of a big room. We were asked to talk about reconciliation. We actually talked about complications. Complications of language and bodies and trust. Half of the bodies seated at the circular table spoke English, the other half spoke French. But the round table was actually the room. Translators were present. Translators were mediating the conversation. One voice was actually two voices. Headsets held onto the two official languages for us.
View Full ResponsePeter Morin
A Refraction of Primary Colours
Day 1: September 23, 2017
Peter Morin and France Trépanier at the Community Feast during the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I repeat to myself: space is complicated. Bodies are complicated. Relationships between bodies are complicated. I am not afraid of intimacy. I’m saying this over and over to myself. Quietly. There are so many people in this room. So many beautiful spirits. All powerhouses. There is also a sharpness here with us. I wonder why. And then I feel deeply that I want to cry. To weep. Deeply. Considering the beauty of these bodies and spirits. Tears that consider deeply about how much fighting we all have had to do, over a great period of years. And yet, we are all here humbly. I want to cry for all of the hard work of ancestors who got us to that room. It’s so so much. I can’t handle it. Tears because it is so much work to keep each other safe. And then I get agitated. Inside. My skin starts to get tight. I don’t know why. And I know why. The fight to keep our communities safe is so so much work. The fight to keep our respective knowledges safe is so so much work. Then I want to weep because I know how easily it all falls away.
In the opening circle we are asked to imagine being held.
I don’t feel love in this moment.
I feel being grabbed from behind, my head held under water.
I have to leave the room. I think—it is hard to remove these demons.
Outside. My sister calls me to tell me that our uncle died. It’s okay. Because I’m outside. It is lunch time. My tears belong to me. My tears belong to my family.
Outside. I make inappropriate jokes to make my sister laugh and her laughter saves my life.
Inside. I look for Ayumi. I look for Ashok. I look for Clayton. I look for Andrea. Their eyes. Their voices. Hold me. There is something beautiful in complications and we all know what to do.
Lunching in a big room. Two moderators. Myself and Sonia Robertson. Sonia doesn’t speak much English. I don’t speak much (any) French. We needed to talk before our panel. France offered to be the body and the voice that could bring these two moderators into unison. This was a beautiful moment, where France becomes all three of our voices. Languages were moved by her gestures. Voices were transformed by her generosity. I felt like I could see Sonia. I felt like I could understand Sonia. I could see her eyes.
Next. A roundtable. In the middle of a big room. We were asked to talk about reconciliation. We actually talked about complications. Complications of language and bodies and trust. Half of the bodies seated at the circular table spoke English, the other half spoke French. But the round table was actually the room. Translators were present. Translators were mediating the conversation. One voice was actually two voices. Headsets held onto the two official languages for us. I think to myself: without naming it, this room still becomes canada. But I don’t want to end in canada. The room is a landscape. Then I start feeling all of the ancestors. Knowledge systems that have converged in this one place. Gathering and exchanging knowledge. It is hard to remove canada but there are so many things older than canada to draw upon.
In the roundtable we talked about how reconciliation should not be conflated with healing.
Further Refraction/Further reading:
- Temple of my Familiar – Alice Walker
- Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, And Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms – Sherene H. Razack
- The Woman who fell from the Sky – Joy Harjo
- A Personal Matter – Kenzaburo Oe
- Custer Died for your Sins – Vine Deloria, Jr.
Peter Morin
Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation performance artist, curator, and educator. In his artistic practice and curatorial work, Morin investigates the impact between indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism. This work is defined by Tahltan Nation epistemological production and takes the form of performance interventions. Morin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions since 1997. In 2016, Morin was the recipient of the Hnatshyn Found Mid-Career Award for outstanding achievement as an artist. Morin teaches with the Visual and Aboriginal Art Department at Brandon University. Photo credit: Gregg Staats
India Rael Young
Understanding : Knowing : Critiquing : New Discourses with Aliya Pabani
Day 2: September 24, 2017
…if knowledge is relational and often obscured by the very mechanisms intended to create knowing, then who has/should have the authority to define what is “new”? Who can be the voice of the critic? […] Our session arrived at no conclusions, but we collectively offered up one means to understanding. That is, through shared experience.
View Full ResponseIndia Rael Young
Understanding : Knowing : Critiquing : New Discourses with Aliya Pabani
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Conversations + Creations session during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
These are deeply meditative questions: what is it to know, to understand, to claim the authority to critique? Our session proved just such a meditation. First, I had the fortune to meet Aliya Pabani, who produces a podcast on the arts, The Imposter, and as an artist herself is currently tackling issues around incarceration in the Toronto area. Meeting Aliya allowed me to broaden my knowledge and experience in a small but concrete way that, as I reflect on the broader themes of our session, offers a model for understanding and knowing.
Aliya and I prepared by getting to know each other and our work. Our brief exchange uncovered shared experiences – about understanding, knowing, and critiquing. We both felt the weight of claiming to know and understand, and the counterpoint of never truly, completely knowing or understanding. From there we shared specific experiences of types, ways, and histories of knowing. We considered experiences of academic knowledge appropriating or (attempting at) erasing Indigenous knowledge. We shared stories of Indigenous knowledge, and means of record keeping and perpetuation. We brought these musings into the room. Both in our conversation and with the larger group, just as the discussion turned to the philosophical, it returned to a specific experience of knowing or understanding.
The larger room had many histories and experiences to share about academic/European-descendant concepts of knowledge creating a boundary around what can be perceived as knowable. These experiences were marked by academic/outside communities attempting to control access and understanding to Indigenous knowledge, and also by Indigenous ingenuity that circumvents or persists in the face of suppression. One example was a commonly used text on floral beadwork. The speaker noted that her and her circle of beaders love the text for the artworks it reproduces, and happily ignore the written word. She understood knowledge to be contained within the materials and patterns themselves. Understanding came through seeing not reading.
This conversation led to an interrogation of authority. We considered the idea that if knowledge is relational and often obscured by the very mechanisms intended to create knowing, then who has/should have the authority to define what is “new”? Who can be the voice of the critic? Does the critic implicitly conform to non-Indigenous ways of understanding? Again, the discussion circled from broad questions to specific examples. One speaker pointed to a fairly recent database that reframes how materials are catalogued using Indigenous frameworks that build relationships instead of categories. He offered a specific, new, Indigenous-centered experience of knowledge defined by Indigenous authority.
Our session arrived at no conclusions, but we collectively offered up one means to understanding. That is, through shared experience. Without delving too far into philosophies of memory, “knowing” might be best arrived at through concrete experiences that, when shared, provide examples of understanding rather than knowing. Critiquing then becomes relative to a set of shared principles, Indigenous or otherwise.
India Rael Young
India R. Young, art historian and curator, studies Indigenous art, print media, and emerging modes of reproduction. Her curatorship and writing negotiate feminist, decolonial, and critical race frameworks to track the cultural geography of the contemporary North American art world. Young graduated in 2017 with a doctorate in art history from the University of New Mexico. Currently, she works as the Research Specialist in Native American Art at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Louise Profeit-Leblanc
This is the Story
Day 2: September 24, 2017
A storyteller usually has an initial challenge of creating a suitable environment within the performance space they have been given. It has to be comfortable to both listener and teller and the audience has to be able to see and hear the storyteller clearly. In the classroom provided, I instructed my audience to envision a campfire burning in the centre, thus becoming a beautiful sharing circle of listeners!
View Full ResponseLouise Profeit-Leblanc
This is the Story
Day 2: September 24, 2017
“Reconcilliation Blanket” collaboration lead by Louise Profeit-Leblanc at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Naomi Kennedy.
In September of 2017, I was honoured to be invited to to share a storytelling space with Chilean storyteller, Lina de Guervera, at the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires Gathering, which resulted in future plans for a potential collaboration with her and her colleagues, in Victoria.
This symposium consisted of many talented artists from all backgrounds and practices, and was held on Lekwungen Territory near Victoria. From the beginning to the end, the Songees showered us with their loving hospitality.
I was pleased that Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires recognized the universality and importance of having story as the foundation of all that we do, as artists. Many stories were shared throughout the symposium including during the meals and break, which allowed us to get to know our brothers and sisters from all of the four directions. We also had ample time and inspiration from panel discussions to catch this multitude of reflections, from all these diverse practices.
I chose a “teaching” story from my homeland, the Yukon. The story was passed on to me by my great Auntie Mary Vittrekwa, a Takudh Gwichin from Arctic Red River, NWT, a people who have been, and continue to be, dependent upon the Porcupine Caribou herd as part of their life subsistence.
The genesis of this story is about caribou migration. It takes place at a time when the herd had taken another migratory path, leaving the people in a state of starvation. The protagonist in this precious story is a young boy, from the moon, who by singing a medicine song and dancing was able to draw the caribou back to save his people from perishing. The hunters of the settlement unfortunately prove to be untrustworthy and don’t keep their promise to pay the boy the delicacy of caribou stomach fat he had been promised. This boy had no alternative but to return to the moon, yet he continues still today to move caribou herds from their summer to winter homes, at the full moon of autumn and spring. I encouraged my audience to watch for these two distinct moons, where they will see a boy holding onto some caribou stomach fat!
A storyteller usually has an initial challenge of creating a suitable environment within the performance space they have been given. It has to be comfortable to both listener and teller and the audience has to be able to see and hear the storyteller clearly. In the classroom provided, I instructed my audience to envision a campfire burning in the centre, thus becoming a beautiful sharing circle of listeners! After turning down the lights and instructing them to turn off their phones, the space was readied. It became a place where story could come to life, where people’s imaginations could be sparked! In that darkened space, we journeyed back in time, transported onto a northern land mass where the Porcupine Caribou herd have migrated for thousands of years, between the Yukon and Alaska.
Traditional stories are the true wealth of a people as well as for their descendants and people who live here now. They reflect the strength and endurance of people who lived on the land and play a significant role in reminding us all of our own sense of spirituality and how to respect our environment today.
It was revealing to me to discover how many people had never been exposed to traditional Indigenous storytelling, so to wrap up the session, I asked: “What did this story mean to you? How does it impact you in your own day to day life?” It was refreshing to hear the common responses despite the cultural differences. The spirit of story had done its job!
Cathi Charles Wherry, Louise Profeit-Leblanc, France Trépanier in front of the Songhees Wellness Centre on Lekwungen territory at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Naomi Kennedy.
This session provided me with more inspiration to do more collaborative work with people from other nations. I believe stories are the glue for a divided community. In a world of “high tech-low touch” we could do better by having more of them! As it is stated in many Indigenous prophecies, all rivers flow into one and who better to initiate this action, than artists of this country.
In closing, I wish to express my appreciation to Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires for inviting me be a presenter. Mussi cho! (thank you)
Louise Profeit-Leblanc
Louise is an internationally renowned, traditional Storyteller from the Nacho Nyak Dun First Nation of Mayo, in northeast Yukon. For well over 35 years she has been committed to the cultural and artistic heritage of Yukon First Nations people. Prior to her move to Ottawa where she served as the Aboriginal Arts Coordinator for the Canada Council for the Arts for 11 years, she was employed by the Heritage Branch of the Yukon Government. It was during this tenure that she was introduced to the traditional stories of the Yukon, which ultimately inspired the founding of the Yukon International Storytelling Festival and the Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry, both germane to the evolution of public presentation of Yukon First Nation cultural practices that we see flourishing in the Yukon today. Her association with many Yukon Elders resulted in her role as a “Story Keeper,” a responsibility and honour which she does not take lightly being constantly reminded by the wise words of her mentor/teacher, Tagish Elder, Angela Sidney-“Live your life like a story!”; a practice she attempts to uphold throughout her everyday life. She has a strong belief that through this process of sharing stories, humanity will right itself and come to a better understanding about the “sacred space” of reconciliation.
Rodney Saint-Éloi
Cultural Policy?
Day 2: September 24, 2017
We live in a time where culture costs votes, where the word culture is vilified, just like the words thought, solidarity, virtue… Culture expands horizons and imaginations, whereas politics limits them, narrowing the focus on identities, fears, threats and wars. What meaning does the word culture hold when democratic dialogue is dying?
View Full ResponseRodney Saint-Éloi
Cultural Policy?
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Yves Sioui Durand, Catherine Joncas, and Rodney Saint-Éloi at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen Territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
It’s a noble idea to talk about culture here, since the truth is, governments seem to have forgotten about the word. Culture is a ball and chain that governments drag around. Traditionally, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs constitutes a liability for politicians. They no longer know how deal with culture or what place to give it in our society. It’s no coincidence that in any government, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs is the first to be impacted by departmental reforms. Culture does not constitute a real issue. Hence, in my view, talking about cultural policy remains a contradiction.
Culture instills fear. How often have we seen the main candidates for a political position scale down their vision, their language, and often their intellectual status in order to reach a mainstream electorate. In this context, culture is a word to be avoided, a word that is too suggestive of exclusion or elitism. A university professor running as a candidate for a major political party was advised not to mention that he taught or wrote books in his interviews with journalists.
We live in a time where culture costs votes, where the word culture is vilified, just like the words thought, solidarity, virtue… Culture expands horizons and imaginations, whereas politics limits them, narrowing the focus on identities, fears, threats and wars. What meaning does the word culture hold when democratic dialogue is dying?
We can’t talk about policy without alluding to the lack of importance attached to culture. The only words that politicians have on their lips these days are entrepreneurship, the market, the competition. Any thought is a disgrace, any culture an abhorrence. Culture is detested and those involved in cultural activities are disdained. No need to get out the shotgun when the word culture is uttered. Politicians have done everything to ensure that the word is an empty shell, that entertainment and tourism replace any stimulating thought, creative act, or soul-searching—in fact, everything integral to culture.
Allow me to digress to explain the expression “cultural policy” in Haiti. There, the work culture is synonymous with resistance. Those who write or think often end up in jail. They have no subsidy. For them, simply being alive is a subsidy.
Having a library at the time of the dictatorship was in itself a death sentence. Duvalier’s Macoutes hated books. The occupants of a house with a bookshelf could be thrown in jail. If the books were read, the penalty was even stiffer. The book alone was an insurrectional object. Knowing full well that revolt begins with books, dictators do everything to prevent their free circulation.
What does a Ministry of Cultural Affairs represent?
In fact, culture leads to social unrest.
Translated by Elizabeth Vincent.
Rodney Saint-Éloi
Born in Haiti, poet, essayist and publisher Rodney Saint-Éloi is the author of a dozen books of poetry. His work, à l’écoute du monde, is a long journey through cities and faces. Passenger of texts, forms, and memories, he founded the Mémoire d'encrier editions in Montreal in 2003. In 2012, he received the prestigious Charles Biddle Award, which "recognizes his exceptional contribution to the development of arts and culture in Quebec." In 2015, he was accepted as a member of l'Académie des lettres du Québec. His last collections of poetry are Je suis la fille du baobab brûlém (Mémoire d’encrier, 2015) and Moi tombée, moi levée (Le Noroit, 2016).
Janet Lumb
Making Music, Yes
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Flashes from the jam of what I recall, felt, sensed… distortion, poetry, memories, darkness, spirits, sobre, clouded, pure, warm, blue, intuitive, gutsy, bright, energetic, flourishing, flyée, exciting, boundless, blissful, confirming, touchante, on common ground, chez nous, at ease, inspirational, la magie…
View Full ResponseJanet Lumb
Making Music, Yes
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Janet Lumb at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Naomi Kennedy.
I acknowledge that we are all residing on unceded colonized Indigenous lands. I respect and am acting upon connections with the past, present, and future with Indigenous communities recognized as custodians of the lands and waters.
Jenelle Duvel is multi-talented, generous, energetic, inspiring, and dynamic. A facilitator with the Women’s Centre Cultural Program and Status of Women’s Council in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Artistic Director of Spirit Song Festival, Indigenous drummer singer, and co-creator of Eastern Owl, the list of initiatives and achievements is outstanding. I am a third generation Chinese Canadian artist/arts/community/social/cultural activist.
Jenelle and I met for our first time during the workshop. My connection with Jenelle was immediate, spontaneous, smooth and effortless with respect, admiration, and trust. With a collaborative agreement achieved in 2 minutes regarding the presentation content, Jenelle and I each spoke for 10 mins at the start of the session. In a circle with the participants, Jenelle and I spoke about the various tools, experiences, and ways of learning and playing music, such as being schooled or not, learning by ear, and occupations such as writing music for films and documentaries and running festivals.
Jenelle and I were to present a workshop. Instead Jenelle, myself, and the 15-20 participants united in a circle musically and collectively, and shared, listened, spoke, collaborated, worked, played, and laughed together. Music is a basic, sensual, ancient form of human utterance, communication, rapport. Anyone can participate from toe or finger tapping, humming, singing, nodding, moving, by playing your body or an instrument. With this ease PLUS the golden gift of being a chosen Primary Colour participants, the playing ground was one giant connection. The music, entrancing. Most striking was the opening piece. Participants brought instruments, guitars, sang, listened. Everyone jumped in full body spirit mind with open arms embrace and confidence. Playing and making music kicked in as participants were itching to play. The jam begun and hit the roof.
Flashes from the jam of what I recall, felt, sensed… distortion, poetry, memories, darkness, spirits, sobre, clouded, pure, warm, blue, intuitive, gutsy, bright, energetic, flourishing, flyée, exciting, boundless, blissful, confirming, touchante, on common ground, chez nous, at ease, inspirational, la magie…
Comments ? Yes. An excerpt taken of the session and the jam on video would have been appreciated as a recollection. I was so present in the moment, I have little to no memory souvenir sense of who participated, how they participated, were they nervous, comfortable, unclear, what did they play, what were their impressions… The musical connections were overwhelming. I was left suspended high in the air after the jam. The jam took over and magic was the overriding finale. Extraordinary. A beautiful finish. I would love to, want to, wanted to, connect, talk, exchange, hug, laugh further with the participants.
Janet Lumb
Janet is a social activist in heart, mind, and spirit, inspired by people, arts, culture, education, and ecology. A great believer in the chaos theory, that there is order in chaos, Janet continues taking chances in the magic of the moment. As a third generation Chinese Canadian, artist and community organizer, Janet loves to play, explore, discover, collaborate and work with artists, workers, and individuals in inter-, multi-, and mixed-disciplinary settings.
Larissa Lai
CanadAsia
Day 2: September 24, 2017
My own thinking these past few years has been around questions of kinship and relation-building because I’m aware of what a relatively privileged place Asianness occupies within the contemporary and historical global order. When I say “relatively,” I mean that we are still so profoundly subject to racialization and all the violence that can go with that. At the same time, as Asian economic and political power is rising on the global stage, we are newly answerable for Asian imperialisms, especially in Africa and the Americas.
View Full ResponseLarissa Lai
CanadAsia
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Larissa Lai at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I co-chaired this session with the wonderful Janet Lumb from Montreal. The title was set before I came on board. It was the first time in ages that I’d been involved in an event focused on Asian Canadians. I had just come from David Garneau and Rinaldo Walcott’s session Redness: Blackness: Thinking which was so intense, difficult, and necessary.
My own thinking these past few years has been around questions of kinship and relation-building because I’m aware of what a relatively privileged place Asianness occupies within the contemporary and historical global order. When I say “relatively,” I mean that we are still so profoundly subject to racialization and all the violence that can go with that. At the same time, as Asian economic and political power is rising on the global stage, we are newly answerable for Asian imperialisms, especially in Africa and the Americas.
I came in wanting to talk about these issues. Most of the attendees were younger artists I hadn’t met before. They were all very smart and very engaged. Janet, with her long, powerful, and committed history of running Accès Asie in Montreal, came in also with heart and mind very much focussed on the needs of Asian communities in and of themselves. Under ongoing conditions of anti-Asian racism, we need to fight back and we need to continue to educate and empower our people, especially youth and elders. We talked a little bit about the powerful work being done by activists, artists and community members across the generations to fight off the developers in Vancouver’s Chinatown. We talked about the sharing of stories from older generations to younger ones, and also about how to explain to more conservative older generations the need for art, the need to talk about issues like racism, sexuality, gender, class, able-ism, and more.
This was a small, but passionate group of engaged artists. I couldn’t help feeling, however, that we were struggling a bit for focus. My general feeling is that the site of “Asianness” is shifting very rapidly right now, but the ways that it is shifting are complicated and profoundly relational. This doesn’t make the conditions we know about go away. The histories (both past and ongoing) of exclusion, denied entry, racialized policies of economic/labour extraction (as in the Chinese Head Tax, but also the Live-In Caregiver Program, and Immigrant Investor Program), expulsion, uprooting, redress, and movement remain with us. But particularly with regards to Indigenous resurgences and the call to attend to Black lives, we also need to be thinking relationally. Also, with the growing economic and imperial power of Asia, bumping up against the ongoing racism we have always faced in Canada, a complex discussion about power as flow and its impact on bodies, lives, and practices—artistic and otherwise—is necessary.
The panel title was a bit broad. For future events, I might suggest making the session form more focused. Perhaps there can be several panels slanted in whole or in part in Asian directions. I, for one, would like to be engaged in conversations across racial forms and histories. But I’d also be delighted to take part in a session that’s about artistic and activist practice across the generations. A critical or thematic focus might help us separate out the various discussions in order to have them more productively. Nonetheless, I am deeply grateful for the wonderful experience I had in this session and at the PC/Cp gathering as a whole.
Larissa Lai
Larissa Lai has authored two novels, "When Fox Is a Thousand" and "Salt Fish Girl;" two poetry collections, "sybil unrest" and "Automaton Biographies," and a critical book "Slanting I, Imagining We." A Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary, she directs the Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing. In Fall 2018, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish her new novel, "The Tiger Flu." Photo credit: Monique de St-Croix.
Elwood Jimmy
ColourAbility - Body Rehabilitation
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Embedded within these shifts in “being” regarding care are gestures of radical learning and unlearning that are required from all of us. This sometimes creates tension and pain, but we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are in this together, and that we need to hold a space where learning, unlearning, and radical caring can happen.
View Full ResponseElwood Jimmy
ColourAbility - Body Rehabilitation
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Elwood Jimmy at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I would like to offer my gratitude to the Lekwungen People for being such gracious and generous hosts of this gathering on their territory. I would also like to thank France Trépanier and Chris Creighton-Kelly for their vision, and invitation into this process. I would also like to thank Vanessa Andreotti for her guidance in helping me clarify and refine my thoughts for this text.
Woven into the Primary Colours program were four sessions under the umbrella theme of Intersectionality in the Arts: Intergenerationality, Feminism(s), LGBTQ2S, and ColourAbility. I was asked to co-facilitate the ColourAbility session with Aruna Srivastava. Prior to the session, Aruna and I talked about how we wanted to collaboratively lead this session. We talked of the body as a foundation for the concepts we wanted to use to lead a conversation with the group that gathered. We shared some common experiences around the body, and how in different times and ways, our bodies have let us down, and how this has necessitated the ongoing negotiation of new relationships to our bodies, of a constant recalibration, and within that recalibration, mixed feelings of shame, of humility, of vulnerability, with each shift in wellness, or age, or circumstance.
I have only recently self-identified as disabled. A serious illness in 2017 landed me in the hospital for one month, followed by weeks of recovery time at home. It was only my second, part-time week back to work when I attended this gathering. Before I arrived, I had to learn how to care for this “new” body. I had to ensure that I travelled with an adequate amount of medication, and to move at the pace my body required me to move. During my hospital stay, a surgeon opened up my right thigh in three different places, and ambulatory care services had to teach me how to clean, unpack and repack the three open wounds in my leg, which I did each day while I was there. These wounds were a part of my daily life for weeks, and significantly altered my sense of (in)vulnerability and ignited a stronger sense of rigour around care and self-care. As a result of this physical trauma, I had only recently re-learned how to walk. Only a couple of weeks prior to the gathering, with great physical, mental, and emotional effort, I had been able to walk to the end of my apartment complex’s driveway and back. Several months on, this relationship with pain can still be one of frustration and sadness, but also of learning and humility and cultivating a deeper love for myself and by extension, those around me.
Part of what triggered this illness was unforeseen, but I assert that a substantial portion of this illness was by colonial design. I was born and raised in Saskatchewan, which is notoriously one of the most racist provinces in the nation we call Canada. At the time of writing this text, the sting of injustice by the acquittal of white farmer Gerald Stanley in the murder of Colten Boushie, a young Nêhiyaw man from Red Pheasant First Nation, is still fresh, as the verdict only came down two nights ago. Like Colten, I too am Nêhiyaw and come from Treaty Six. As a young adult trying to access the health care system, I was subjected to dehumanizing racialized and sexual harassment within the healthcare system. Those experiences were traumatic enough to drive me away from seeing a doctor for over a dozen years, and only after a move away from Saskatchewan to Ontario. It was only this recent personal health crisis, and some reasonably compassionate care in the hospital, that had me accessing “universal” health care regularly for the first time in my adult life. My story is not unique. Saskatchewan’s Indigenous population lags behind the rest of the country in all wellness indicators. This racially pervasive environment has also contributed to many forms of trauma that I and people like me carry, which contribute to a lack of wellness on an individual and community level.
These days, my life and work straddle many different sensibilities, communities and practices—Indigenous, Disabled, Fat, Mad, Queer/2-Spirit—all read as deficiencies and liabilities within a colonial culture and structure. But it is also from the ways of being derived from the work being produced in these communities that I draw inspiration for envisioning the world where I want my friends and peers to thrive. Within my practices now, care is a central driver and goal, and the definition of what care is shifts within each community. There is also an important distinction that Cree scholar Karyn Recollet asserted in a recent conversation, between “care” and “in care.”
Embedded within these shifts in “being” regarding care are gestures of radical learning and unlearning that are required from all of us. This sometimes creates tension and pain, but we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are in this together, and that we need to hold a space where learning, unlearning, and radical caring can happen. I struggled and hesitated to use the word privilege in this text, but it is something that we have to recognize exists within our own communities. It may seem odd to say that a group of Indigenous artists and artists of Colour are privileged or hold privilege, but in terms of gender and sexual identity, (dis)ability, and all-around proximity and access to wellness, the critique becomes more nuanced, and hierarchies emulating the colonial structure will, and do, reveal themselves. I think we are still several years away from a (dis)ability theory, practice, sensibility, and embodiment becoming embedded in the foundation of what we do, but it has to happen. My hope was that in our time together, we have planted seeds for further thought, conversations, governance, and actions around disability and care.
Elwood Jimmy
Elwood Jimmy is a learner, collaborator, writer, artist, facilitator, cultural manager, and gardener. He is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation, a Nêhiyaw community in the global north. For close to 20 years, he has played a leadership role in several art projects, collectives, and organizations locally and abroad. In December 2015, he was hired as the program coordinator for Musagetes, and has also commissioned texts on social injustice for its online platform ArtsEverywhere.
Nilufer Rahman
Reflecting on Muslim Screens
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Orientalist narratives about Muslims are alive and well and have continued to flourish in the post 9/11 world. In this context, many Muslims have felt immense pressure to counter Islamophobic rhetoric and discrimination with positive narratives from Muslim voices. However, always being on the defensive and needing to constantly extol the virtues of their faith, Muslims often find themselves burdened with a responsibility much larger than any individual can bear.
View Full ResponseNilufer Rahman
Reflecting on Muslim Screens
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Nilufer Rahman at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory.
At the first-of-its-kind Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires Indigenous and People of Colour artist gathering in 2017, I was honoured to co-facilitate the Muslim Screens session with journalist and filmmaker Saida Ouchaou.
Filmmaking for me has been a way to share my lens as a Muslim, Bengali, Canadian woman of colour. In our Muslim Screens session we quickly reinforced the reality that being Muslim, just like expressing any other identity, is an extremely subjective experience. We cannot be boxed in to a set of behaviours or norms, which would, in fact, be oppressive. Orientalist narratives about Muslims are alive and well and have continued to flourish in the post 9/11 world. In this context, many Muslims have felt immense pressure to counter Islamophobic rhetoric and discrimination with positive narratives from Muslim voices. However, always being on the defensive and needing to constantly extol the virtues of their faith, Muslims often find themselves burdened with a responsibility much larger than any individual can bear. Not all Muslims want to be reduced to their faith identity. As much as one would like to present positive counter narratives of the “Muslim world,” it’s very hard to speak on behalf of 1.8 billion people. Furthermore, the rise of Islamophobia globally makes it extremely difficult to engage in much-needed critical discourse within Muslim cultures and societies where positive social change needs to happen. For example, how do you address patriarchy and sexism within Muslim communities when women wearing hijabs are being attacked on the street based on the way they look? Basically, it is tough to air your dirty laundry when you are desperately trying to impress and reassure people, in order to avoid worsening the prejudice, discrimination, and violence that is already directed towards you.
Within this catch-22, Muslim artists struggle to express our subjective voices. Funding opportunities are opening up that promote Muslim filmmaking and art, but they are often in the context of combating Islamophobia. While I see the need for this, I also see a problematic pattern emerging where narratives from Muslim and ally voices are also stereotypic, albeit in a positive sense. While this reactionary representation is providing some balance in our very polarized society, it is also overshadowing the layered and nuanced voices and experiences that in the long term will be more effective in carrying critical discourse forward—not just in mainstream societies but within Muslim communities as well.
As a Muslim filmmaker in today’s fractured world, I admit to feeling the obligation to represent. To me this means sharing stories that reflect authentic experiences and promote empathy without diminishing negative realities in the world. I would like to see funders supporting films beyond the films themselves. We need help in distribution strategies to communities, educational institutions, service sectors, governments, and online platforms, where our films can be shared, critically discussed, and used as tools towards a more nuanced understanding of Muslim diversity and the historical, socio-economic, political contexts worldwide that have shaped our modern fractured yet ever-interconnected world.
Nilufer Rahman
Nilufer Rahman is an award-winning Winnipeg-based independent filmmaker. In 2007, she interned on the set of CBC’s hit television sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie. Through their company Snow Angel Films, Nilufer and her sister Saira Rahman have produced well-received films such as Arctic Mosque and Letter to a Terrorist. As a Canadian Muslim of Bangladeshi heritage, Nilufer views film as a powerful tool to share diverse voices, facilitate dialogue and motivate positive social change.
Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski
Muslim Screens
Day 2: September 24, 2017
This session highlighted the double hurdle facing Muslim female artists in Canada, like Nilufer, myself, and others present at PC/Cp. Being an artist is not an easy choice, given potential family disapproval. What’s more, an artist’s perspective on her Muslim and cultural community or the way in which Canadian society views Islam continues to be challenged by prejudices and closed minds.
View Full ResponseSaïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski
Muslim Screens
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Saida Ouchaou-Ozarowski experiencing Haruko Okano’s Homing Pidgin installation at the Deconstructing Comfort exhibition at Open Space. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Freedom of expression in a special space.
Several topics emerged as soon as the workshop began, such as curiosity or ignorance about Islam—too often presented through negative or emotionally charged images—the narrow profiling of Muslim women (controlled by men, little visibility, forced to wear veils, etc.), the homogenous perception of Islam, and the limited knowledge of audio-visual works by Canadian Muslim artists.
This led to discussions about the type of documentary or cinematic works that have been produced in Canada and the way in which the many aspects of persons of Muslim culture and/or faith are addressed.
Nilufer Rahman, my co-facilitator and producer from Winnipeg, initiated a discussion about the work of Muslim female filmmakers in Canada within their religious communities. Nilufer explores the issues facing the Muslim community in which she was raised and her place of worship—the mosque. Having grown up in an open community where men and women prayed together, she now sees this mosque being subjected to the ultra-conservative influence of Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia. Hence, she feels it is crucial that female artists provide a critical, yet constructive perspective in order to offset the trend toward an insular, homogeneous religious practice governed by male-dominated conservatism.
Based on my documentary research on the diversity of Muslim women in Canada, the discussions focused on the importance of expanding perspectives on the place of reformist practices, as well as that of non-practising Muslims demanding the reappropriation of an Islam that is more open to the outside world.
There is definitely much to learn about the presence of practising and non-practising Muslims from various backgrounds in the population. Practices are also influenced by cultural identity, education, and adherence to Canadian values within Muslim families.
This session highlighted the double hurdle facing Muslim female artists in Canada, like Nilufer, myself, and others present at PC/Cp. Being an artist is not an easy choice, given potential family disapproval. What’s more, an artist’s perspective on her Muslim and cultural community or the way in which Canadian society views Islam continues to be challenged by prejudices and closed minds.
How can we overcome all of this? By creating immersive media art experiences and exploring collaborations. To draw a parallel between the meetings held during the session and the four days of PC/Cp in Victoria, Aboriginal artists have much to teach us since, for them as well, exploring issues from within or outside their communities causes reactions and sometimes misunderstandings about the artistic work they generate.
Translated by Elizabeth Vincent.
Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski
Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski lives in Vancouver. She has written several documentaries: "Pluri'elles," "Une langue aux mille visages : le français au Canada," the web-docu series "La vie en rose" and more recently "Demain, nous parlerons tous chinois." She aims to capture the issues of society with the help of a camera.
Kathia Rock
What is a Quebec Artist?
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Having been born in Quebec, I’m well placed to talk about language protection. However, I still don’t understand why my native language is excluded or why I’m considered part of the world music scene.
View Full ResponseKathia Rock
What is a Quebec Artist?
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Kathia Rock at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
The question “What is a Quebec artist?” was aimed at exploring identity and identification issues.
My name is Kathia Rock and I’m a singer-songwriter from the Innu Nation. I’m also an actor. For me, Montreal is my second “great reserve,” where I can fulfill myself as an artist. I have lived there for 34 years and followed a personal artistic journey in order to further my learning process.
On Lekwungen territory in September 2017, I was invited to join this great gathering to discuss the general issues and challenges facing the arts sector.
Montreal is a city where you can see all kinds of shows. However, Indigenous productions are limited and very few are invited to take part. The City’s major festivals come to mind.
My proposed workshop was “Who is considered a Quebec artist from the perspective of the Quebec arts community?”
In my humble opinion, “dyed in the wool” Quebecers are an integral part of the Quebec arts scene. As for new arrivals, visible minorities or aboriginals, we’re only called upon in the case of needing to meet special requirements or a hiring percentage. Unfortunately, in certain disciplines like music, Bill 101 hurts other cultures, including First Nations, if they sing in their mother tongue. Having been born in Quebec, I’m well placed to talk about language protection. However, I still don’t understand why my native language is excluded or why I’m considered part of the world music scene.
What were the questions, issues and challenges?
When I left my community, my big dream was to perform on numerous stages in Quebec, collaborate with other artists and help promote Indigenous culture. As the years went by, I soon realized that I was invited to perform only when there was a need for a “First Nations Artist” box or a show opener. This impression was confirmed one day when I wanted to register in a singer-songwriter contest… and was refused because I didn’t sing in French.
Who receives grants?
Anyone can, especially since the federal government increased the budget for Aboriginals. For the past year, the watchword has been “reconciliation” or “include an Indigenous person in your production and your budget will double.” Imagine the offers for 4th assistant or 3rd or 4th non-speaking roles.
Who has access to resources and infrastructures?
We only have access to a small share of these resources or infrastructures, again due to Bill 101.
Who is celebrated at galas?
The first Aboriginal artists to make an appearance at an ADISQ[1] gala were the duo Kashtin. Then for several years, nothing. Next came Elisapie, and then Samian, who spoke a few words in Algonquin or Inuktitut. Otherwise, our music is considered world music in our own province.
Who is seen on TV?
Whether on television, in the theatre or in feature films, our roles are informed only by stereotypes. My culture is basically a barrier.
Who is part of public collections?
??
Who is featured in museums and galleries?
No painters that I know.
Who is published? What place is given to aboriginal artists and artists of colour (immigrants or from communities of colour)?
Not for me to say. It’s not my department.
Who has the right to call oneself a Quebecer?
We all have the right to call ourselves Quebecers, except that we’re categorized only as visible minorities.
Who feels like a Quebecer?
I was born and raised in Quebec and am governed by the federal government; I consider myself a Quebecer.
Translated by Elizabeth Vincent.
[1] Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video, or the “Québec Association for the Recording, Concert and Video Industries.”
Kathia Rock
The musical universe of this Innu of Maliotenam is theatrical and tinged with poetry. She is inspired by both the urban planner and community life. Her warm voice accompanies melodies that draw their sources from the ancestral repertoire of his people and contemporary music. Photo credit: René Bellefeuille
David Ng
Community - Ethics - Art
Day 2: September 24, 2017
…whether it is the process in which the art is made, the intention behind the artistic expression, or the motivation and ethics of the artist, the product and arts practice is ultimately contingent on the guidelines dictated by funders. […] If funding for arts could allow space for artists and communities to determine outcomes, the relationship between artists and communities would also be transformed.
View Full ResponseDavid Ng
Community - Ethics - Art
Day 2: September 24, 2017
Conversations + Creations session during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
The session I led was on Community, Ethics, and Art. We had a small group of about fifteen people in the session, made up of people from different backgrounds, including Indigenous folks and People of Colour. A theme that emerged from the discussions was on the notion of “accountability” and where it lies. Are we accountable to communities? Or are we beholden to funders? How are funders accountable to community? Some of the challenges raised in the discussion addressed the ways that requirements for arts grants often direct the outcomes of the arts, as artists often tailor their work to fit the specifications of grants. In the long term, this places the direction and accountability from the artist’s work to the funder. Scarcity of arts funding also constrains the artistic agency that artists have access to.
Arts that are accountable to community was also a big discussion that came out of the group. Many of the people in the discussion were doing work that is deeply embedded in community, so there was a lot of expertise in the room around community engagement, and this whole idea of “community engaged art.” One question that was raised was the fact that the arts should be connected to community, should be accountable to community, and should engage community. There was also a debate around how art is always political, and we can’t create art that isn’t, because arts practice always comes out of a particular context. This also adds to the fact that if art is always political, then it must be accountable to the communities within which it exists. Some questions that emerged from this discussion included: how can artists respond to community needs? How can communities be a part of the direction of artistic practice?
A lot of discussion repeatedly gravitated toward the notion that funders hold purse strings, and the constraints that this places on artists being accountable to communities. It was hard to steer the conversation beyond this, because whether it is the process in which the art is made, the intention behind the artistic expression, or the motivation and ethics of the artist, the product and arts practice is ultimately contingent on the guidelines dictated by funders.
Along these lines, some of the suggestions that came out of the discussion revolved around how arts funding could transform to allow for malleability towards community needs. If funding for arts could allow space for artists and communities to determine outcomes, the relationship between artists and communities would also be transformed.
There was also a suggestion along the lines of funders looking at qualitative aspects of arts to determine successful outcomes, for example, using relationship building between the arts, artists, and communities act as legible measures of success. A related example would be acknowledging the ways in which accountability between artists and community could also be seen as a measure of success for an arts project. Rather than steer towards quantitative measurements that emerge from neoliberal pressures for “return on investment,” qualitative evaluations on the nuances of community engagement and accountability could also allow for a more ethical arts community.
David Ng
David Ng is a queer feminist, and is the co-founder of Love Intersections, a media arts collective made up of queer artists of colour. David is a passionate social justice advocate, and has co-founded and worked on numerous arts based anti-oppression campaigns and projects ranging from feminist anti-violence campaigns, decolonization work, cultural safety, anti-racism, and other forms of social justice art and activism.
Guy Sioui Durand
The Colour of Words
Day 3: September 25, 2017
That’s when, as a Wendat from the snowy north, I had a vision of a rainbow. It covered the island of the great black ravens and was made up of the Trickster figures found in tales of the Indigenous people from the Pacific Coast, the Wild North of Sioui, the black South of Saint-Éloi and the bitter Middle East of El Ghabdan.
View Full ResponseGuy Sioui Durand
The Colour of Words
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Gallery visitors listen to the recording of Nadia Myre’s A Casual Reconstruction at the opening reception of Deconstructing Comfort at Open Space.
The formation of a rainbow is a magical moment. Rays of sun, drops of rain, sky and clouds, land, and the human eye all come together in an Aiminanu (which means “a conversation is in progress,” in the Innu-aimun language).
A similarly magic moment occurred on a micro-scale during the Colour of Words workshop at the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering. Upstairs in our small meeting room, I actually had the feeling of riding on the back of Yandiäwish, the Great Turtle. That’s because the workshop attracted artists of such varied backgrounds—Indigenous, Francophone, city dwellers, and nomads—to talk literature and to create poetry together.
That’s what delighted me about the workshop. Palestinian Yara El Ghabdan, author of l’Ombre de l’olivier and Le parfum du Nour was in fine form. Rodney Saint-Éloi, publisher of Mémoire d’encrier brought the freshly-minted second edition of the Aimititau-Parlons-Nous! collection. His Haitian origin allowed him to speak with authority about the humanity of the word “Negro” as a way to express his fascination for the poetic dimension of words, which form the basis of literature.
That’s when, as a Wendat from the snowy north, I had a vision of a rainbow. It covered the island of the great black ravens and was made up of the Trickster figures found in tales of the Indigenous people from the Pacific Coast, the Wild North of Sioui, the black South of Saint-Éloi and the bitter Middle East of El Ghabdan. Added to this, the astonishing mixed-race Francophile sensibility of Oceania in the person of Léuli Eshrāghi, an Australian artist, curator and writer from Sāmoan, Persian and other ancestries.
It was as if East, West, North and South were joined together by the power and the colour of words. And what might have been a mere discussion, developed into a two-part play based on the aromas of sensuality and the fragrances of the imaginary that make up art.
Around our little table, Rodney Saint-Éloi set the tone as he calmly addressed passion, triggered by certain words, a passion that inhabits the lands where these words take root. Léuli Eshrāghi, a Samoan francophone born into an anglicized Oceania, colourfully described his marginal and nomadic existence travelling to the four corners of the world. Our exchange was further enriched by Yara’s upbeat and worldly-wise comments.
Rodney then suggested that we read a passage from our books— a sort of performance art—in order to bring The Colour of Words to life. And so, for a brief moment, we switched personas. Yara El Ghabdan became a Wendat and read from Rêves et Révolte, an excerpt from my exchanges with Québec poet Yves Boisvert published in Aimititau-Parlons-Nous! And I became a symbolic Palestinian as I softly recited a beautiful excerpt from Yara’s latest novel, which left us savouring the smell of coffee on an imaginary morning.
This is how I remember the The Colour of Words workshop. In some ways, it was a prime example of the overarching objective of the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering: to break down barriers!
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Guy Sioui Durand
Guy Sioui Durand is a Wendat (Huron) based in Wendake, Québec, Canada. He is a sociologist (PhD), art critic, independent curator, and performer (spoken word). He is specialized in contemporary Aboriginal art and contemporary art. Sioui Durand is curating the project Hommage aux Skywalkers/Ironworkers Mohawks from the event Rassemblement Internations d’Art Performance Autochtone (RIAPA) in Wendake this September 14-16, 2018. He is preparing the exhibition De Tabac, de Sauge et de Foins d’odeurs for the Joliette Museum of Art for winter 2019. Sioui Durand teaches "Initiation to Modern and Contemporary Aboriginal Art" at the Kiuna Native Institution, the only completely Aboriginal post-secondary institution.
Greg Younging
The Colour of Words
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Traditional Stories are sacred and have Indigenous Laws attached to them. Some Traditional Stories are seasonal (some Cree Stories, for example, can only be told when there is a lot of snow on the ground). Traditional Stories can be clan or family owned. They can also be gendered, ceremonial, and/or require Storyteller training/apprenticeships.
View Full ResponseGreg Younging
The Colour of Words
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Greg Younging at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Q: Where do art practices come from?
A: Our Stories.
“We are all about stories, and stories are all we are.” (Harold Johnson)
Indigenous Peoples have the following categories of Traditional Stories.
- Animal Time Stories
- Creation Stories
- Animal and People Stories
- Ancient People Stories
- Prophecy Stories
Indigenous Peoples also have the following categories of contemporary stories:
- Colonization Stories
- Decolonization Stories
- Indigenization Stories
Traditional Stories are sacred and have Indigenous Laws attached to them. Some Traditional Stories are seasonal (some Cree Stories, for example, can only be told when there is a lot of snow on the ground). Traditional Stories can be clan or family owned. They can also be gendered, ceremonial, and/or require Storyteller training/apprenticeships. They are subject to interpretations, have longer and condensed versions, and are sources of Indigenous Teachings, Laws and Identity.
Some nations have their own specific categories of Traditional Stories. The Sylix, for example, have the following categories:
- world-before-humans captikʷɬ
- sacred text captikʷɬ
- coyote-traveling captikʷɬ
- people-were-living captikʷ
- people-were-traveling captikʷɬ
Colonization stories are about
- Population Depletion
- Displacement and Diaspora
- Confinement (Reserves and Incarceration)
- Extraction and Imposition (Indian Act, Residential Schools, 60s Scoop, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls… Cultural and Language Loss).
De-colonization stories are about
- Political Organization (e.g. Idle No More)
- Indigenous Rights/Aboriginal Title, Protest (Oka, Kinder Morgan, Standing Rock,…)
- The Rejection of Colonial Law (e.g., the Indian Act)
Indigenization stories are about
- Cultural Rejuvenation
- Indigenous Laws
- Recognition of Traditional Territory
- Indigenizing the Academy and other colonial institutions
All of these types of stories inform and inspire the Indigenous traditional and contemporary arts in all of their manifestations. Unfortunately, the stories of people whose ancestry comes from a very small portion of the world have become dominant and privileged and imposed Indigenous peoples and other marginalized people through the process of colonization.
Greg Younging
Gregory Younging is a member of Opsakwayak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba. He holds a Master of Arts degree from the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton University and a Master of Publishing degree from the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. He received his doctoral degree from the Department of Educational Studies at University of British Columbia. Gregory has worked for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. From 1990 to 2003, he was Managing Editor of Theytus Books. He is now on faculty with the Indigenous Studies Program at University of British Columbia Okanagan.
Stéfan St-Laurent
Acadia Indigena
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Often romanticized, Acadian relationships with First Nations in Atlantic Canada are almost non-existent today. Discussions began before our public conversation, with Natalie Sappier Samaqani-Cocahq, and it became apparent quite quickly that Mi’kmaq and First Nations artists on the East coast have been underrepresented on the national scene, and in the art world, and Indigenous art world in general.
View Full ResponseStéfan St-Laurent
Acadia Indigena
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Bradley Dick and Butch Dick drumming together at the Community Feast during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I participated in the presentation Acadia: Indigena, as well as What is the Future of Artistic Practices. I had agreed to contribute to the Acadia: Indigena conversation firstly, because this was a very rare occasion for Acadian and Mi’kmaq and Indigenous artists to have a long overdue dialogue. Even though there had been closer ties in the past during settler times, the Acadian and Mi’kmaq communities have not broached the divide since the deportation in 1755. Often romanticized, Acadian relationships with First Nations in Atlantic Canada are almost non-existent today. Discussions began before our public conversation, with Natalie Sappier Samaqani-Cocahq, and it became apparent quite quickly that Mi’kmaq and First Nations artists on the East coast have been underrepresented on the national scene, and in the art world, and Indigenous art world in general. AXENEO7 has been taking concrete steps to decolonize over the past 3 years, developing long-term exchange projects with Indigenous organizations and artists. SAW Gallery and AXE will host a Nunavut-based artist every year, in collaboration with Nunavut Arts & Crafts Association, and we will soon embark on a new residency program for Acadian and Mi’kmaq artists starting in 2019. Decolonization cannot be realized simply by presenting Indigenous artists in a gallery. Initiatives need to be taken to allow artists and curators to take space, physical space. Budget priorities need to be shifted in order to sustain a commitment towards decolonization and reconciliation. I was at Primary Colours to listen. Intercultural dialogue, especially between settlers and Indigenous peoples, begins with settlers listening. I heard loud and clear what Indigenous and racialized artists need from Canada’s artistic institutions. Primary Colours exposed me to entire generations of artists in other disciplines I did not know; a rarity in the art world where so many of the same people are shuffled from one place to the next, a flagrant display of white privilege and power. In order to understand Indigenous art history, we need to forgo the idea of forcing it into a Western art canon that it shouldn’t ever fit into. Parallel art histories need to be written and studied, going back a millenia, to counter the idea of a universal art history. The What is the Future of Artistic Practice roundtable discussion helped me grapple with the many questions I had around the future of artist-run culture, how white boxes have become wholly inadequate to present the evolving, interdisciplinary work being made by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists in Canada.
What was especially moving during Primary Colours was the artist cabaret, a multidisciplinary display of our leading artists and musicians. The collaborations were exciting, stirring, heartbreaking, life affirming. Janet Lumb slowly walking up the stairs, with the sound of the saxophone becoming richer and richer, was a highlight for me, I was transported to a time of jazz infused bars with its melancholy and soul. It was a total discovery for me to meet a prodigy and trailblazer like her, in the most unexpected of performances.
Following my time in Victoria, and all the exciting projects I was presented, I woerked with artist and fellow PC/Cp participant, Skawennati to present her major exhibition, Teiakwanahstahsontehrha’ We Extend the Rafters. It is a children’s exhibition with Vox and Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, presented at AXE in April and May of 2018. This project exemplifies the ideas discussed during the conference and is what I would consider the future of artistic practice and presentation on Turtle Island.
Bradley Dick and Butch Dick drumming together at the Community Feast during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Stéfan St-Laurent
Stefan St-Laurent, multidisciplinary artist and curator, was born in Moncton, New-Brunswick and lives and works in Gatineau. He was the invited curator for the Biennale d’art performatif de Rouyn-Noranda in 2008, and for the 28th and 29th Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in 2010 and 2011. From 2002 to 2011, he worked as curator of Galerie SAW Gallery, and has been an adjunct professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa since 2010. His performance and video work has been presented in numerous galleries and institutions, including the Centre national de la photographie in Paris, Edsvik Konst och Kultur in Sollentuna in Sweden, YYZ in Toronto, Western Front in Vancouver and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. He has been a curator and programmer for a number of artistic organizations and festivals, including the Lux Centre in London, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montréal, the Festival international du cinéma francophone in Acadie, the Rencontres internationales Vidéo Arts Plastiques in Basse-Normandie, France, the Festival international du cinema francophone en Acadie in Moncton, as well as Pleasure Dome, Images Festival of Independent Film and Video and Vtape in Toronto. He is currently director of the artist-run centre AXENÉO7 in Gatineau.
Maryse Arseneault
Acadia: Indigena
Day 3: September 25, 2017
Like most Primary Colours / Couleurs primaires workshops, the title was chosen ahead of time, no questions asked. This was a problem right from the start, because this statement presupposes that the words Acadia and Indigena can be used interchangeably, as though a sort of reciprocity existed between Acadia and the Mi’kma’ki territory.
View Full ResponseMaryse Arseneault
Acadia: Indigena
Day 3: September 25, 2017
PC/Cp participants and community members at the Community Feast on Lekwungen territory honoring Lina de Guevara and Butch Dick. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Like most Primary Colours / Couleurs primaires workshops, the title was chosen ahead of time, no questions asked. This was a problem right from the start, because this statement presupposes that the words Acadia and Indigena can be used interchangeably, as though a sort of reciprocity existed between Acadia and the Mi’kma’ki territory.
The Mi’kmaq people enabled us to survive in their forests following the deportation of 1755, but according to information I obtained from Marylin Bear, a Kouchibouguac elder, the help offered by the Mi’kmaq was not out of friendship but rather out of respect for an ancestral value: unconditional compassion for children. Marylin told me that a true friendship between the Mi’kmaq and francophones would have been highly doubtful given the fact that they were betrayed by the first French settlers shortly after their arrival. In order to gain access to marine resources on the west coast of Newfoundland, the French treacherously pitted the Mi’kmaq and Malecites against the Beothuks, which resulted in the latter’s annihilation.
It would be interesting to draw a parallel between the colonial identity and the identity of an uprooted Acadia. But I would hesitate to begin such a conversation without pointing out that we did not share Wabanaki Territory (which includes the Abenaki, Penawapskewi, Pestomuhkati, and Malecite First Nations) in a neutral fashion, as many Acadians would like to believe. This territory had its own name, which we have for too long forgotten. Acadians were long scattered across a diaspora that has come to be known as “l’Acadie sans frontières” (Acadia without Borders). We slowly returned to resettle and create a so-called inclusive society. But until quite recently, we have expressed very little acknowledgement of the compassion shown by the Mi’kmaq people. And although there has been mixing among Acadian and Indigenous families, people are not aware of the circumstances under which this mixing took place. It was against this backdrop of ambiguity concerning identity that I undertook the workshop, which I co-moderated with Stéfan St-Laurent. The subjects discussed included: our hidden Indigenous bloodlines (racism and the stigma attached to the Indigenous ancestry in our white families); bilingualism (and the lack of other non-official languages in our curricula); sharing of territory (and the related power dynamics); and the reality of French-Canadians outside Québec (and their under-representation at PC/Cp).
It became clear for our group that Indigenous languages must be revitalized and included in the public arena, as is being done in Brittany, for example. And while fraternization among francophones, anglophones, and Indigenous peoples is an ongoing process in the Maritime provinces, particularly in light of the collective urgency of opposing fracking and protecting our waterways, it is no longer acceptable to speak of being inclusive without making concrete gestures of reconciliation. There was much talk of the correct process to initiate collaboration. What often came up is that when an invitation is heartfelt, the rest can unfold in an atmosphere of respect and cooperation. I believe it is important not to expect friendship but rather a learning experience. Perhaps, for example, learning another language enough to say hello and to listen, or even to translate. One proposal I find interesting would be to restore the identity of the territory by using pre-contact place names. Accordingly, a more accurate title to summarize our discussion would have been Acadia: Wabanaki.
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Maryse Arseneault
Based in Moncton and Montreal, Maryse Arseneault is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work has been presented nationally and internationally, through festivals and artist-run centres such as Atelier d’estampe Imago, Eastern Edge, Connexion ARC, and Galerie du Nouvel Ontario. Recent MFA graduate (Concordia University 2015), Arseneault continues to showcase drawing, print and video in her interventions. Her recent efforts critique society's disconnect with nature, due to technology and the objectification of matter through art.
Mark Igloliorte
Traditional is Contemporary is Traditional is…
Day 4: September 26, 2017
When I learnt to do an “Eskimo Roll,” capsizing myself, being inverted underwater and then completing a full rotation with my body and paddle, I did so in an Inuit design with an Inuit technique. Sitting in the kayak back a top of the water, I completed something that my ancestors completed. The traditional has that power of connecting time in a way that does not take into account linear thinking.
View Full ResponseMark Igloliorte
Traditional is Contemporary is Traditional is…
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Léuli Eshraghi performing at the Deconstructing Comfort opening reception. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
The day after the Traditional is Contemporary is Traditional is… talk with Maikoiyo, someone mentioned that we should have our own podcast. It was a great talk. I’m having a hard time recalling it all to tell the truth. It was months ago.
The title Traditional is Contemporary is Traditional is… suggests, or fits well with, the indigenous dialogues about the nature of time. Two days after the talk Chris Creighton-Kelly said to me during the Sunrise Breakfast: “You must have contributed a wider view on time for your panel!” I replied that there was such a perspective in the panel but it didn’t originate with me.
Maikoiyo lead that part of the talk for sure. My impressions from that conversation was that he viewed time as expansive and non-linear. I don’t recall comprehending the whole of his explanation. At the same time I didn’t doubt his perspective at any moment.
In our discussion, I used the specific example of my pursuit of kayaking in relation to our question of time. I asked my Uncle Ron and Aunt Miriam as elders, if they remembered seeing kayakers growing up. Between them they had lived in the coastal Inuit communities of Okak, Nutak, Nain and Hopedale. Nothing. Not a single memory of the traditional hunting boat used during their lifetimes.
So Maikoiyo and I discussed what to make of this colonial wrinkle in time. The period when the kayak disappeared completely from its territory. Again, I can’t recall exactly how the non-linear part of this talk went—yet I was on board.
When I learnt to do an “Eskimo Roll,” capsizing myself, being inverted underwater and then completing a full rotation with my body and paddle, I did so in an Inuit design with an Inuit technique. Sitting in the kayak back a top of the water, I completed something that my ancestors completed. The traditional has that power of connecting time in a way that does not take into account linear thinking.
Back in the panel, held in the windowless basement meeting room, the discussion opened up and I recall an active conversation. Then near the end of the session the discussion devolved and I could not follow along. It just got real flakey. “As a member of your tenure application panel could you expand on what you mean by ‘flakey’?” Ashok Mather pantomimed as a friend, exhorting me to always be respectful and mind my language. Two lessons I haven’t forgotten.
Thinking of the first conversation with Maikoiyo outside the Songhess Wellness Centre, we talked about of some amazing stuff. It was a free ranging discussion which also planned loosely for the panel ahead. At the end of the gathering we didn’t make any plans to have a podcast. Nothing like that. Just that it would be great to meet again in the future.
—Mark Igloliarte
Curators Michelle Jacques, Doug Jarvis, and France Trépanier at the Deconstructing Comfort exhibition opening reception at Open Space during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017.
Mark Igloliarte
Mark Igloliorte is an interdisciplinary artist of Inuit ancestry from Nunatsiavut, Labrador. His artistic work is primarily painting and drawing. In 2017, Igloliorte received a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation and to note, he was also longlisted for a Sobey art award in 2012. He currently lives in Vancouver where he teaches at Emily Carr.
Vanessa Andreotti
Re-Wilding Our Imaginations
Day 4: September 26, 2017
What are ways of imagining and being become viable when art is able to interrupt our satisfaction with the modern-colonial (intellectual, affective, relational and performative) economies we are invested in? And what are the conditions that make this interruption possible?
View Full ResponseVanessa Andreotti
Re-Wilding Our Imaginations
Day 4: September 26, 2017
knitting needles
I was invited to lead a bilingual inter-generational conversation with Guy Sioui-Durand on the topic Re-Wilding Our Imaginations/Ré-ensauvagement de nos imaginaires. During the session, we talked about the potential of socially engaged art to interrupt the colonial entrapments of our imagination and to help us to heal the collective pain caused by enforced separations.
one wool yarn
My work in arts and education focuses on troubling the modern-colonial idea that being is reducible to knowing. I am interested in how art can enable us to tap a stream of connections not mediated by the known and the knowable:
where relationships are not dependent on meaning, knowledge or understanding;
where generosity, compassion and humility are not intellectual choices;
where we can take responsibility for being entangled within a wider metabolism, much larger than human embodied temporalities.
In educational and artistic practices, this moves the focus from the dimension of knowing and questions of representation towards the dimension of being and questions about the limits of representability.
basic stitches
During the conference, ideas of entanglement through the unknown and unknowable popped up at different points. I sensed it in Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes’ explanation that we are not separate, but continuous with each other. I saw it in Zab Maboungou’s embodied insistence that art is, and comes from, movement and vibration. I experienced it in learning from Elwood Jimmy, the practice of disciplined knitting as a basis for deep listening. I read it in Chris Creighton-Kelly’s and France Trépanier’s open invitation for participants to go beyond access and inclusion. I heard it in many silences and songs that were performed within and in-between bodies and spaces.
different fibers, different patterns
I also witnessed when this notion was confronted with different ideas about the importance of representation, pride and/or identity in historical struggles for recognition. This witnessing felt like sitting at the edge of a fault line where two different sensibilities meet on uneven grounds, and where there is only one inadequate common language to communicate across differences. I felt this fault line strongly in the conversations in my session with Guy, in the panel discussing where art practices come from with Zab, and in the moment participants were asked to represent being, place, time and space using only language.
more wool
These were important moments of difficulty, discomfort and deep learning, which I am very thankful for. We need more encounters and perhaps a new language that can bridge these and other fault lines we will find as we work together, individual and unique in one layer of being, but also inseparable in another.
…more knitting
These moments also inspired two events at the ArtsEverywhere Festival in Guelph in January 2018, one curated by Elwood Jimmy, and another by myself. Elwood’s session Braiding Infinity: Enacting Indigenous futures was a conversation with Shelley Niro, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Nancy Rowe addressing hybrids of ancient and innovative practices around land-based learning, and communal living centring Indigenous thought, protocols and relationships to land. The session Meaning or Movement? Objects or Rhythm? with Zab Maboungou, Ashon Crawley, and Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes invited the audience to engage with a number of questions related to the implications of mobilizing art primarily through movement, rhythm and process, rather than meaning, fixed stories and finished objects.
…knitting-together
I offer the two key questions we addressed in the sessions as an open invitation to collective knitting practices:
What are ways of imagining and being become viable when art is able to interrupt our satisfaction with the modern-colonial (intellectual, affective, relational and performative) economies we are invested in? And what are the conditions that make this interruption possible?
Vanessa Andreotti at a Conversation + Creations session during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti holds a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change at the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia. Her teaching and research focus on analyses of historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of knowledge and inequalities and how these limit or enable possibilities for collective existence.
Guy Sioui Durand
Re-wilding Our Imaginations
Day 4: September 26, 2017
One way to translate our thoughts into action is through what I call staged rants. And so, at the end of the workshop, I put on my moccasins and bracelets and invited the group to follow me outside to the tall Songhees/Lekwungen totem poles, resplendent under the brilliant sunshine.
View Full ResponseGuy Sioui Durand
Re-wilding Our Imaginations
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Casimiro Nhussi leading participants in movement during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
The heart of the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering was the large talking circle that brought together all the participants in the gymnasium. It was also the site of our formal ceremonies. And that is where the workshop on Re-wilding our Imaginations took place.
I was happy to present the idea of Re-wilding our Imaginations as a way to renew our relationships with the non-Indigenous world of art. I suggested that we start by considering the expression “retracing the footsteps of our Elders” (learning from the past in order to engage with the future).
We took inspiration from the work of Kanien’ke ah :ka Taïake Alfred, a political scientist and professor at the University of Victoria. And our soul-searching, which was of a serious nature due to ethical and aesthetic considerations, was magically enlightened by the presence and contributions of Vanessa Oliviera-Andreotti, my workshop co-host. A native of Brazil, she shared her viewpoints on ancient and modern-day practices in South America.
Moreover, although the gymnasium was abuzz with activity and the need for interpretation required us to be patient, as we listened to each participant’s contribution the dialogue was further enriched.
I have three main takeaways: (1) the importance of respect for the knowledge, know-how and knowing how to live together demonstrated by our Elders, particularly the incredible resilience of women, whose power is being passed on to the next generations; (2) the importance of telling Indigenous stories of art that take into account the “inter-American” nature of the entire continent, and; (3) the need, like with Wampum, to re-interpret our stories in light of present-day reality.
One way to translate our thoughts into action is through what I call staged rants. And so, at the end of the workshop, I put on my moccasins and bracelets and invited the group to follow me outside to the tall Songhees/Lekwungen totem poles, resplendent under the brilliant sunshine.
Forming a new circle, I invoked the memory of Grand Chief Kwakwaka’wakw Mungo Nakapankan Martin, who was born in Prince Rupert and who died in Victoria in 1962. Not only did he continue to hold potlatch ceremonies in defiance of the Indian Act, he also rekindled the memory of Indigenous songs and the great totem poles (he was a mentor to the Hunt brothers as well as Bill Reid). People still talk about his performance at the 1953 inauguration of the Royal British Columbia Museum, to which he gifted his famous Longhouse. Breaking a copper crest in two, he kept one half and threw the other half into the bay; well before the word reconciliation became fashionable, he pointed out that a lasting peace would be achieved only when the two halves were once again joined.
Accompanied by Vanessa, we approached the waterfall feature in front of the Centre and threw in copper pennies, a symbol of power. I then held up a small amulet of a copper killer whale purchased at the Museum and we concluded the beautiful afternoon by showing respect to our Elders with a performance of re-wilding our imaginations.
Guy Sioui Durand
Tsie8ei
8enho8en
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Guy Sioui Durand
Guy Sioui Durand is a Wendat (Huron) based in Wendake, Québec, Canada. He is a sociologist (PhD), art critic, independent curator, and performer (spoken word). He is specialized in contemporary Aboriginal art and contemporary art. Sioui Durand is curating the project Hommage aux Skywalkers/Ironworkers Mohawks from the event Rassemblement Internations d’Art Performance Autochtone (RIAPA) in Wendake this September 14-16, 2018. He is preparing the exhibition De Tabac, de Sauge et de Foins d’odeurs for the Joliette Museum of Art for winter 2019. Sioui Durand teaches "Initiation to Modern and Contemporary Aboriginal Art" at the Kiuna Native Institution, the only completely Aboriginal post-secondary institution.
Naomi Johnson
Indigenous Curation... for Whom? by Whom?
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Prior to my in-the-round conversation centering around Indigenous Curation… for Whom? by Whom?, co-moderated with the brilliant Jaimie Isaac of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, I had opportunity to venture into several other sessions over the four day period. Each of these circles could best be described as welcoming, open, honest… and dare I say it? Decolonized.
View Full ResponseNaomi Johnson
Indigenous Curation... for Whom? by Whom?
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Naomi Johnson at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
I must begin by thanking and acknowledging the presence and contribution of all those who attended the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires Gathering in September 2017. I must also thank France Trépanier and Chris Creighton-Kelly for the invitation to what was a unique, multi-layered, invigorating, and inspiring event. It was a bringing together of minds and hearts of those who work within the arts—curators, artists, and administrators. People who for the most part are notoriously “over doing it.” It must be acknowledged that to manage an assemblage of these professionals into one place and time is something to be applauded. So I am. Well done.
As I write this reflection I am at a distance of six months from the Primary Colours gathering. I should have put these thoughts down a long while ago. I’ll blame the delay on my somewhat recent return to my regular gig as the Artistic Director at the Woodland Cultural Centre. I can also blame it on constant sleep deprivation, thanks to my fifteen month year old son Charlie, who has yet to realize the benefits of a full nights uninterrupted sleep.
Coincidently the Primary Colours gathering was intrinsic in mentally and emotionally preparing me for returning to my duties at the Woodland Cultural Centre.
Since 2012 I’ve worked as the Artistic Director at Woodland, curating exhibitions and programming annual performing arts events. I am fortunate that my work is grounded within my own home community at Six Nations. I am very cognisant that this scenario is an outlier and not the norm for most of my Indigenous colleagues working within the arts. The staff, board, and volunteers at the WCC are currently all Indigenous. Quite frankly, there need to be more places like The Woodland Cultural Centre spread across this country.
It was with great fortune and pleasure that I was able to attend the gathering with my friend and mentor, Tom Hill. A trail-blazer whose work within the arts has improved and impacted many. Without Tom’s efforts I can confidently say I would not have the honour of holding my current position. For nearly twenty years Tom served as Museum Director, curating both the annual artistic and historic exhibitions, and programs. Whenever I’m feeling overburdened, I remind myself of what Tom did.
Prior to my in-the-round conversation centering around Indigenous Curation… for Whom? by Whom?, co-moderated with the brilliant Jaimie Isaac of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, I had opportunity to venture into several other sessions over the four day period. Each of these circles could best be described as welcoming, open, honest… and dare I say it? Decolonized. I’ve seen attempts at other gatherings in which structured and thematic conversations have been approached in a similar way, with varying degrees of success. In my humble opinion, Primary Colours nailed it. Not once did I feel the need to force myself into participation. I also never felt the need to mentally prepare myself to slog through a dense lecture. With no exaggeration each round table, conversation circle and breakout sessions left me feeling inspired, recharged and quite frankly ready to get back to work.
Nia:wen
Naomi Johnson
Naomi Johnson is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Bear clan from Six Nations. Naomi has had several years’ experience as a curator, arts administrator, professional artist, and community arts facilitator. Naomi has a BFA hons, Visual Arts from York University and a diploma in Cultural Resource Management from the University of Victoria. Since 2013 she has served as the Artistic Director at the Woodland Cultural Centre programming exhibitions and performance art events annually.
Anna Binta Diallo
The Art of Storytelling
Day 4: September 26, 2017
There were only three of us in this session. […] So we were quite a small group in the francophone room, but that wasn’t a problem—quite the contrary. We had a very calm and inspiring session, and we took the time to get to know each other.
View Full ResponseAnna Binta Diallo
The Art of Storytelling
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Conversations + Creations session during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Co-hosted with writer and playwright from the Huron-Wendat nation, Guy Sioui Durand, this session unfolded differently from the first I attended, entitled “La langue de l’autre.” I was a bit intimidated to find myself in the presence of a very famous artist. As an emerging artist, I wanted to learn about the artistic methods that sustained his long and successful career, during which he created the first professional Indigenous theatre company in Québec. There were only three of us in this session. (In contrast, the Afro dance session with Zab Maboungou & Casimiro Nhussi was packed!) So we were quite a small group in the francophone room, but that wasn’t a problem—quite the contrary. We had a very calm and inspiring session, and we took the time to get to know each other. As a result, it was a refreshingly light exchange compared to the other workshops I attended during Primary Colours / Couleurs primaires. Our sole participant told us that she worked at the Canada Council for the Arts and wanted to learn the different ways of telling stories and the various strategies used by storytellers.
I liked the fact that we were able to share our different approaches to storytelling. Mr. Durand gave us a lot of insight into his work methods by describing his dramatic art practice. He often used the word “Action,” explaining how a transformative act can be used to conceal emotional information in a story. He talked about the importance of shamanism and how this type of spiritual manifestation remains at the heart of his practice. Artists are always searching for their own, authentic voice that can also reach others. At this point, our participant mentioned that she had come to our session specifically because she had attended the “Moving Images Showcase” evening where I had shared one of my films (Negotiations II). She wanted to know more about my creative process. Pleasantly surprised, I explained how I address the themes of nostalgia, identity, otherness, and memory in my works by intermingling memories and dreams. I use visual art—a symbolic language—to explore highly personal yet universal themes. I freely rearrange images to create a new cosmogony comprising various layers of information, a method that differs from the one described by Mr. Durand.
Mr. Durand ended our session by pointing out that one sometimes has to get lost in order to find or (re)discover oneself. We all agreed that artists are storytellers and that our role is to ask questions, delve deep, reformulate and then tell our stories.
All in all, a very enriching exchange.
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Anna Binta Diallo
Anna Binta Diallo is a visual artist who investigates memory and nostalgia to create unexpected narratives surrounding identity. Born in Senegal and raised in Manitoba, she’s currently based in Montreal. Her work has been exhibited at La Maison des Artistes Francophones, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Art Gallery of Alberta, MOCA Tapei, and featured in numerous publications. In 2016, Diallo exhibited "palimpseste," at MAI (Montréal), which weaved together collage, painting, prints, drawing, and audiovisual installations.
Toby Lawrence
Intersectionality in the Arts: Feminism(s)
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Why should feminism matter? A quote from cheyanne turions feels particularly relevant here: “It is important to acknowledge that feminism is about more than ending sexism—it’s also about abolishing interconnected systems of oppression that affect different people in different ways, and in a Canadian context this importantly means working to acknowledge and then abolish colonial forms of dispossession.”
View Full ResponseToby Lawrence
Intersectionality in the Arts: Feminism(s)
Day 4: September 26, 2017
PC/Cp participants gather outside on Lekwungen Territory for Jamelie Hassan’s Sunrise Breakfast, part of the Deconstructing Comfort exhibition at Open Space. Photo credit: Doug Jarvis.
The Intersectionality in the Arts (3) Feminism(s) 2017 session was an opportunity to gain greater understanding into the range of ways that contemporary feminism is understood and practiced. Led alongside Anoushka Ratnarajah, we opened up the session to all the participants, each sharing how we came to feminism, or are in process of coming to feminism. For some, this was an introduction to the conversation; for others, a lifelong affiliation. Many of us identified as feminist and/or understood our practices to be feminist, yet this did not necessarily correlate to the development of a feminist perspective founded in traditional western education models or an in-depth knowledge of feminist theory or history. The gathering reiterated the fluidity of feminist engagement and the nuanced roles it plays across praxes. In the arts, we are all well aware of the statistics. Exhibitions, performances, publications, events, and labour continue to represent predominantly white hetero-patriarchal perspectives, despite the decades of work that has been, and continues to be done. Particularly palpable in a session where all but one of the participants were women, the question of responsibility was made clear and the role of gendered involvement in the practice of feminism was a prevalent topic throughout the session conversation—#whereareallthemenat—combined with the profound importance of intersectionality. Due attention was given to the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, and subsequently to the levels of involvement and interest by cis men in the initiatives against gendered and racialized violence. There is an urgent and pervasive need to look closely at who is present in the conversation.
The mainstream dominance of western feminist theory and pop-culture and capitalist interpretations has dissuaded feminism’s potential. The discernable discomfort with—and even rejection of—the term “feminism” amongst the session participants results from such associations with specifically white women’s issues in the absence of a genuine intersectional discourse. A notable point was raised in relation to the fissure of feminist practice from feminist theory. The academic framework, or stronghold, of feminist discourse comes into play here as well, in terms of the location and positionality of feminism’s theoretical development, by contrast to work being done on the ground and beyond the institutional reach.
Why should feminism matter? A quote from cheyanne turions feels particularly relevant here: “It is important to acknowledge that feminism is about more than ending sexism—it’s also about abolishing interconnected systems of oppression that affect different people in different ways, and in a Canadian context this importantly means working to acknowledge and then abolish colonial forms of dispossession.” Moving forward, we must listen—with seriousness—to the ways in which the colonial hetero-patriarchal system is impacting individuals and communities, and to take these effects as points of action. To make space that allows people to be and feel provided for and safe as themselves, that does not simply replace males with females in the same patriarchal framework, but works to establish an entirely different societal system of organization.
Toby Lawrence
Toby Lawrence is a curator and writer based between Kelowna and Gabriola Island, in the territories of the Syilx and Snuneymuxw peoples. She has held curatorial and programming positions with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Nanaimo Art Gallery, and Studio 111, an experimental arts laboratory in Kelowna. She holds an MA in Art History from UBC and is currently working toward a PhD focused on curatorial practice at UBC Okanagan.
Janet Romero-Leiva
Arte LatinX
Day 4: September 26, 2017
spanish is the first language i heard understood spoke
until i was seven it was my only language
it was my love language
fun language
school language
shame and pain language
until i was seven it was my only language
Janet Romero-Leiva
Arte LatinX
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Carmen Aguirre honoring Lina de Guevara at the Community Feast during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
spanish is the first language i heard understood spoke
until i was seven it was my only language
it was my love language
fun language
school language
shame and pain language
until i was seven it was my only language
but then came english unapologetically clinging to my throat and bones
incruptandose en mi memoria hasta que spanish became misunderstood misspoken missed
my english.thinking.reading.writing.talking brain gives my belly a nauseated tight churning at the thought of carrying a whole panel discussion (what is latinx art?) on the weakness of my spanish tongue
because
i speak english better
and she speaks spanish better and french
my french is nominal at best
but we both speak spanish clearly the language for this panel
pero…
i don’t i rarely speak of colonization and reconciliation and intersectional identities and settlerdom and indigeneity and my art practice in spanish
the words they are hard to find mostly unfamiliar mostly unknown
unknown mostly to my 7 year old spanish speaking self
?
this
is where the translation angels step in and translation booths multiply
spanish to english to french english to french to spanish french to spanish to english
instant alleviation!
the discussion begins…
(we are: mujer, inmigrante, colombiana, chilena, bilingue, hija, madre, tia, hermana, revolucionaria, indigena, feminista, queer, actor, cisgender, director, playwright, teacher, painter, performer, stage manager, writer, multidisciplinary artist)
entonces:
how do we four latinx womyn artists sitting around this table invite indigenous communities into our art practice without being dangerously tokenistic?
how do i as an immigrant reconcile my place on this land?
how do i create work that acknowledges my own unspoken, denied and shamed indigeneity without causing further harm?
how do latinx people take our space in “canadian” art?
what/who defines what is latinx art?
…what is latinx?
does being a person of latinx heritage unconditionally make your art latinx?
if you immigrated as an adult and were an artist in your home country, is your art latinx-canadian? just canadian? colombian-canadian? chilean-canadian?
how does queerness fit into this equation? queer latinx canadian artist?
what examples do we have of other latinx artists working in canada? in latin america? in other countries/continents?
and beyond our art….what is our responsibility?
we need to learn our own indigenous history alongside learning the history of indigenous communities whose land we live on
we need to learn the history of latinx artists on turtle island
we need to learn that sometimes the learning comes from stepping back and holding space for others
sometimes the learning comes from sitting around a mapudungun.spanish.french.english speaking table and letting the learning flow through you not from you
Carmen Aguirre honoring Lina de Guevara at the Community Feast during the PC/Cp Gathering 2017. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
Janet Romero-Leiva
janet romero-leiva is a queer feminist latinx visual artist and writer whose work explores immigrant displacement, denied aboriginality, and the experience of living between the south and the north, between spanish and english, between memory and truth "i am moved and inspired by the writing of Gloria Anzaldua and Nayyirah Waheed, the art of Yolanda Lopez, the music of Rae Spoon and Carla Morrison, the nakedness of trees in winter, moments of love shared in an instant, the desire for a just and fair existence for all, and the lines on the faces of strangers" @janetromeroleiva | [email protected]
Helena Martin Franco
Arte LatinX
Day 4: September 26, 2017
One ephemeral island. Four Spanish-speaking women. Brought together for the very first time on unfamiliar First Nations territory, we were surrounded by a constantly shifting tide of people, emotions, and perceptions. In such a context, one could have perceived our meeting as being fraught with danger, but the Arte LatinX workshop proved to be a comfortable setting for sharing our stories.
View Full ResponseHelena Martin Franco
Arte LatinX
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Helena Martin Franco and Janet Lumb at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
One ephemeral island. Four Spanish-speaking women. Brought together for the very first time on unfamiliar First Nations territory, we were surrounded by a constantly shifting tide of people, emotions, and perceptions. In such a context, one could have perceived our meeting as being fraught with danger, but the Arte LatinX workshop proved to be a comfortable setting for sharing our stories.
We began by describing our various and ever-evolving artistic practices, a range of activities that included visual art, theatre, literature, education, and activism. We talked about how we first “landed” in Canada and more particularly in the professional arts community. We quickly identified the stereotype that limits our potential to embody multiple, evolving, and complex roles—a stereotype we did not choose, but which is difficult to shake off. We also observed that our cultural baggage prevents us from being equitably represented in professional bodies. We learned that our Canadian host’s lack of knowledge about our homelands results in irreparable breaks in the career paths we had already built prior to arriving. And we agreed that, professionally speaking, dialogue among cultures in Canada does not take place on a level playing field. In such a context, the only way to ensure the survival of our artistic practices is to promote radical change—basically starting from scratch—while at the same time resisting assimilation, whether consciously or not.
This is how we can assume our “foreignness, “not as an identity, but as a starting point, a tool for activism and a way to relate to the art community. Adopting this attitude will allow us to design innovative strategies for developing our creative and dissemination processes.
Lina de Guevara is an actor, director, and theatre teacher who approaches education from an intercultural perspective. She develops spaces for the creation and sharing of stories from migrant communities. Carmen Aguirre is an author, actor and playwright. By writing and taking centre stage in her own stories, she is able to overcome limits imposed by cultural hierarchy in the professional milieu.
Our youngest participant, Janet Romero-Leiva, creates and disseminates her art in Toronto. Highly attentive to her surroundings and her community, Janet is building a socially-engaged, cross-cutting practice as a painter and writer. Based on an interest in the visual languages of Latin American muralists, she links issues related to origin, immigration, and gender identities from a queer perspective. As for myself (Helena Martin Franco) although my painting career came to an abrupt halt after I arrived in Montreal, I have redirected my creative energies into interdisciplinary autofiction. I create self-referential creatures as a way to reframe certain stereotypes that inhabit institutional discourse—stereotypes that reinforce a completely distorted perception of the “other,” as if an entire continent were suddenly split in half.
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Helena Martin Franco
Helena Martin Franco, (Cartagena, Colombia) has lived and worked in Montreal since 1998. She holds a master's degree in visual and media arts from UQAM. Her feminist practice explores the crossover between artistic processes, as well as the hybridization between traditional techniques and new technologies. In collaboration with the La Redhada (Colombia) and Spider (Quebec) visual arts dissemination collectives, she creates, coordinates, and curates exhibitions in order to encourage the meeting and exchange of artistic practices, particularly between Canada and Colombia.
Karine Awashish
Community, Ethics, Art
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Above all, the exchanges confirmed our common vision as artists concerning the need to increase the potential of art, to contribute to the affirmation, healingm and self-determination of our communities. We must use our creative processes to defend and protect the expression of our imaginary universe, which embodies the richness of our cultures as well as our distinct values and worldviews.
View Full ResponseKarine Awashish
Community, Ethics, Art
Day 4: September 26, 2017
Karine Awashish at the PC/Cp Gathering 2017 on Lekwungen territory. Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz.
At the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires gathering last September at the Songhees Wellness Centre on Lekwungen Territory, we held a sharing circle under the theme Community, Ethics and Art. Our workshop brought together artists of various origins, including from the Ilnu, Atikamekw, and Métis Nations, as well as artists from Haitian and Acadian communities. The exchange gave rise to much reflection as well as a better understanding of the issues related to the emerging artistic creativity of our communities and their relationship to ethics.
One of the first themes that emerged was the notion of identity. Each of the participants spoke to the importance of expressing their cultural identity through their art. This often involves representations of their language, their territory, and their history. Identity is absolutely key, not only in their creative process, but also in the desire to affirm the identity of their communities and their nations. Everyone agreed that art is the best way to affirm one’s identity. Even more important is the ability of artists and creators within communities to control the expression of that identity as well as the dissemination of their image. The notion of image and representation through the arts is an ongoing issue for visible minority artists, because we often find ourselves in situations where “others” (representatives of the dominant society) hold the privilege of promoting a culture and an identity that are not their own. This is particularly true in the fields of literature and cinema.
Our discussion on the notion of identity obviously led to a variety of exchanges on the issue of cultural appropriation. Without getting into the existing problems related to cultural appropriation identified by our communities, our discussions did allow us to take stock and to determine possible solutions that will enable us to exercise better control over the dissemination and promotion of our cultural identity. One such solution would be to raise the awareness of decision-making bodies and institutions as to the importance of enabling community representatives to take control of their cultural and artistic projects. It is crucial that organizations supporting the arts understand the importance of giving artists the means to manage their own practice.
In summary, the themes proposed for this sharing circle enabled us to raise some interesting points of view on ethics. Above all, the exchanges confirmed our common vision as artists concerning the need to increase the potential of art, to contribute to the affirmation, healing, and self-determination of our communities. We must use our creative processes to defend and protect the expression of our imaginary universe, which embodies the richness of our cultures as well as our distinct values and worldviews.
Translated by Don Sugden, reviewed by Breanna Fabbro.
Karine Awashish
Ms. Karine Awashish, atikamekw is from the Atikamekw community of Opitciwan. Ms. Awashish is a multidisciplinary creative and social entrepreneur who has accumulated professional experiences in Aboriginal social and cultural development for over 15 years. In 2015, she co-founded Coop Nitaskinan, a work cooperative that enables the development and implementation of collective social, cultural and economic projects on Nitaskinan, territory of the Atikamekw Nation. Her involvement in the Tapiskwan collective project, of which she is also one of the founders, allows her to combine her personal and professional goals, which are particularly important to her, namely the creation and dissemination of Atikamekw culture and arts, as well as the development of the youth.
It’s been awhile since the Victoria gathering and as I read through the thoughtful feedback from all these participants I realize that one of the deepest residues of colonialism for myself was the need to survive violence. Part of that is the difficulty in remembering, a kind of deer in the headlights effect. I notice myself now clenching my lips between my teeth. It is only now that I understand that it came from my mother warning me never to speak Japanese outside of the home….and so I didn’t think I ever spoke Japanese until someone who babysat me as a young child told me “Of course you did” . The deep sustained psychological/emotional damage colonialism has on the targeted peoples needs to be better understood by ourselves and then understood by the broader population so that we all regain what we’ve lost as caring humans. Thankyou France and Chris now you’ve done it. ha ha
Dear you all,
WoW!!
Touching, honoring, honored, deep, interior questing, awe, inspiring, awakening, capturing, humbling, respecting, revealing, overwhelming gratitude, thanks, impacting constantly with flashes, moments, images, sensations knocking me. Primary Colors in Victoria and Banff was, is, continues to be incredible, overwhelming, face slapping, intense.
My skin, patience is thin. I am easily enraged, screaming and tearful when I talk. The injustices, inequities, inhumane wrongs are everywhere, every day on the city streets. I know my emotions are repercussions of the intent unconscious intuitive researching discoveries with you through Primary Colors. I know my coming of age to 65 are accumulating decades of immense experiential frames, contexts, pictures, positioning, stances. I fight. I believe. I struggle. I share.
Much appreciation. acknowledgement. gratitude. respect.
affection hugs kisses les bises Love Janet
A person can learn a lot from a program which is national, bilingual, intergenerational. I once had the opportunity to attend something like this, and it was the best experience.