{Re}conciliation

Arnait collective

This project is one of communication between the North and the South, between Inuit and “Southerners”. Relying on community involvement and participation, it will pull together processes of communication and artistic creation between the North and the South using Internet technologies. This will be documented and archived in galleries or public spaces in the North and in the South where the audiences will be invited to participate.

Photo credit: Plateau Uvanga. Photo by Philippe Ruel

Chocolate Woman Collective

Chocolate Woman Collective's ongoing reclamation of historical memory and cultural translating continues with Side Show Freaks & Circus Injuns written by Monique Mojica and LeAnne Howe. This site specific performance will be presented at various mound sites and earth works across Turtle Island, beginning at sites within the Greater Toronto Area. The (re) conciliatory action this work reanimates is between our bodies and the land.

Photo credit: Dustin Mater - Chickasaw Nation

Lana Mae Whiskeyjack

Led by two Cree women visual artists who enjoy sharing transformational stories, educating with love, and creating art. Their collective vision is to create a visual documentary as they travel to different urban and rural communities within Treaty Six territory in Alberta to undertake workshops. The driving force of the documentary will be the sharing of personal stories about Treaties, the Indian Residential School experience, intergenerational resilience and the reconciliation and healing that will result from the creation of art and connection to traditions and lands. The media of creation will include traditional arts (beadwork and Sweetgrass figurine sculpture), traditional storytelling, digital storytelling, and the documentary film, itself. Through engaging Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in various inclusive dialogues, storytelling, combined with art and cultural activities in each of the four seasons, the artists will combine their knowledge and experiences to share personal stories of an IRS survivor (Alsena) and a child of an IRS survivor (Lana) and the effects of intergenerational trauma. The stories will weave personal challenges and triumphs of being iskwewak (women) from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Treaty Six territory, using story, song, humour, and art to engage dialogue, awareness and connection. The outcomes will be posted on www.lanawhiskeyjack.ca to share the experience. Lana Whiskeyjack has collaborated with various artists, communities and organizations, from art fusion experiences to art retreats.

Photo credit: Lana Whiskeyjack

Shirley Williams

Ecko-ngoding: Shoolee is a book that will document Shirley Ida Willams' childhood stories growing up in the Wikwemikong Unceded Territory (Ontario) in both Anishinaabemowin and English. Shirley I. Williams is an Elder and Professor Emeritus at Trent University and is a leading Anishnaabemowin linguist, traditional knowledge holder, educator and scholar. Also an accomplished storyteller who weaves her life experiences and traditional knowledge into stories that are accessible to a variety of audiences. Through sharing of Shirley I. Williams’ personal stories, Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences will gain a better understanding of a traditional Anishinaabe upbringing in the 1940s.

Photo credit: Eagle Woman Shirley Williams. Photo by George Campana

The Kingcome Collective

Awaḵ̕wa̱s: Gathering Place is an original film and multimedia project that examines the contemporary process of reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous (settler) society within the traditional territory of the Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw Tribal Confederation. The project explores relationships within traditional Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw lands, including the remote modern settler community of Echo Bay, an old village site of Kwikwasut'inuxw called Kwakwalawadi. Awaḵ̕wa̱s: Gathering Place calls upon video, sound, story, and voice to explore the early histories and contemporary realities of Indigenous peoples who are re-establishing their place on the land. The work will use audio and video from the Broughton Archipelago, B.C. to bear witness to the processes of remembering, forgetting, knowledge-sharing, and truth-telling. It aims to be an intimate portrait of the experiences of six women who are brought together to build a split-cedar cabin within Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw territory and to explore how this process continues to shape their worlds and relationships.

Photo credit: Mack Bartlett

Urban Shaman Inc

This project is about 60s Scoop, a Canadian practice beginning in the 1960s of apprehending unusually high numbers of Indigenous children in Canada and fostering or adopting them out, usually to non-Indigenous families. Many Indigenous foster care and adoptees endured abuse and racism in their households. As a result, many now share a common experience of loss of language, ceremony, familiarity of extended family and connection to their identity through the land. This multimedia, multi-venue community art initiative will involve 24 artists who have produced artworks, performances, writing and films that describe a myriad of experiences on being adopted out or placed in case. The project is intended to promote awareness and develop dialogue about the after effects of residential school systems – focusing on the 60s Scoop, to educate the public about the current situation and to investigate strategies and other methods of healing supports for Indigenous families and communities through the unique voice of Indigenous contemporary art.

Ashok Mathur

O k’inadas is a multi-part project that will bring together artists from various artistic disciplines to inhabit an six-week residency during July and August of 2016 that will result in the production of new individual and collaborative work addressing the complexities of reconciliation practices.

Longer term outcomes will combine a travelling curatorial exhibition with a major publication. The artists will be mostly Indigenous, with the non-Indigenous participants drawn largely from racialized communities, countering the usual reconciliation discussion framework that depends on the pairing of European and Indigenous parties. This different formation will be a radically unique contribution to responses to colonialism, allowing for the generation of a new creative paradigm around reconciliation. The project is led by a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists working together to produce a significant body of work that transcends colonial politics and art-making.

Photo credit: Two members of the O k'inadas collective -- Ayumi Goto and Peter Morin – taken from a performance project in Ottawa, as part of an ongoing performance in homage to the Nishyuu walkers.

Dermot Wilson and Reno Couchie

For the Driveabout project (or an Nishnaab and an Artsnaab Make a Video About Whether or Not Anything has Really Changed) artists Reno Couchie and Dermot Wilson will document with video, still photography and audio recordings what happens to them as their travel across the country during the summer of 2016.

They will record our encounters with friends who have invited them in. Along the way they also plan to visit artists' communities to see what they're doing, ‘now that we're all reconciled’ and to explore the belief that things will change for the better? The Driveabout will feature new voices of hope and might end up convincing us (and maybe a few people who participate in the project) that, despite many toothy misgivings and wiseacre critiques upon political solutions to real societal problems, we have indeed started down a road to renewal and eventually to mutual respect.

Photo credit: Reno Couchie

First Nations Child & Family Caring Society (Caring Society) and filmmaker Andrée Cazabon

The Reconciliation Film Project is a collaborative initiative between the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada (Caring Society) and filmmaker Andrée Cazabon, who will produce a medium length documentary film (22 to 40 min) and an accompanying multi-media children’s response campaign to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s Report.

The film will inspire broad mainstream Canadian society to engage in reconciliation while its accompanying children’s campaign will specifically focus on children and youth by producing a child-friendly adaption of the TRC's Report and the point of view of children and youth. The campaign will be shared freely via social media and schools across Canada through the extensive networks already established from previously successful children’s campaign at the Caring Society with their reconciliation team. Based in Ottawa, the Caring Society is a national First Nations organization focused on the health, safety and wellbeing of First Nations children, youth and families. Filmmaker Andrée Cazabon is the President of Productions Cazabon. Since 2008 she has been focused on raising awareness towards reconciliation through her documentary film, 3rd World Canada.