Column

**Michael Turner**’s most recent book, _9×11_ and other poems like _Bird, Nine, x_ and _Eleven_ (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2018), was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. 

> \_…when the narrated identity is unbearable, when the boundary between subject and object is shaken, and when even the limit between inside and outside becomes uncertain, the narrative is what is challenged first\_[^1] — Julia Kristeva

I am working through my books, pulling titles from shelves, reading first lines.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,”[^2] writes American novelist, journalist and memoirist Joan Didion at the beginning of her highly regarded essay collection _The White Album_ (1979).

I always get a tingle when I read that line – its economy, its assurance – but I never settle for it. For me, living is less about telling stories than exploring the narratives that order the events of our stories, our lives and how these narratives determine how we experience subsequent events.

Didion’s opening paragraph ends like this:

> “We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”

Didion does not discuss the ideological forces behind this narrative line, nor does she elaborate on her “we,” though she admits that between 1966 and 1971 she “began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling.”

Is that doubt really so “common” (anymore)? Is the premise of a story constituent of a larger, more insidious narrative?

“To be an Indian is to be a man, with all a man’s needs and abilities,”[^3] writes Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jean Chrétien at the opening of his department’s _Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,_ 1969, also known as the “White Paper.”  
What is the premise of a story that begins with a definition of a sovereign people (based on “needs and abilities”) as supplied by those who have robbed a sovereign people of their land?

“Indians are like the weather,”[^4] writes Standing Rock Sioux writer and activist Vine Deloria Jr. at the opening of _Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto_ (1969).

I tingle at this line, too, particularly after spending the past year as an uninvited guest on the land of the Syilx (Okanagan) people, a year that featured an unusually cold winter and a usually hot summer. The effect of these weather events varied.

For some, they contributed to a story of “mounting disaster;” for others, further evidence of global warming; for others still, a critique of private property.

In July 2016, I was invited by Kelowna-based writer and educator Ashok Mathur to “sit in” on the University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Summer Indigenous Intensive. Among the highlights of this extraordinary gathering of artists, writers and scholars was an introduction to Syilx cosmology by Aboriginal and Traditional Knowledge Keeper Richard Armstrong, who spoke of the land not as a surface on which to draw conclusions – “through trial and error, as the anthropologists tell us” – but as a sentient presence inextricably related to the Syilx people.

“What I have to say to you this afternoon is not found in books,” said Armstrong at the 2017 Intensive, before once again describing the land as “our parents” and “a teacher,” which only reinforced my doubts about the sustainability of our increasingly business-driven Global Art Culture, a recognition I did not find “troubling,” as Didion describes her doubt, but generative.

And so it was that the land showed me something, first through a series of heavy snowfalls that covered the ground from the first week of December to the middle of March, followed by a sudden blast of heat, when the snows melted and the lakes rose.

“Everyone knows all about the weather,” Deloria continues, “but none can change it. When storms are predicted, the sun shines. When picnic weather is announced, the rains begin.”

“The land is showing us something,” I wrote in a postcard to my mother last spring, only to cross out “showing” and “something” and replace “-showing-” with criticizing.

We criticize our stories in order to live. Which is to say the “we” who listen to the land and who live in history take issue with the established order of events, the narrative line that conditions both the stories people tell and the people themselves.

A consequence of this narrative conditioning can be found in what Coast Salish and Okanagan artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun refers to as “colonial stress disorder syndrome,” an affliction that results from historic exposure to imperialism, the capitalist mode of production, the scientific method, neoliberal democracies… Another consequence can be found in our ignorance of this conditioning.

“Likewise,” writes Deloria at the conclusion of his first paragraph, “if you count on the unpredictability of Indian people, you will never be sorry.”

“The land is ~~showing~~ criticizing us ~~something~~, Mom, and no matter how many sandbags someone is paid to stack outside someone else’s lakeside mansion, they cannot stop the waters from rising beneath it.” Nor will these sandbags protect us from septic fields built too close to these now receding lakes – until what remains is not a mound of unemployed sandbags but a shit-ridden Minimalist sculpture.

Before we learned of these toxic sandbags, we were told not to take them to beaches and empty them, as people were doing, because their sand is coarser, greyer, not the soft ochre-coloured sand imported by municipalities for tourists to lie on. But why were we fed this story (based on aesthetics) when what was stewing inside these bags posed a more convincing (health) threat?

We tell ourselves stories in order to distract.

Something else the land showed me this year: a record number of wild fires. While the worst of these fires were in the Caribou, winds brought their smoke south, transforming gentle sunsets into lurid tableaux, but also, like the rising waters, turning clifftop landlords into Custers armed not with sandbags but with garden hoses. I am speaking of those in Lake Country, not far from where I began this text, and where, as an itinerant critic alert to the narrative line, I struggled with fires of my own.

[^1]: Julia Kristeva. “The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection” (New York: Columbia UP, 1982), 141
[^2]: Joan Didion. “The White Album” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 11
[^3]: “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy” (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1969), 1 
[^4]: Vine Deloria Jr. “Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto” (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 9

Writer

Site/ation

issue-136-p73-74.pdf

Michael Turner reflects on his experience at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan’s Summer Indigenous Intensive.

On Writing: Moving

Jaimie Isaac is the Curator of Indigenous and Contemporary Art at the Inventory Site/ation 71 Winnipeg Art Gallery. She is an interdisciplinary artist and co-founder of The Ephemerals Collective. Isaac is a member of Sagkeeng First Nation, of Anishnaabe and British heritage.

##### Beyond the traditional walls and white-cube space of the gallery, these projects highlight works on and about the land, and depict the body as space, standing in harmonious tension with Canada 150 discourse.

Taking up physical space in, out and on a large gallery, the _Insurgence Resurgence_ exhibition (September 22–April 22, 2018) performed a major shift at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), curated by Dr. Julie Nagam and myself (shameless mention). This exhibition celebrated and asserted Indigenous presence on these lands long before 150 years. The WAG’s largest-ever contemporary Indigenous exhibition featured 12 new commissions from artists across Canada considering movements of political insurgency and cultural resurgence. One of the artists commissioned was Kenneth Lavallee, a Winnipeg-based artist, who created a monumental-sized design on a four-story canvas currently pinned to the tyndall façade of the WAG, entitled _Creation Story_ (2017). Lavallee’s work draws on local histories, the parallels of Indigenous mythologies, classical Greek and biblical texts to explore balance, harmony and connection to the universe. His work evokes a sense of movement and water, inspired by creation stories and the destruction of the “great floods.” _Creation Story_ makes the wall come alive with rich, teal-coloured curvilinear lines that contrast the building’s late modernist, pale tyndall stone structure. _Creation Story_ will leave a lasting mark on the WAG’s exterior, with a mural that will hold a permanent memory of taking up space for Indigenous contemporary work at the WAG and in Winnipeg. WAG curators also teamed up with Wall- to-Wall Mural Festival/Synonym Art Consultation to partner and support a collaboration mural between artists Dee Barsy (Winnipeg) and Jordan Bennett (Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqmkuk) called _Mawpile’n (Tie It Together)_ (2017), which will grace the walls of Great West Life at 650 Broadway Street in the West End of Winnipeg and on the WAG for the duration of the exhibition.

From August 18 to September 4, 2018, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presented a project called _STAGES: Drawing the Curtain_, a series of temporary public sculptures and performances, featuring nine artists: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), Erica Eyres (Glasgow, Scotland), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver), Ron Tran (Vancouver) and curated by Jenifer Papararo (Winnipeg). STAGES was a public exhibition that situated Winnipeg as a stage and space for public art and performances – both material and immaterial – that spoke to audiences about theoretical and situational considerations. The two-week public exhibition and programming was ambitious, with six guided tours, a speak- er series, a publication and several performances throughout the city.

Canada’s first-ever Indigenous Tattoo School debuted during the 2017 Summer Indigenous Intensive initiative at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna in July. The School featured instructors Dion Kaszas, Amy Malbeuf and Jordan Bennett of the Earth- line Tattoo Collective, guest mentor artists Dean Hunt, Nahaan, Pip Hartley (NZ) and artist participants Amberley John, Sheldon Piere, Louise Danika Nolte, Jerry Evans, Maani Oakes and Ippiksaut Friesen. Their collaborative act of revival declares and reclaims this traditional practice of identity declaration: Indigenous cultural tattoo practitioners taught and tattooed each other following their nation-based knowledge and style. Students, visiting artists, curators and faculty were of the many that were marked that month and skin was the canvas, imprinting permanent signals of resurgence.

Indigenous Fashion & Wearable Art, an Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective partnership with Western Canada Fashion Week (WCFW), presented three Indigenous contemporary artists as designers at the Fall 2017 fashion week in Edmonton: Jeneen Frei Njootli, Meghann O’Brien and Sage Paul. As the Ociciwan website explained, “These artists/designers explore fashion and the body, using traditional material or traditional garment making techniques to inspire and inform contemporary fashions. Each artist has created a fashion line that narrates histories and innovations of Indigenous people; creating a surface of insights on cultural complexity and diversity, that can be worn for special occasions or in daily life.” In the fashion industry, with its routine habits of cultural appropriation of Indigenous cultural materials and design, in often awkward or harmful stereotypes, the work of the Ociciwan Collective and the artists presented an example that Indigenous fashion from Indigenous designers can be honoured and acknowledged, while decorously highlighting their diverse cultural identities to revolutionize and reframe perceptions of Indigenous cultures.

A mammoth project, _LandMarks2017/Repères2017_ created a deeper connection to the land through a series of contemporary art projects in and around Canada’s National Parks and Historic Sites from June 10-25, 2017, “inspiring dialogue about people, places and perspectives that have shaped our past and are vital to our futures.”[^1] This project brought together a team of curators working with artists across Canada with multiple experiences and projects. David Diviney, Ariella Pahlke and Melinda Spooner (a.k.a., ACT) curated _al-loca- tion_ with artist Ursula Johnson; Véronique LeBlanc curated _Subsistences_ with Raphaëlle de Groot and Wanderer and _(re) Marking_ with artist Douglas Scholes; Natalia Lebedinskaia curated _Coalescence_ with artist Michael Belmore; Kathleen Ritter curated _Wave Sound_ with artist Rebecca Belmore and _Long View_ with artist Jin-me Yoon, as well as _Weaving Voices_ with artists Chris Clarke and Bo Yeung; Tania Willard curated _Freedom Tours_ with artists Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner, _Being Skidoo_ with artist Jeneen Frei Njootli, _Stitching my Landscape_ with artist Maureen Gruben, and _Many Voices: Indigenous Art_ at Bellevue House National Historic Site. Through an array of places, experiences, histories, differences and voices, _LandMarks2017/Repères2017_ was a symbol for a multi-space meeting place to express concerns for environmental, social, political and cultural territories that cast a wide net in exploring the complexities of Canadian discourse.

The new installation of PA System, Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson, _Towards Something New and Beautiful + Future Snowmachines in Kinngait_, was shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of the exhibition _Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood_, curated by Andrew Hunter with Anique Jordan, until December 10, 2017\. This new work is a collaborative schema that features youth from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) as Embassy of Imagination. _Towards Something New and Beautiful + Future Snowmachines in Kinngait_ features sculptures of snowmobiles cast in aluminum from the remains of a local school that was lost to arson; it exposes issues of education and the lack of youth programming in the North. Collaborating Embassy of Imagination artists included Christine Adamie, Lachaolasis uk, Moe Kelly, David Pudlat and Nathan Adla. In keeping with the socially engaged and relational art practices of PA System, the cast aluminum sculptures are being sold with proceeds going to support elder and youth trips out onto the land and future Embassy of Imagination projects. PA System’s other notable and mesmerizing work _Gauge, 2013–2015_ is on tour with the exhibition _Floe Edge: Contemporary Art and Collaborations from Nunavut_, currently at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery in Winnipeg. A most captivating film, _Gauge_ shows the creation of large-scale, moving paintings on giant ice walls – ephemeral works created and erased by icebergs moving by the tide of the Arctic Ocean.

[^1]: <ahref=“www.landmarks2017.ca”>www.landmarks2017.ca</a>

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Curator of Indigenous and Contemporary art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Jaimie Isaac, discusses projects that highlight works on and about the land, and depict the body as space, standing in harmonious tension with Canada 150 discourse.

Inventory: On the land, on the body, on and off the walls…

Toby Katrine Lawrence is a curator, writer and researcher based between Kelowna and Gabriola Island, in British Columbia, on the traditional lands of the Syilx and Snuneymuxw peoples. She has held curatorial and programming positions with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Nanaimo Art Gallery, and is currently curator of the Kelowna Art Gallery.

The teepee has been an ever-present feature of BUSH gallery; but it does not stand as the gallery. Erected two years ago, the structure has weathered, presented and housed many of the actions of BUSH gallery. At the BUSH gallery Writers Union retreat in August 2017, the structure was dismantled; the canvas too brittle to maintain its architectural function after having ripped apart in a windstorm earlier in the summer.

After travelling to BUSH gallery in Secwepemc territory from Vancouver, Tarah Hogue joined Tania Willard in dismantling the teepee, dragging its wooden poles to be stacked for future purposes. Tarah recounted a re-linking of body to land in the reverberations between body, land and wooden pole, activated through their preparatory performance of sorts and marking the beginning of the retreat.

_“The teepee poles are so dry and have deep cracks that run almost to the core of the poles at certain points, so when we dragged them across the ground, the sound of their being dragged was amplified. The sound was like a small echo chamber, hollow and almost electronic_.” (Hogue)

Following our Sunday afternoon convergence of friends and colleagues at the annual Kamloopa Pow-wow, Tarah, Tania, Peter Morin, Ashok Mathur and I gathered at Quaaout Lodge on Little Shuswap Lake, and then at BUSH gallery the next day. The pow-wow, as a shared point of departure, centred Indigeneity and located experience as material for making, performing and thinking together.[^1] At dinner, Tarah expressed her need to drag more poles – to utilize acts of labour to connect to place, to land, performance, situation. At breakfast, Peter asked us what it was we wanted to build. Though framed through colonial language, as Peter acknowledged, his question opened space for intellectual, textual, spatial and embodied restructuring of the ways in which Indigenous praxes, and more specifically Indigenous performance praxes, are approached in art writing and art galleries– and beyond.

Monday, we cut up the teepee. We laid out the teepee canvas. We intuitively assumed roles. Within this performative action, we marked the circumference of the canvas staking pink survey flags. Peter, with a blue raven rattle, and Tania, with tin can rattle, circumnavigated the canvas as Peter sang.

“\_Just as in our performance, we ripped long lengths of canvas fabric, so did the wind enact the inevitability of this temporary structure.\_” (Willard)

The canvas ripped easily along its weave and we made cuts to direct the tearing; the canvas pulled by two of our bodies in order to arrive at segments large enough for specific, repurposed functions. The largest uncompromised section was kept to be suspended in the trees as a movie screen (_Skinwalkers: The Navajo Mysteries. The Daughters of Dawn_. Netflix search: “Native American”). Smaller segments were used to produce solar prints and their edges finished with pinking shears; the excess made into ribbons. The remaining canvas segments were gathered for future uses. Enshrouded by the dense forest-fire smoke that permeated the region and crouched within the teepee’s flag outline, we cut ribbon and produced a series of solar prints out of rope, rattles, rocks, ribbons, collective writing, laser-cut “SITE/ation” text and toys. Ashok prepared bison meatballs, shish kebobs and Chilliwack corn.

Wednesday, when I returned, the flags had been removed. The activities were now concentrated around the forested area and the trees that supported the large piece of repurposed canvas. No longer in its distinguishable form, the tee-pee remained through abstraction. The screen became the conversational “tee-pee.” The location shifted along with the referent. Now in segments, the canvas marks as it is marked. Material for objects and surface for solar prints, lunar experiments, backdrop for movies, foreground for shadow play, hunting ground for insects…

In one of my trips back and forth from Kelowna to BUSH gallery, I was charged with transporting the 12 large Mylar panels produced for Ashok’s 2009 installation of _A Little Distillery in Nowgong_. Together, we hung them to weather and to remain in the trees at the edge of the forest with cord coloured the same pink as the survey flags. A twofold final installation. The final action of the BUSH gallery Writers Union retreat took shape through our collective curation of Ashok’s panels and as a collaborative performance by Ashok and Peter. Backed by the layering of _A Little Distillery in Nowgong_ and the teepee, illuminated by a work light, Ashok read aloud _Loveruage: A Dance in Three Parts_, accompanied by strategically timed drumming by Peter. The text from one of the Mylar panels was incidentally visible through the canvas. And we all listened.

Changed by and changing the actions of its inhabitants and guests, the architecture of the bush is reciprocal. The collective and individual actions under the auspices of BUSH gallery are the materials that form BUSH gallery. The ephemerality and the place-based conceptual space supports the fluid architecture of the teepee. As an Indigenous “sovereign display territor\[y\],”[^2] BUSH gallery functions beyond the systemized conventions of dominant culture exhibition spaces. In the Land.

[^1]: David Garneau, “Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation: Art, Curation, and Healing,” in _Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action In and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada_, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016), 35.

Toby Katrine Lawrence reflects on the collaborative activities and performances that took place at the BUSH gallery Writers Union Retreat, especially the treatment and dismantling of the teepee that had been a feature of BUSH for two years.

Artefact: Architecture of the Bush

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Editorial

**Peter Morin** is a Tahltan Nation performance artist and writer. His work focuses on decolonization through the centering of Tahltan knowledges and practice.

> This year, the annual guest edited issue of _C Magazine_ has been organized by artist Peter Morin and artist and curator Tania Willard. Together they represent two members of a shifting group of Indigenous artists that make up BUSH gallery – an experimental land-based, Indigenous-led artist rez-idency that takes place on Willard’s land in Secwepemc Nation in interior British Columbia.

> This is a very special issue of _C Magazine_. Part of this lies in the fact that it focuses inwardly, with the texts circling back to friendship, kinship and often to the specific plot of land at BUSH gallery where many of the contributors in these pages have gathered to think and work. But the texts, interviews, poems, scores and artworks within also extend far beyond BUSH gallery, provoking critical discussion of where and how art exists – and has existed for thousands of years – on the land, outside of city centres, gallery systems and western systems of valuation. With many thanks to Peter, Tania and BUSH gallery for their radical work herein. — Kari Cwynar, Editor

BUSH gallery is located on the traditional territories of the Secwepemc Nation, hosted on Tania Willard’s land. BUSH gallery is a series of on-going gatherings of like-minded folks united under questions concerning art making, land, Indigenous art history and interventions into the colonial. These gatherings focus on experimental investigations that enable the complexities of Indigenous knowing along with an active disengagement with western logic.

In this issue of _C Magazine_ we dared to ask this question about land: does it still mean art if we make it on the reserve? We dared to ask this question about art: does it help us to realize the depth of Indigenous art history when we make art on the reserve outside of gallery and museum systems? We present here a decolonization of the idea of an art magazine or an art review or art writing or art criticism. We asked writers to consider the future and space-making. We asked writers to consider and acknowledge the creative force of the body. Instead of reviewing the places art circulates in dominantly non-Indigenous institutions, we called on writers to review experiences, exhibitions, events or lands close to their heart. We asked them to give voice to aesthetic experiences in their communities, defining community generatively to include spaces on and off reserve, Indigenous or non-Indigenous spaces in which they find home and cultural continuity and safety. We asked writers to de-centre the city as the place of contemporary art, to ask ourselves what it means for contemporary art conversations to circulate in rural or non-art spaces.

BUSH gallery opens up space to experience all of the complexities that build contemporary Indigenous art, Indigenous knowledge, history, ancestors and future ancestors fusing time streams in a nonlinear constellation of meaning, history and futurity. Within these pages is an interrogation of the established structures of meaning within english language, and an active questioning of the unnamed and silent barriers that keep us just one foot away from an imagined and inherited futurity.

There are no contemporary art galleries or artist-run centres on First Nation reserves/reservations because people have been too busy surviving. Art is both a record and a future. In these pages, we want to ask the spirits: is it a good idea to have Indigenous art galleries on a reserve or on the land? What do Indigenous artist-run centres look like on lndian land? And when they do happen on reserve land, do they just feel like artist-run centres in cities?

The reader is invited to plant these pages in the ground for mother earth to read.

Editor

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Artist-run centres

Activism

Infrastructure

Colonialism

Indigenous

Guest editors Peter Morin and Tania Willard, introduced by editor Kari Cwynar, introduce their direction for the issue and offer insight into the ethos of BUSH gallery. New approaches to art and art experience are introduced, de-centring conventional institutions as art hallmarks and instead, focusing on themes of specificity, colonization, and indigenous futurity.

Editorial: Site/ation

BUSH gallery is a space for dialogue, experimental practice and community engaged work that contributes to an understanding of how gallery systems and art mediums might be transfigured, translated and transformed by Indigenous knowledges, traditions, aesthetics, performance and land use systems. This model of decolonial, non-institutional ways to engage with and value Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous creative production is at the heart of BUSH gallery. BUSH gallery is a trans-conceptual gallery space. To be trans-conceptual is to reposition ideas born within Indigenous and western epistemological conditions. A trans-conceptual space requires your body to be in a constant state of flux – never settling, like the flow of water in a river. One of the goals of BUSH gallery is to articulate Indigenous creative land practices which are born out of a lived connection to the land.  
  
  
This gallery is out on the land, it is outside of or at the margins of monetary systems and away from the colonized space of art institutions. This gallery is a gallery of the land, of Indigenous culture(s) and language(s); this gallery can show new media with basketry, beading with installation art, performance art and storytelling.  
  
  
BUSH gallery is alive and breathing.  
BUSH gallery is on Indigenous Lands.  
BUSH gallery is animate and inanimate at the same time.  
BUSH gallery is radically inclusive – all bodies and  
lands and kids and dogs and bears are welcome.  
BUSH gallery requires new words.  
BUSH gallery includes working the land.  
BUSH gallery includes walking the land.  
BUSH gallery includes conversations with kids.  
BUSH gallery includes moms and dads and caregivers.  
BUSH gallery includes all Indigenous languages  
(within BUSH gallery, we understand that Indigenous languages are spoken with hands, with the movements of bodies, with the tongue, with the movements of mouths, with laughter, with tears, and with righteous anger).  
BUSH gallery includes dogs.  
BUSH gallery is in constant transition as the land is in constant transition.  
BUSH gallery knows that disruption inspires growth.  
BUSH gallery is a place of hope and no hope.  
  
  
Our ancestors are buried there, in BUSH gallery.  
  
  
BUSH gallery is not afraid of opinions.  
BUSH gallery is not afraid of sharing our opinions.  
BUSH gallery is not not-for-profit.  
BUSH gallery is for Indigenous and non-Indigenous art and artists and curators and thinkings and grandmothers and grandfathers and fathers and mothers and cousins and aunties and uncles.  
BUSH gallery is eating whipped berries under the stars, punctuating conversations and visits about art.  
BUSH gallery is a space to make art, but the openings are attended by bears harvesting the last of the berries before hibernation and maybe the neighbours’ horses or cows are grazing, and there are crows, reservation dogs and the spirit of the land, lots of spirits.  
BUSH gallery is an autonomous space… for birds.  
BUSH gallery is human-led, Indigenous knowledge-based, we trace our impacts on the land in search of balance amidst our inherent selfish humanity.  
BUSH gallery talks big, dreams bigger and doesn’t bother to walk its talk, we send our talk straight up to the stars and the sky, on the wings of eagles and hawks…  
BUSH gallery can disappear.  
BUSH gallery fits into our pockets.  
BUSH gallery can be called into being and called out.  
BUSH gallery is not one place, not one territory, not  
one Nation, we trace out our family, our blood, our  
belonging in cities, on reserves, in the BUSH, in the  
suburbs, overseas and under mountains.  
BUSH gallery believes in dreaming, and sleeping, and walking, and being.  
BUSH gallery is sometimes nothing but opening your eyes and breathing in the land around you.  
BUSH gallery hopes that art matters.  
BUSH gallery is sometimes a blockade, sometimes a bridge, always a balancing beam.  
BUSH gallery says sometimes you gotta stop dreaming and get to work, dig a well, hunt and grow food, chop wood, bury sunshine for later and give food to ghosts.  
BUSH gallery is stick gambling for all the bragging rights.  
BUSH gallery respects the land and is in love with it.  
BUSH gallery means nothing if you are in the way of a bear and his berry patch, you better move it on.  
BUSH gallery is performance, installation, craft, conceptual, painting, photography, stand up comedy, cooking, movie watching with trees and many other things you might call bullshit on ’cause they are not really art. But bullshit is part of BUSH gallery too.  
BUSH gallery seeks to speak with many tongues, honouring Indigenous languages as a way to speak with, to and from the land. BUSH Gallery asks what does pop culture mean in the BUSH? If you hashtag the land, and no one is there with a cell phone, does the land even know it is on social media.  
BUSH gallery; ants might crawl on your art, surprise rain might ruin or make your next work and you should think about carrying bear spray.  
BUSH gallery starts now.  
BUSH gallery ends here.  
BUSH gallery will pitstop intermittently.  
It is recommended you have your web browser settings  
filter out any obscene images you may find when you  
google search BUSH gallery – that means images of war leaders as well.  
BUSH gallery is idea(s), place(s), story(ies), mood(s), artist(s), farmer(s), fighter(s), kid(s), the four-legged, the fish, the birds and the bugs, the stars and the water that makes us all.  
BUSH gallery is yours and mine and no one’s.  
BUSH gallery is going to blow up.  
BUSH gallery sees the bush in the city.  
BUSH gallery imagines what art for ourselves – not for the institutions of galleries, museums, history or academies – looks like.  
BUSH gallery wonders what art can do.  
  
  
BUSH gallery works towards Indigenous resurgence.  
  
  
BUSH gallery is expanded, not limited, by tradition.  
BUSH gallery is feminist.  
BUSH gallery remembers the things we never knew.  
BUSH gallery is inauthentic.  
BUSH gallery is unsettled.  
BUSH gallery is representative and abstract.  
BUSH gallery is on the land, researches land, goes to the land, because land is the foundation of Indigenous life and Indigenous struggle.  
BUSH gallery is a place where knowledge is open-ended.  
BUSH gallery thanks the land.

issue-136-p6-8.pdf

Landscape

Collective

Manifesto

The BUSH Manifesto outlines BUSH Gallery’s decolonial and non-institutional praxis by stating both what the gallery is and what it is not.

THE BUSH MANIFESTO

Feature

Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is a PhD student in the Dept. of English & Film Studies at the University of Alberta. He is the author of This Wound is a World: Poems.

in front of me, 1947; a fractured door; rotted wooden beams. behind me, an old forest of gone peoples. these are what’s left of an indian residential school in joussard, alberta. what remains exceeds the infrastructural remains. we are caught up in the afterlife of captivity. cages were made out of bodies, and then bodies out of anything that was left behind. this is the world we have inherited. it is infused with the violence of being left to float in the air like an unanswered question.

it is an afternoon in june when i return to this primal scene, this open wound. the air clots, as if to make a fool out of my lungs, as if to remind me that having a body were a sick joke i was never in on. air enters, and out comes smoke.

there is something unsayable about this type of return. it makes words crumble in my mouth. they taste like dust this time. it feels ndn to be pulled anew into a scene of injury like this one.

it is summer, so rich white people are camped on the shores of lesser slave lake, just a few feet away from this prison house. they think nothing of it. not thinking is a way to think the world. they bathe in the aroma of violence, but unlike me their sense of self stays intact. a self that’s been dragged through the dirt of bad social structures cannot bear this kind of looking.

one day, the government of alberta might make this place into an historic site. i can see it now: a spectacle during which white politicians crawl out of the bloody maw of the past, smiling with the carcasses of words like history and forgiveness hanging from their lips. they mistake the red on their skin for sunlight.

to be ndn is to know that a spectacle isn’t always an event.

online dating bio: i want to refuse the non- event of the present with you. my hobbies include: not dying, apologizing to the future, and slow dancing to the tune of bryan adams’ “heaven” with white men who won’t find it in themselves to love me.

i am fixed by the darkness that emanates from the doorway. it is a thick nothingness at which i feel compelled to stare. nothingness is a thing. a lot of indians live there. i don’t blame them; who needs a map when the world is labyrinthine? who needs geography when there are doorways everywhere?

does the sky look like it could fall apart at any given moment, or is that just me?

here, i have no words for things like _priest_ or _prayer_. the dead come back from the dead for at least the possibility of revenge. revenge is something more satisfying than justice.

did you know: a group of indians is called a murder?

a white boyfriend of mine wanted me to be less beholden to the clouds. i told him that we are all at the mercy of the sky, for better or for worse. part of me still thinks that he didn’t deserve to know about this mode of attention, about this art of description. but i can’t keep secrets: i am addicted to the high of letting my own words betray me.

there is no shelter under skies like these. when i was a little boy, my mooshum told me a story about the day the sky fell down. the sky is still falling, but only indians can tell the difference. i look up, and down comes an endless parade of half-smiling children.

issue-136-p13-16.pdf

Poetry

Identity

Time

Critique

A poetic response to the residential school ruins in Joussard Alberta.

TO BE AT THE MERCY OF THE SKY

Ashok Mathur is a writer, artist and cultural organizer who works around issues of racialization and Indigeneity in the fields of creative practice and postsecondary education. He is a Professor in the Department of Creative Studies at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus and incoming Dean of Graduate Studies (2018) at OCAD University.

This is not an essay, nor a review, nor very much of an interrogation, which means (perhaps) it fails to fulfill the intended desires of the editors. Nor does this fractured writing posit itself as daring to do much of anything, whether confronting binaries of Bush versus Cube or otherwise interrupting the hubris of established and power-bent art criticism. Instead, this is a speculation and a way of reflecting through.

This writing is more of a consideration. Of openings and opportunities that happen through what Bush might be. What Bush reaches for and pulls a muscle in doing so.

In other words (and there are so many other words dragging in different directions), in order to breathe, drink, ingest Bush, there may need to be a straggling outside the struggle, a way of speaking alongside instead of about.[^1]

Then, for your consideration, co-readers/writers, here are 10 preliminary reflections on this thing called Bush. Not so much a primer, but a collection of ruminations.

> 1   
> Cube versus Bush – is there such an oppositional imaginary? One infects, informs and disrupts the other always. We cannot speak of Bush without having in mind Cube (or city gallery or artist-run space or artistic institution). And we cannot think of Cube without rendering its negative space as Bush. 

> 2   
> I had an exhibition once where I tried to think through the project of the written novel and reimagine it as a physical space. I told my assistants and colleagues that my imagining entailed ensuring every word of the novel was available in the exhibition in some form or manner, perhaps not easily read or rendered, but present. One of the key elements was the novel writ large, printed out on a dozen eight-foot-long scrims so gallery visitors could walk through the text and read the novel in its entirety if they were so compelled. At BUSH gallery this summer, we took it upon ourselves to reinstall that work as a palimpsest of targeted love, those self-same scrims hanging between trees and across shrubs, readable in the moonlight and rain showers and giving evidence of the novel to the land and the bugs and the animals who came across the installation. 

> 3   
> Driving north until you are too tired to drive but the sky is a gallery, yes, the sky reminds you of that time you remarked upon the colours of landscape paintings in a gallery down south. This was our journey to Tahltan territory where we left parts of ourselves in the grasslands precipiced over rivers. Feeling the body and its failings, I stayed behind as the others climbed to the peak, and I lay on sloped grass and watched the clouds shadow the prints Peter had installed on the banks. This, no Eames chair perfectly distanced from a framed classic, but a hump of dirt and grass and insect life that serves the same purpose. 

> 4  
> Projecting light onto living objects that miss particles of light and just don’t reflect them back so they travel forward into eternal space. Old movies and long extension cords to bring a data projector into the eld. Kicking up dust to watch the light sprinkle through an image of a face caught on particulate matter and blown through onto trees. Like watching a movie between fingers, except these are not digits attached to hands but fine lines of foliage disturbing the unity and providing a different vision. 

> 5   
> Bringing dirt into the gallery is a sign of Cube critique and re-invention of the gallery, but is it Bush and what might Bush be if you brought in hardwood floors and drywall, which is what the gallery in the urban centre is if you time-travel back a few hundred years. The question is not how to differentiate, but what constitutes the difference, perspectivally and perceptually. 

> 6   
> Is being on Indigenous land what makes Bush, Bush? What of land unmarked by such designations? And land imitates art wherever it goes. The exterior of the Cube space, whether urban or far-flung rural has elements of Bush, even if the ground is concrete instead of humus. 

> 7   
> The sun prints hashtags, ancient heat eight minutes away, wheeling and dealing with a new social media economy. Chemistry and solutions combine to make light permanent, but not in a laboratory unless Bush is a lab of unknown resources. Nevertheless, there are these #sunprints made inside and outside and living new lives inside Cube galleries. 

> 8  
> If the earth sees the art, it can write a review, but its form takes many different tacks. It decentres words and moves from affect to affection. A stick drawing letters in the sand, a checkmarked thumb’s up as an act of criticality. 

> 9   
> Addressing injustice with moral rectitude in the middle of the land. Social justice is branded by the activism of the street: the marches, the protests and ultimately the re/ presentation of ideas inside a gallery. But streets are not animal paths, and what of the idea of corrective measures taken by the streams and watering holes, demands of systemic change under a clear blue sky? 

> 10   
> Bringing BUSH gallery into a city is an experiment in redecolonization or derecolonization. Or perhaps the very shi questions whether colonization has a fit here. If we cease a focus on those histories, might that reinvent a future, or does that doom us to historical repetition? Or maybe Bush, by its very iteration, already encapsulates such critiques – and yet, through oblique reference, allows a shift into new terrain. 

Considerations such as the above are not suggested solutions or even earmarked directions, but merely a struggle to complexify and re-identify where Bush might lead us, or how we may lead ourselves into a new form of roughing it in the Bush. As with many a movement, the risk here is not that we fail to articulate an identity, but that we may overemphatically overdetermine and, in so doing, promote a demise as we prescribe a genesis. The path of Bush, it seems, is best understood not with a spotlight but under a whispering rain.

[^1]: I take this from Trinh T. Minh- ha’s 1983 film, _Reassemblage_, where she suggests a way of performing ethnography in a fashion more akin to poetry than didacticism.

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issue-136-p16-20.pdf

Ashok Mathur offers ten reflections on the ways in which BUSH Gallery stands in contrast to urban white cube gallery spaces.

Refracting Bush

Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is a Metis artist and writer from Vancouver, BC, located on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands. Gabrielle’s found object sculptures, installations and video work perform as a material enquiry into economic systems, ideas of property and the land.

Amy Kazymerchyk is the curator of the Audain Gallery at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. 

Jeneen Frei Njootli is a member of the self-governing Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and is a co-creator of the ReMatriate Collective. Based between the Yukon and unceded Coast Salish territories, she works collaboratively with artists, communities, youth and the land. Frei Njootli’s practice takes the shape of sound, performance, fashion, workshops and barbeques.

Chandra Melting Tallow is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and experimental filmmaker of mixed ancestry from Siksika Nation. They spearhead the music project Mourning Coup and have exhibited and performed across north america and Istanbul.

Artist

issue-136-p20-26.pdf

Collaboration

Film

Women

Food

Animals

A conversation between collaborators Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Amy Kazymerchyk, Chandra Melting Tallow, and Jeneen Frei Njootli about the process of making their film Coney Island Baby at Bush Gallery. Initiated by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill Coney Island Baby explores Hill’s interest in learning to trap rabbits and research on the ways in which certain types of labour become racialized, feminized, and devalued.

Coney Island Baby

Amish Morrell is Assistant Professor at OCAD University, where he teaches Criticism & Curatorial Practice, and Visual and Critical Studies.

issue-136-p28-32.pdf

Environment

Performance

Site-specific

Centered around the Mi’kmaq philosophy of Netukulimk, _A Feast for the Stewards of the Land_, the culmination of Ursula Johnson’s 2017 Landmarks project _re-(al)location_, brought together artists, students, and musicians in Cape Breton Highland National Park to share culture and eat moose meat culled from the park by local Mi’kmaq hunters.

A Feast for the Stewards of the Land: Contemporary Art and Netukulimk on Unama’ki

##### _to the archive_ is part visual score, part road map. It describes the formation of my most recent work, _Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa_, which reinterprets 20th-century field recordings of the Wolastoqiyik. The journey of this visual piece begins in Tobique (Neqotkuk) First Nation, on the banks of the Wolastoq river. The shapes, words and colours describe the journey that follows. Drawing inspiration from John Cage’s _Aria_ (1958), shapes and colours replace common black note notation. It concludes on the steps of the Canadian Museum of History, where this archive is housed. Sing along. Return the knowledge to the people.
  
  
**to the archive**

Neqotkuk

Where the two rivers meet

Eliyay (as I go)

Through   
Past

Eliyay (as I go)

Other side of Kepek

Elakomkwik (Algonquin)   
These are our relatives

Essuwonike (let’s trade)

Kani-lintuwakonol (old songs)

I dance.

The piece is a reflection of the journey to access archival material of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet people) from the Museum of Canadian History on the unceded territories of the Algonquin people. We continue to assert our identity and work to reclaim the cultural knowledge that is institutionally held; bridges from past to future.

Neqotkuk — Tobique/ Where the two rivers meet   
Eliyay — As I go  
Elakomkwik — Algonquin   
Essuwonike — Let’s trade  
Kani-lintuwakonol — Old songs

Instructions for performance:

This score is to be rendered in an acoustically sound space. Renderers are encouraged to perform it first privately, followed by a public iteration; notice the difference. Renderers are encouraged to move in ways they see fit. Shapes indicate movement – vocal/physical. The colours indicate the qualities of the voice. Their distinctiveness is essential. Repeat as needed.

issue-136-p32-36.pdf

Sound

Music

Conceptual

_To the archive_ is part visual score, part road make, and describes Dutcher’s journey to the Canadian Museum of History.

to the archive

<h5>BUSH gallery recently spoke with artist and curator Anique Jordan about her recently curated off-site programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition _Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood_, and ways in which this programming resonated with ideas we are activating at BUSH gallery.

_The Public – Land and Body (West)_ was a video art exhibition installed inside the Black Creek Community Farm farmhouse in North York. Black Creek Community Farm focuses on improving food security, reducing social isolation and improving employment and education outcomes. _The Public_ used performance, video installation and discussion to explore themes of land and body across two community sites: _The Public – Land and Body (West)_ at Black Creek Community Farm and _The Public – Land and Body (East)_ at Y+ contemporary in Scarborough. At Black Creek Community Farm, the program included work by artists Yu Gu, Lisa Hirmer, Lisa Myers, Ella Cooper and Joshua Vettivelu and panel discussions with Cooper (artist, educator), Erica Violet Lee (writer, blogger) and Sabrina “Butterfly” GoPaul (community activist and journalist) in conversation with curator, Anique Jordan.</h5>
  
  
**TANIA WILLARD**: At BUSH gallery we are thinking about creating intentional space for art-making or art-conversation or different things, but not in gallery spaces. Not that it’s meant to be a binary – we love gallery spaces, we want to be in gallery spaces – but part of the impetus for BUSH gallery is finding ourselves always having to move to cities to show in galleries. There are very few that are Indigenous- or people of colour- or Black-led; for this issue of _C Magazine_, we wanted to play with that idea and do reviews and texts that are more about experiences of art within a community that’s important to you or within a natural outdoor space or that kind of thing, rather than in a typical gallery system.

In thinking about that, I was following the work from the AGO exhibition and had noticed the programming you did at Black Creek Community Farm.

**ANIQUE JORDAN**: When I first started going to the AGO, only two years ago, I came with family and friends who also had never been there. I remember having conversations with people who didn’t feel like they had the right to interpret what they were seeing. They felt uncomfortable and I felt that with them.

I’ve always been a community worker, and because of working for so many years in my community I always think about a responsibility that I have to return art to the community that informs it. I feel like it’s up to artists and curators, and whomever is in the gallery world, to always be thinking about how the work that we are doing is a reflection of the experiences in the communities that we have come from. And therefore how do we give that back to them, to those spaces. I wanted to be able to do something that was not centred in the downtown core but reached out into the wings of the city, which are the places I grew up in and did all of my community work in – recognizing that these people typically are absent from gallery settings but the experiences that inform our lives in those wings of the city are constantly being leveraged in the gallery. The work is really centred in a public downtown geography. I wanted to privilege the knowledge that came from other sites and say that there are things that we can learn from showing and witnessing work that is coming from those spaces, but also there are things that we can learn just by being in those spaces.

**AJ**: My background in community work is really embedded in my way of thinking. I am truly indebted to the people, mentors and young people, who have taught me and who I have worked with growing up in Scarborough. I was pushed further to understand and be able to speak about what those experiences meant to me through the work of Quill Christie, an artist and educator, who also worked with me at the AGO. I learned from her the language to speak about what has been so fundamental to my work. She talks about relationships as a core artistic practice – the central role that relationships have in everything that you do. This helped me find the language in designing the work for The Public. I want to make sure that those community folks who taught me so much are centred.

There were a couple of elements that were really significant in _The Public_ on both sides. One was that knowledge was centred on the people from the community, the activism and work that was coming from the community, and the sites that we were working with. That came from a strong partnership with the community members, between organizations – Black Creek Community Farm, Y+ contemporary and the AGO – but more so it came from the relationships that I had built knowing the folks on the ground, who had been doing this work. It was really about recentring the site where knowledge comes from and privileging that as the forefront.

Another element was that the project had to be accessible in many ways. I used my mom and my elder aunt as sort of a barometer – if they can go to a space and feel a visceral response or feel like they are comfortable talking about it or finding their own meaning through it, then I feel like it’s a success. I really thought about the different challenges that they would experience going through institutions as Black people, as women, as elder folk with disabilities, as folks who come from working class backgrounds, and so I wanted to ensure that the art, if it was art that was maybe abstract, or layered and symbolic, they would still have an entry point.

In _The Public (West)_ it was important to have a panel discussion that allowed for the themes in the work at the farmhouse to be brought into a conversational space. That people could talk about it and those who learn differently could have a way of entering it in different forms. What was important to me, in that panel conversation, was that there was somebody there whose work really thought about land, and thought about particularly Canada as a site. It was important that there was an activist from the community or a community worker who was deeply rooted in that community as part of the panel. To bring the artwork into this conversation allowed us to make sense of the things we were talking about – so that we can start to, as a community, think about the ways that we interpret visual language, to understand what we are experiencing now. And while that becomes intuitive for an artist, or for folks who studied art, it’s not necessarily intuitive for many people. It mattered as a political action, in saying that this work comes from you, is informed by you and it is important that we return it to you in a way that we can talk about it. So that was how it was done in _The Public (West)_.

We invited community members who are excluded from so many art spaces, so that they felt like they one-hundred-percent could own this, they do own this, and they could speak about it in a way that makes sense to them. Another important element was that the community that we were investing and embedding ourselves in was completely involved from the very beginning. That meant having conversations about the name, having conversations about the sites, selecting the artists together, selecting the placements of things together, talking about what sort of things would happen in tandem – for example Black Creek Community Farm just recently opened an outdoor pizza oven so we wanted to have fresh pizza with fresh vegetables from their garden, from the farm, to serve to people.

Community members were the first ones hired for anything. In particular, young people as photographers, as distributors of the flyers – we also made sure to print flyers so that we weren’t relying only on online presence, particularly in communities where there are a lot of seniors or people who may not be on the computer all time. So we flyered throughout the entire community. All these people came straight from the community, also as a way to ensure that there was a mix between artists who were in the show paired with artists who have a relationship to the community, currently living in the community or from that community. Having these kinds of components and the deepening of relationships was a really significant part of the work.

All the youth from the Indigenous youth residency, that Quill led and designed, were hired as gallery educators. I did an orientation with the group where we focused on what they thought of the art – what questions, feelings, stories they felt came from it – it was then their interpretation of the work that led visitors through. Making sure to continue to reiterate you are a keeper of knowledge. You can make sense of this. You know things. You bring so much. Together we asked what, for you, is coming from this? What is it that makes sense to you? What would you ask of this? It was really just asking questions of each other so that they had the space to come up with their own language to speak about the artworks. That was one of the most important components to the project, one that no one would have seen. When visitors came to the site, they would be led around by one of these young people. They would be speaking, and it wouldn’t be something I told them as a script. They would be speaking from their own perspectives, from the ways they understand this artwork. This is the way I want to work. I am constantly re-centering where knowledge comes from and affirming that.

That knowledge is often in a cycle, for example presenting the panelists with gifts that came from the farm. On the Black Creek Community Farm they have beehives and they collect honey and so we bought honey from their business to gift to the panelists. Things like that. Constantly recycling and returning resources that we have and thinking about how we can redistribute those resources. And really thinking about what matters, then, in the community as a site of knowledge within their own power.

It was also important to continue to build a relationship between Black, Indigenous and POC communities. That work was really central to how I programmed this. An example is Yu Gu’s work called _Interior Migrations_ (2008). Her work is about migrant workers on the farms in the Niagara-on-the-Lake region. It’s about food and social justice. It’s about migrant labour. Three videos were put in the Black Creek Community Farm kitchen while the kitchen maintained its function. So when the people from the outreach program that the farm runs came, food was prepared in the kitchen right next to the screens with the migrant farmworkers of Gu’s documentary. With that, every action the kitchen became a performance as well.

One of the great things about the installation at Black Creek Community Farm was how children related to the work. I look at large cultural institutions, and when we go into these spaces with children they are taught to obey. They are taught how to follow rules. They are taught how to stop. Not play. Be silent. And I thought about how when we did this program at the farm, they were taught how to be free. How to run. How to touch things. How to eat things that they found. There were children playing with ducks and chicks. Going and sitting down in front of Lisa Myers’ work that was on the balcony. Or going inside to look at the incredible work by Joshua Vettivelu, Lisa Hirmer or Ella Cooper, and this would just happen fluidly throughout. I started seeing how confining an arts institution can be. Why wouldn’t we want it to be a place of freedom? It’s not a space where you can breathe and see a horizon behind the work or feel as though you can remember there is land and communities and neighbourhoods and people surrounding it.

I was thinking about work that has pain in it, not necessarily in a bad way, but work that is showing pain or hurt or difficult times and how you are drawn into that and it surrounds you. And then seeing how different displays of pain felt at the farm, where you could see that things still live even after that or through that. Thinking about Lisa Myers’ work, about her grandfather and the residential school, or seeing a door that’s wide open to the outside right next to Lisa Hirmer’s work that’s about climate change, and knowing that there is a type of agency, even amongst the pain and amongst whatever the work was about.

**TW**: So the artwork was able to be in relationship with the site, in relationship with the farm.

**AJ**: That was something that everybody really spoke about. How the farm informed how you understood the work. And the work informed how you understood the farm. And the land that the farm is on. And the community that surrounds the farm. I also thought about it as refusal, as a practice of refusal, where we are going to do this because we are artists and we are people in a community and this is our community space and we don’t need permission to show the work that comes from us. Even within that I also recognized that we were able to do that because there was money backing it. Which is important because artists have to be paid and their labour has to be accounted for.

**TW**: It’s important. We want to bring the circulation of economy that comes with art practices and the art world back into our communities, instead of always outside of.

**AJ**: Right. Yeah.

Thinking back to the women in my family – my mom and my aunts. I have always created work for little Black girls. Every time I create an artwork I imagine, or remember how few images that I had or even people to look to. I always want to be that person who, if you look to me and you can see what I’m doing, you can be affirmed and given strength. And now I’ve started looking to my mother and my aunts instead of only to that little girl. My mom is the youngest of 13 children and so people always think my aunts are my grandmothers. They are 70 and 80 years old. I started looking to them because my mom was telling me – you know, I want to understand this art but it feels so complicated.

And so I look to mother and my aunts, because I want them to be able to understand this because they created this. They gave us this and therefore we have a responsibility to make sure that they as elders and that little Black girl, as a child, can enter it. That is something that I felt was successful about this show. It’s not just the farmhouse, it’s everything else that surrounds it – the young people who spent time and took the care to talk to every person who came through because they were proud of it. It was their work and it came from their knowledge. The conversations on the farm were emotional. We talked about fighting, we talked about what community and art; it was a conversation that was so intimate and it was held outside in the sun with the pizza oven and a dog barking. Children were running and playing. Geese in the pen. And flower and corn. And things growing all around us. Having this conversation outside was such a different experience. It created a sense of freedom that was so necessary to come from work, and from our discussions about it. It was a human way to experience art.

**Acknowledgments:**

Youth from the Indigenous Residency/   
Gallery Educators (AGO):  
Alesha Soloman   
Destyne Shivtahal  
Deshaun Whyte   
Micheal Whiteloon

Panelists:  
Sabrina “Butterfly” GoPaul   
Erica Violet Lee  
Ella Cooper

Artists:  
Ella Cooper  
Lisa Hirmer Lisa Myers   
Yu Gu  
Joshua Vettivelu

Black Creek Community Farm:  
Ama Boahen  
Nathan Walters   
Hinda Omer   
Rudy Gerodi

Andrew Hunter, co-curator of Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood   
Madelyne Beckles, performance artist and Special Program Assistant, AGO  
Quill Christie, Indigenous Youth Arts Residency Coordinator, AGO

Scarborough-born Anique Jordan is Toronto’s 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year, the Executive Director of Whippersnapper Gallery, the co-curator of the groundbreaking Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood at the Art Gallery of Ontario and an award-winning writer, artist and social entrepreneur who has lectured in institutions across North America including UCLA, MIT and  
Harvard. She has been a community worker for over a decade and is most proud of being a self-taught artist whose practice is shaped by and reflects the communities and mentors that raised her.

Speaker

issue-136-p36-42.pdf

Installation

Public art

Exhibitions

Education

Dialogue

Interpretation

Tania Willard speaks in conversation with curator Anique Jordan about her off site program _The Public—Land +Body (West)_ as part of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition _Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood_. 

Re-centring Knowledge an Interview with Artist and Curator Anique Jordan

Clayton Windatt is a Métis multi-artist, curator, writer and filmmaker. His work has been featured in the Toronto International Film Festival, ImagineNATIVE and various art spaces across Canada. He is a writer for Muskrat Magazine and the  
Executive Director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective.

A recent gathering conducted by _Primary Colours_ on Lekwungen Territory, Victoria, BC, gathered various artists; Indigenous artists, Black artists, artists of colour and artists of settler heritage to discuss shared histories of colonialism, race and convention in the arts. This gathering acted as a platform of investigation into exclusionary power dynamics, exploring the constructs of inclusivity, building collective memory and offering tools to those attending, who represented all generations of cultural leaders from diverse and marginalized communities locally, nationally and internationally. Explorations of privilege, abuse, control and ways to circumvent those hazards within institutionalized models served as tools handed from one generation of cultural leaders to the next.

_Primary Colours_ is a major Canada-wide initiative taking form as a multidisciplinary series of actions. The actions, spanning from 2016 to 2018, place Indigenous art practices at the centre of the Canadian art system and assert that art practices by people of colour play critical roles within any system that imagines Canada’s potential futures.

The _Primary Colours_ gathering hosted approximately 90 invited participants, in addition to many coordinators, technicians, curators and various partnering representatives including governmental and foundation representatives. The gathering engaged process-based methodology to explore contemporary issues raised by Black Lives Matter, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Islamophobia, unsettling settlers and the strange occurrence of Canada 150 celebrations as a way of framing critiques of nationhood and cultural policy.

Chris Creighton-Kelly and France Trépanier led the _Primary Colours_ conversations, both embodying a volume of experience within their individual and combined careers dealing with rights, culture and social justice through making. Chris Creighton-Kelly was born in the United Kingdom, of South Asian and British heritage, while France Trépanier is of Kanien’kéha:ka and French ancestry. Both are interdisciplinary artists and writers who work within critical curatorial, community-driven and research-based circles locally and internationally. Their work recognizes and values different bodies of knowledge, making steady progress towards understanding intrinsically, respecting protocols, honouring processes of collaboration and developing trust through transparency.

The four-day gathering continuously challenged the expected “conference” format, making consistent efforts to consider alternative methodologies, including ones set forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and practices rooted around the world. This meant that there would be no keynotes or formalized panel discussions but instead attempts were made to facilitate circles, sharing and informal conversations.

_Primary Colours_’ breakout sessions empowered artists and curators to actively engage in sharing their stories and practices, opening dialogues for constructive criticism to take place between peers. These conversations led to highly theoretical critiques of colonial institutions and inevitably overarching colonial environments as the established “norms” in which we all exist. Considerations of transformation and change were ever-present, leading to functional recommendations on how actual change could occur. One breakout session entitled “Engaging the Institution” with Tom Hill and Aruna Srivastava brought a group through several different organizations’ histories of transformation over the past 40 years. In each instance, the changes referenced were hard earned and required a great amount of self-sacrifice, but each also effectively became the foundation for new practices at institutions today. In many ways the groundwork set forward by figures such as Tom Hill or Louise Profeit LeBlanc, also present, supported the current climate at the Canada Council for the Arts and the creation of the new Creating Knowing and Sharing department. This gave the circle of people involved a higher level of firsthand knowledge towards leading institutional change and transferring generational knowledge to new leaders to continue advancing an agenda of transformation within the current models of Canadian cultural policy. An interdisciplinary focus has been an important curatorial strategy for many diverse cultural workers creating intergenerational dialogues that ultimately critique institutions to ensure privilege and power remain accountable.

Central to the gathering, the exhibition _Deconstructing Comfort_ opened at Open Space, an artist-run centre in downtown Victoria. This exhibition was an interdisciplinary presentation of seven contemporary Indigenous artists and artists of colour, including Jamelie Hassan, Syrus Marcus Ware, Lisa Myers, Nadia Myre, Haruko Okano, Philip Kevin Paul and Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i Eshrāghi. _Deconstructing Comfort_ was curated by Michelle Jacques, Doug Jarvis and France Trépanier, and all of artists and curators in the exhibition also contributed to the _Primary Colours_ gathering.

Other issues that both _Primary Colours_ and _Deconstructing Comfort_ attempted to address were the constructs of “decolonization” and “indigenization” within Canada. Although many Canadians use these terms interchangeably, and at times they can be used to describe the same action, it is absolutely necessary to emphasize their difference. Wikipedia describes “indigenization” as “the act of making something more native; transformation of some service, idea, etc. to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more Indigenous people in administration, employment, etc.” Wikipedia is referencing the action from a governmental standpoint and what it does not acknowledge, in this definition, is that this act also means the transfer of power to those Indigenous people, not just in administration, but in governance, management and implementation on all levels. The amount that an organization, institution or government becomes Indigenized is self-determined but often leads to a heightened state of communication between both parties, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Decolonization is the general act of undoing colonialism. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “decolonization” as “the withdrawal from its colonies of a colonial power,” meaning when a nation has established and maintained domination over dependent territories or people, the people affected carry the domination and subsequent withdrawal with them. The act of decolonization can be organizationally driven or done on a personal level by dismantling preconceived notions left behind by colonization. It can also be the abandonment of one methodology to embrace another, less colonial way of life. It is not necessarily anchored to an Indigenous body as decolonizing oneself can be an act without Indigenous influence. This is also where many people start confusing the terms “indigenization” and “decolonization.” For a non-Indigenous person, the act of following Indigenous modes of being can be an act of decolonization but it is not an act of indigenization, as you can never change your blood or heritage. Indigenous people need to commit to decolonization as well but decolonization is unique to each individual colonized experience and the response differs each time.

Facilitating modes of communication between cultures is at the core of _Primary Colours_ and the _Deconstructing Comfort_ exhibition. It cannot be epitomized more than in the actions of Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i Eshrāghi, who describes himself as coming from Sāmoan, Persian, German and Chinese ancestries and living as an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin Nation territory. Léuli describes his practice as: “Son travail est axé sur le renouveau cérémonial-politique, les langues, les avenirs incorporés, et les indigénéités locales et diasporiques. His work centres on ceremonial-political renewal, languages, embodied futures, diasporic and local indigeneities.” Language is a vast part of Léuli’s artistic practice and life, and in the work that was part of _Deconstructing Comfort_ entitled _tagatanu’u_, which means “people of the land / country / village / Indigenous.” In the piece, Léuli speaks in Sāmoan, Hawaiian, Tałtan, Woi Wurrung, Secwepemc, French and English as he emphasizes nuts, medicines and exoticised bodies as commodities simultaneously crushed by missionary body, spirit, sex-shaming and the extraction of labour into tourism, military, security, nuclear testing and plantations. During the performance, he immerses his body in a tub full of water, flowers and nuts in a way that is currently taboo in Sāmoan and other Indigenous cultures, to be in his body in a way that has power over intergenerational trauma and violence.

When gatherings take place – gatherings specifically focused on marginalized groups engaging with one another – there is a fear that the act of the gathering marginalizes those represented further; even the perceived action of segregation can cause further isolation. This is why _Primary Colours_ ensured that many of the major stakeholders in the arts were present to witness the gathering, including the Musagetes Foundation, Department of Canadian Heritage, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. The presence of these foundations and government agencies at the gathering ensures accountability in the large-scale recommendations for change being made. Those in power often wait until forced to respond either out of distraction, privilege or comfort, but should always feel accountable to the public. Challenging entrenched cultural policies, _Primary Colours_ brought people together to address the urgent need for re-imagined Canadian art systems formed through the collective efforts of cultural leaders in many communities. Assembling this group of thinkers, advocates and activists allowed for an update of the 30+ year conversation that has taken place regarding race, ethnicity, colonialism and diversity in the arts. The resulting intersecting discourses between the many groups represented created consensus in terminology and a new context of expectations for changes in Canada’s future cultural policy.

Representation is never easy when examining the volume of publicly identified groups that are considered to be marginalized people. The idea that any individual can represent an entire population is laughable but making attempts to include many voices, with each bringing their own culture, heritage and perspective, is an act of cultural pluralism that enables relatively successful consensus building related between cultures, especially under the shadow of existing systemic frameworks in Canada. Discussions between marginalized groups outside of the presence of the dominantly “white” majority of arts administrators and government agents often takes on a completely different tone. Conversations that would not have the same critical commentary become heavily analysed as activists within social justice causes begin to share notes and point out areas where improvements could have been made. This also leads to conversations around issues of appropriation between marginalized groups and how all groups operating within the inherently white Canadian art system are inevitably damaged and cause damage to each other through that power.

Our relationships are messy and our identities are complicated but _Primary Colours_ focuses our energies into collective actions. Bringing us all together allows us to find ways to empower one another through acts of collaboration and honest effort towards mutually beneficial goals for all. This also extends to those who may not consider themselves to be part of a marginalized group. Everyone needs to understand that these conversations discuss all people, and that major decisions about the climate of the arts and potential futures for Canada are taking place. This representation is not about displaying the “other” or allowing a spotlight to be shared with the less fortunate. The conversations that have taken place deal with the transfer of power from the existing infrastructures to new leaders. Major paradigm shifts are on the horizon, abandoning the notion of control and beginning leadership through stewardship. They ask us to contextualize language instead of creating new systems of complexity. They allow people to choose how they are identified and how they are discussed. These shifts ask that “empowerment” only be used as a term when power is being maintained or shared and that the “transfer of power” be considered for some situations. And such situations will become more pressing as these new leaders explore how they plan to enact change.

Race

A reflection by curator Clayton Windatt on _Primary Colours_’ recent gathering of artists on Lekwungen Territory, Victoria BC, to discuss shared histories of colonialism, race and convention in the arts.

Primary Colours: Preparing a New Generation 

##### Dachinta Centre for Research and Learning/Bush University

http://dechinta.ca
  
  
##### This is a site/ation of Denendeh lands on BUSH gallery mishnds.
  
  
##### Bush University reaches us, at BUSH gallery, as a twin spirit. Together these two entities reimagine the ancient tools created for our use by ancestors.

This reimagining enables. This reimagining shapes our shared futures.

We look to the land to support our practice. A space of possibility and risk. This bringing our current experience of learning from western institutions to/back on the land. Practicing this art on the land. We honour our original makers/thinkers. The history of innovation, often referred to as survival, continues to transform our realities. This keeps us connected to future ancestors. It is something beyond colonial and decolonial.

issue-136-p44-49.pdf

Photography

Documentary

Multimedia

An instagram photo essay documenting BUSH Gallery’s experience at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning/Bush University.

Learning from the Land: BUSH gallery @dechintau

Karyn Recollet is an urban Cree visitor to Tkaronto (where the trees stand in the water), Ontario. She is faculty in the Women and Gender Studies Department, University of Toronto. Her most recent imaginings and writings invite conversations around the intersections between cultural/ critical theory, dance choreographies and Indigenous futures. Recollet is beginning to explore how  
constellations/star mappings provide principles for social organizing and movement building.

> Kinstillatory gathering spaces, wishful thinking through dimmed light, making meaning out of the shadows because sometimes shadow-glyphs are all that we have left as our means for time travel. Ancestors peeking through cedar, “sometimes she hears them voicing and claims that she felt a tickle from her ancestor on her back.” Her dreams I pay attention to over my own. Leaves have traces too, they have memories written in the curves, contours and veins. Their smell is like old paper, yet sweeter, and in the winter, I long for their touch. If I place this leaf on my face, will it feel like skin, like that touch that chubby cheeks long for from momma’s hands? Her six-year-old self has become my childhood, like mine infused with hers from the moment she came into this spatial realm. My cheeks have stretched thinner – some call them Cree cheekbones, but I think of them more as fatigue. Sometimes this plain, grass… soil… gives the feeling of a chill, and I need to put my hat on… And think of all of the hipsters back home, those on Ishpadiinaa who fail to know the real meaning of the bones ground up in the concrete… that this really isn’t about them. Before Jimmy Bean, there was this muskeg. Sadly my tastebuds still want that soya chai latte. This my sad truth. 

> So I pour this latte into my Thermos and pretend it is muskeg but everyone can smell its pretentious sweetness, and I feel so dang urban. Then I come to this space and the languages we speak are kinstillatory – ally holding space here. He says I say “space” too much, hold onto space like it is my life-blood… and that is revealing. You see space, particularly dark matter, is my jam. And dark matter is magic; it is that wondrous active presence that is moving, vibrating, surging… formulating, ideating, creating… You see, I stretch these star map hides so that you can build that frame and we can create maps to tomorrow. Align them as though they are precious bundles scrolled, stretched, tanned, scraped, revealing hidden messages that lead to how we can be together here in this space, this land… that over ows the boundaries of water, subaqueous and celestial. “All is land,” she whispers and this is somehow always enough.

> These layers always remind me of the strata in rock we are supposed to know the names of in public school, but I never paid attention. I like this idea of the ephemeral, I like to think of my loving as ephemeral even though it hurts the heart – these absences, presences… this ow of back and forth… makes life sometimes quite lonesome. If I go back to the land, they say, maybe I will feel… home, belonging… something. And I believe them a little ’cause I know that me and the land… maybe we don’t have that great of a connection and, if I were to be totally honest with you, this land scares the shit out of me. If you were to drop me in the middle of land alone – any land – I would be afraid for my life. These disappearances, these absences of Indigenous lives taken to land – that ditch, that water’s edge – these are scary places for those of us whose bodies gesture to the otherwise possibilities of alternative worldings. But please don’t forget about me. Invite me to this gathering of people in land, on land, in its underneath and overhead spaces so that I can feel safe. I need you all, and something in me knows that when we gather, we are stronger. 

> So we tag these trees with the promise of our futurities, we sing these dark spaces into light and gather around shadow-making against deer hide as we collectively embody our love letters to the future. Marker trees – paint – brighter colours than could have ever been possible because these times require neon – lots of it. And I know that you wear colours well I have seen it… all the colours all the time, you say. And sometimes I think that these are ancient future teachings on how to be in these worlds together. You teach me that… and the cedar… the images through cedar… the making, the just frick’en “do it” ethic is brave like that first night in the bush. Make that mark – tag this space – is a marker that I am here, I am present here, others might know that I am here – this shit is scary but so necessary. Ephemerality doesn’t mean erasure, it is being the most present in this moment. The tiny feet, handprints in concrete that Grampie insisted on moulding into the re pit… a part of me will forever still be there… my heart… my love as rupturous as I know it to be. I have this relationship now with fractals in concrete… as though piecing together ancestral light to acknowledge my presence in Tkaronto. We love taking pictures and sharing them. I think this is part of fractal relationality, kinstillatory presencing in the urban spaces that we love. I bring this silver fake leather coat to the bush because fractals are a part of me and I need to radiate this so that the star that I can see from that Tkaronto balcony recognizes that I have moved… and that I am not alone. 

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issue-136-p51-55.pdf

Cities

Karyn Recollect reflects on her time at BUSH Gallery and her relationship to the land as an Indigenous person living in a Tkaronto. 

Kinstillatory Gathering

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Kari Cwynar is a curator, writer and editor based in Toronto, where she is Director of Kunstverein Toronto and Editorial Director of _C Magazine_. She writes on contemporary art for publications and catalogues, contributes regularly to _Frieze_ and _Metropolis M_.

Editorial Conception

Designer

Artist Project

Native Art Department International is a collaborative long-term project created and administered by Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan.

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issue-136-p53-56.pdf

An open exhibition model that is the expression between an artist’s instructions and the participants’ actions.

Sovereign Capitals

Review

Marianne Nicolson (Tayagila’ogwa) is Dzawada’enuxw First Nation from Kingcome Inlet and of Scottish descent. Her artwork has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally and she holds a PhD from the University of Victoria in Linguistics and Anthropology.

> _“WITNESS: I want the Commission to tell us the one that sold it, and they should remember that the Indians have a law among themselves just as the whitemen have – and no one is allowed to take another man’s land without first finding out who the land belongs to.”_

> — Kwakwaka’wakw Testimony to the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission ( June 1914)

In June 1914, the head chiefs of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations gathered in Alert Bay in order to testify to the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission. This commission was the culmination of decades of unresolved questions around Indigenous Land jurisdiction and the encroachment and imposition of colonial land needs and desires. It was a process that sought to dispossess Indigenous Nations of their lands and to impose severe limitations through the establishment of small “reserves.”

The photo below shows the Gigigame’ chiefs wearing all their regalia and standing inside their ceremonial house – note the remnants of the fire in the foreground. While the blankets and headdresses do indeed create a colourful and artistic display, their real meaning and importance was internal recognition of land title and rights. For instance, no chief could wear that to which he was not entitled, and the sanction was the public acceptance and validation of those rights. Each crest and image existed not only for simple display and beauty but also as a direct link to the histories telling of how each lineage came to be _in the land_. On the far left, the _kolus_ headdress worn by ‘Maxwa’kutłala, Chief Johnny Scow of the Kwikwasut’inuxw, tells of his descent from the great thunderbird Udzista’lis (or, A’udzistalaga’lis) who at the beginning of time came down at K’axadakwi (“Split-in-Two Mountain”) in Xakwikan (“Thompson Sound”). In order to affirm both ancestral rights and land rights, he would have been obligated to display these privileges publicly before the rest of the Kwakwaka’wakw, who as witnesses bore testimony to its legitimacy through the potlatch system. It is only in enacting this process that he is able to legally wear the headdress that connects to the history and place of the Kwikwasut’inuxw of whom he became head chief. This is true of all the Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs who accompany him in this photo. During the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission, these chiefs testified to their great discontent and alarm at being allocated only tiny reserves within lands that they considered theirs through great lineages established “since light first came into our world.” Mostly oblivious to their concerns, the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission carried on allocating tiny postage-stamp-sized reserves on the coast and ultimately swindling away the most valuable reserve lands for more, but less valuable, lands. They did this by recommending the removal of approximately 47,000 acres valued at $13– 15 million and the addition of 87,000 acres valued at less than $500,000.[^1]

To complete the slight-of-hand transformation of Indigenous Lands into Crown Lands, the colonial authorities outlawed Kwakwaka’wakw traditional law and governance by banning the potlatch from 1893–1951\. Though hard to prosecute by 1921, the Kwakwaka’wakw Indian Agent, William Hailliday, was successful in charging with an illegal offence many of the head Kwakwaka’wakw for potlatching. Those who wished to avoid jail time were given the option of giving up their regalia. With great sorrow they brought these things to Halliday, who put them on display in the Alert Bay Community Hall and charged a quarter to people who wished to view them. For the Kwakwaka’wakw, this was a tremendous humiliation. Once sold to the major museum institutions of colonial society, Halliday paid out paltry sums, thus imitating the coercive tactics of the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission in transforming that which was worth “beyond measure” to the Kwakwaka’wakw into next to nothing.

> _“I am returning to you cheque No.3799 for $22.00 in favor of Abraham which he refuses to accept for his paraphernalia as he say the sum is absolutely too small for the paraphernalia he surrendered. He wants to tell you he would rather give them to you for nothing than accept $22.00 for them.”_

> —Letter from Kwawkewlth Agency, Alert Bay, BC to Department of Indian Affairs (May 1st, 1922)

I cannot help but think of these things today when I see the great treasures of the Kwakwaka’wakw and other great nations within the great storehouses of colonization. Even today, the display maintains the illusion that these things are there to educate and illuminate the general public of our greatness. It is only with sorrow that I can see how captured they are and how trained we have become to view them as within their natural state, when the authority and relationship with land they were originally meant to express remains as disregarded and desecrated as they were in 1914 and again in 1921\. I think this while knowing that the great fish runs that so sustained the Kwikwasut’inuxw since time immemorial are also desecrated and diseased and our way of life is under such threat that our young people are occupying fish farms in our territory in order to protest them while John Horgan, the new Premier of British Columbia, reiterates to us that Norwegian- and Japanese-owned fish farms “…now \[generate\] $800 million in annual value…”

[^1]: Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), “Our Homes are Bleeding” ([ourhomesarebleeding.ubcic.bc.ca/index.html](“ourhomesarebleeding.ubcic.bc.ca/index.html)

issue-136-p58-60.pdf

Marianne Nicolson explores the history of the Kwakwak’wakw Nations and the McKenna-McBride Royal Commission, and how Kwakwak’wakw chief regalia came to be put on display.

Seeing You and Looking Back: Display as Land Rights and Title

Maureen Gruben is an artist based in Victoria, BC and Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. She has most recently exhibited work in the group show **150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact** at Art Gallery of Guelph (2017-18), and as part  
of **Landmarks/Reperes2017**. Her first solo show, \*UNGALAQ (When Stakes  
Come Loose)\* opened at Vancouver’s grunt gallery in 2017.

issue-136-p62-63.pdf

A poem connecting the author to their Indigenous history and place.

I Am

Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Persian, German, Chinese ancestries) is an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin Nation territory, and a PhD candidate at Monash University Art Design Architecture (MADA). His work centres on ceremonial-political renewal, languages, embodied futures, diasporic and local Indigeneities.

> tagatanu‘u  
> People/s of the land/s  
> People/s of the country  
> People/s of the village/s  
> People/s of the culture/s  
> People/s of the ocean/s  
> tagatavāsā

Ua fuifui fa‘atasi ae sa vao ‘ese‘ese is an enduring Sāmoan expression that signifies that we have gathered together from different parts of the forest. ‘OSā. Our clans. ‘O ‘āiga. Our families. ‘O tupuga. Our ancestors. ‘O tapuafanua. Our guardian spirits. ‘Osuli – descendants. ‘O atua ma āitu. Our kin animals and birds and plants. ‘O mauga. Our mountains. ‘Ovaitafe. Our rivers. ‘O ma‘umaga. Our food gardens. ‘O matafaga. Our beaches. ‘O fale sā. Our temples. Our lands and waters shared amongst clans for the use of all, disputes and all. All this in the ancestral time of the lupe pigeon’s heyday before plantation and missionary colonial rule in the 1800s destroyed lupe pigeon numbers and our own with hunting, abduction into forced labour and blackbirding into overseas slavery, and introduced diseases decimated our numbers, all across the ocean. Before we moved offshore in vast numbers. Before our coral and fish boiled in high-temperature waters. Before nuclear testing and overfishing poisoned our primary ancestor, Vāsālaolao, sacred-far-reaching-undulating-relational-space, who cares for us yet. Before the body-, sex-, spirit-shaming of the missionaries and Eurocentric knowledge systems imported into our language, culture and outlook were unleashed to destroy us one by us, long after the original violators from Europe had passed on to the spirit world.

Before we resisted and fought back. Before we remade ourselves in our ancestors’ image for our own Indigenous diasporic and archipelagic resurgence. I know this every time I stand in our ancestral belonging, and recently when I spent a few days on a sanctuary island, Namu‘a, to the southeast of our main island, ‘Upolu. There, debris installations wash up every day from far across the sea; there, pe‘a flying foxes, laumei turtles, pa‘a crabs and manu birds rule the land, air and sea! There, humans only spend a little time at a time, and this decentring of human-centrism is salvatory to me and my kin there. The smell of the sea on the breeze, the humidity and rain gliding off leaves in the forest, nearing creatures of the sky, remind that this is not only our home, that Earth-centred ways of knowing are active yet.

What is a city but a collection of villages? What is an aesthetic experience but a passage of moments? All lands and waters are known and inhabited by living beings, sometimes including us humans. All cities are built on still-sacred lands and waters. In unceded Kulin Nation territory, where I mainly live and work, the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung clans of inner Narrm/Melbourne and their relations, the Wadawurrung, Taungwurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung clans further west and north, are in sovereign resurgence right now. Their oratory, performing and visual languages are expressed with power. The settler colonial city of Melbourne/Port Phillip was built over their territory but has not subsumed them, rather a rebalancing is afoot where their cultures, and those of other First Nations and global Indigenous cultures, are being centred in accordance with protocol and respect. The city is also Country, to amplify the concept of First Peoples in “Australia.” As Elders teach us uninvited guests in every Welcome to Country ceremony, Country will nurture you if you respect it, and if you do not harm the children of Bunjil. All of the mineral resources used to create the built environment also come from the very lands and waters we are indebted to for our lives. So, Country is really all around us.

Ninety rotations of Lā Sun and many more of goddess Māsina Moon. Indigenous matriarchy heals and binds. Ia manuia lou aso fānau, peleina Tinā matua, Nātia Fa‘ase‘e Tautua. In my ‘āiga, we call grandma, great-grandma, mum, aunty, cousin, “mum” across generations. My grandma has looked after many generations of children, nieces and nephews, from our extensive family and those needing love and a home, for decades. Every day, amongst all the affairs she is managing in our 40-member household (not including all of us in the diaspora), she has a cup of tea or fresh lemonade, some fruit, sets up her weaving space in the living room, primes the fala pandanus lengths, fashions scary/amazing dolls with cube heads and siapo barkcloth attire, rectangular handbags with fala squares and triangles for the trocus shells and siapo lining the inside. She shows my younger cousins how to spin the fala into a tight length to be used as a strap on the bags, my aunts and older cousins watching on and weaving their own magic. Tinā matua has created ‘afa coconut sennit and fala dresses for couture competitions in our archipelago, her creations, the models and her glowing in the local paper and in our memory. The sounds of our village, the soundtrack to Tinā matua’s daily practice: chickens scuttling along, a Tarago van slowing down behind an old rusty and faithful pickup along the village road weaving around our ancestral Mount Vaea, children screaming with glee/hurt around the open-air and closed-air houses of all our relations, the melodies of church choir practice, the water flowing (when it does) in Loimata o Apaula Creek from our ancestors to us, and the excitement of young people able to forsake duties and homework for some volleyball under the big trees before dinner.

Last December, we celebrated Tinā matua’s 90th birthday in the hall of the Papauta Girls’ School, which she attended as a young girl, just on the main road side of our village. I remember the officiating of my orator uncle, Leuli, the local pastor, the organizational prowess of my mother, Sone, and aunts Sally, Elisapeta and Sualua, the tribute songs performed by cousins living in Aotearoa and Sāmoa, the classics in our language playing on the speakers so the third age could dance a little before the bones crackle again. I remember the intense aromas of seafood, landfood, served in delicious arrangements by my chef uncle, Siaosi, and the protocol of serving the eldest to the youngest, the best pieces of meat, lobster, limu seaweed, taro, ta‘amū yam going out first. The village gossip about who prepared such sumptuous take-away packs of food, so fresh and generous. (This is eternally the measure of a successful event in the islands: was the food good, generous and were you able to get extra take-away packs for those who didn’t make it to the event? You really just want another pack, but let’s say, it’s for the ancestors, of course.) I don’t live in my village, more than half of my ‘āiga don’t, but my brothers and I did grow up there for a few years when we were much younger. Mum moved back three years ago, and this anchoring always brings a rebalancing to what’s going on in my life in Narrm. My grandma has been an artist her whole life, independent of the gallery system, supporting our expansive family relationships across lands, waters, airs, in a sovereignty that is care from the land, in a matriarchy that is love from the ancestors, in a binding of diasporic children that is making with the fruit of your labour what is denied from us in the capitalist system of our colonizers, who left but never leave our minds, spirits, bodies. The keys to our liberation are also found in the wisdom of the diaspora for all our people (more Sāmoans, like many Indigenous archipelagic peoples, do not live on our lands and waters). Tinā matua reiterates her messages to me and my cousins in Sāmoan and in English. Don’t forget me. Don’t take too long to come home, I don’t want to be buried already when you do. And the excited cackle when I respond in Sāmoan: ‘Ou te alofa ia te ‘oe, Tinā. E lēgalo ‘oe, e lē galo lo tātou atunu‘u. 

issue-136-p63-65.pdf

Nature

Family

Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i Eshrāghi recalls tender moments of his family dynamics and life in Narrm, meditating on the ways that his matriarchal figures, specifically grandmother Tinā matua, live as artists free from any art institutional structures. The text explored the intersections between indigenous matriarchy, community, land, colonialist history, diaspora and creative practice. 

tagatavāsā

Meghann O’Brien is a weaver descended from the Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw nations. She lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

These writings are reflections on growing up in the Kwakwaka’wakw community of Alert Bay, where I also learned to weave. After we moved away, I returned each summer with my family for the commercial salmon fishing season. One year (2007) I brought around a typewriter with me everywhere I went, including on the fishing boat and into the forest. When I look back on the writing from this time I value it so much. Because, I feel like at that time I was the kind of person that the weaving wanted to give itself to, or trusted itself with.

I feel like the weaving took root in my heart as a worthy place to flourish in, and lately I find myself wondering if I’m still that person. It offered so much, but to translate this skill from another time into the capitalist structure we exist within poses challenges. The weaving has been my hiding place, quiet, private, intimate, the place where I can love the way that I want to, and that is why I treat the tradition with such respect. I wouldn’t go back and take out my original weavings from that time to make them perfect aesthetically. They carry the same weight if not heavier than current work, even if the exterior expression is more re ned now. In the same way I wouldn’t want to heavily edit these words. They stand as are. I see them now as in protest to the english language and the world it evokes into being and its lack. I may be abiding to tradition in my weavings, but the english language is something that was violently imposed on my people. I take free reign in assembling the colonizers’ language in any way I feel fit to do so.

> 19\. There are such gifts of the past so valuable, that they must be repeated. There is the weaving of cedar bark and I wish with my heart to learn of it. To learn such means of practicality. I desire to wear the love of my ancestry as a headband on my head that comes down to a basket who was woven for berries. I have a certain desire to sleep after this. I have a desire to compose boxes of bent maple or cedar for the storage of herbs and weeds from the sea and berry cakes of all kinds. And things such as dinosaurs and guts from the sensitive type of man who loves. The kinds of love offered are terrible. I despise the love as it exists between humans on this planet. I want love like it is shared between roots and the soil.

> 21\. yesterday was the 5th july, Thursday. I worked on the net and made patches with a needle and tar twine, and Billy was drunk and had scabies. At his house Jared was cutting the lawn for beer money, and I was gathering clover; only especially ones who were very colorful. When the time had come for finishing the net for the day, Billy and I went to gator gardens swamp and he showed me the means of stripping cedar bark from trees and bending it for carrying. His son Kyle was four now, he stamped his feet to that certain rhythm from the log drum at the big house and started singing in kwakwala. Billy said he was praying and singing songs for the trees while I took it’s bark.

> Then I went and gathered more rose’s petals. I seen Dorothy Daniels, and I collected salmon berries, and the sun had a beautiful time, I think, in the sky. It was evening now, I was by myself, we were together on the other side of the island that is more empty than the other. This side of the island is looser, it looks at Malcom Island, although they do not have eyes. It was so lovely last night, just so. It is so lovely here tonight, I’ve spent this evening by myself, it was nice out and the clouds were out too. My salmon berry cakes were ready when I returned, so I took them out and put new ones in. Then that night I am stripping the outer bark from the inner bark from the cedar trees bark. Is it that you are weeping for the naked flesh of the living tree unclothed? It was dark by then, there was cakes to be made from salmon berries, and there was a pot of honey wine to be made. And rose petals to be laid down then, down in the spare bunk. My dad said the roses made them smell good like roses. I felt pleased at this yesterday. 

> 24\. July 7th, 2007.  
> Today I went to Jeanette’s parents house and picked some of their raspberries. On the way down I found my way to some salmon berry bushes and was gathering a few of those when they came alive, the whole bushes when I looked into them they just began to be bursting with berries. And I picked them, then some leaves would rustle or shift and then and then awhole new bunch of perfectly ripe huge berries would jump out, so shiny. They were so shiny, and dark and soft, . I made my way into the thicket. It was so thick, so old. There was an opening, and the prickles were surprisingly prickly. There was so much old dead twigs under there, it looked really excellent. Then there was the main trunk of the bushes, a few of them, they were so awesome. When the salmon berry bushes get older, their trunks get thicker. There is an outer skin like paper or bark that forms, like a arbutus tree. And it grows sideways, shooting up shoots straight up in the sky, so from the outside it looks like the bushes just grow straight up. But they don’t they grow very sideways with the shoots straight up. They make it look like the bushes grow up, not sideways. It was so thick with skinny dead twigs all in the underbrush. There were  
> some dead looking leaves, slightly brown colored and crinkly like foil paper, and then these berries hanging everywhere, like being inside a salmon berry Christmas tree. It felt like I was inside the heart of the salmon berry. It felt like the salmon berries had come from the centre of the earth, and that it was the energy from the centre of the earth, the heart of the salmon berry spirit. The thicket felt and looked like it was really old, it was magnificent and I miss it already. It reminded me of the thicket that was beside the house I grew up in. That thicket we used to play in it every day when we were little. Me and Kimberley and Andy Wagald. He was my first friend. I think me and him played together more in there than Kimberly and I did, or more than he and I and she. 

> Aug 5th, Finally I have made it to the forest near the beach with my typewriter. I find myself fond of small lilies in this step forest, an interest towards the way they grow, their beauty makes it hard to stand being alive, they have a pattern, owing, it is flowing, the way similar to how the heart would flow, if it could contain love.

> there are straw grasses too, green ones, the typewriter sitting on quite a hill, this hilly forest with an ocean underneath it, and rocks who are larger than they appear from a distance.

> There is devil’s club, i was sifting about the lillies and green grasses when i got a small blue jay’s feather, how lovely, i like the devils clubs presence, and the ferns, who have their powdery seeds all lined in a row on their undersides, fidgeting, this is a lovely place to be. My basket looks good here, too, I went for a brief walk up the slope. A slug has made friends with the typewriter while I was absent. Then I sang songs to the devil’s club and i watched it in the breeze. Then the sun went behind the mountain, and I decided to walk to the rocks down the slope to go back to the boat to sleep or skip rope. I keep fear about the kinds of beauty that wakes us. I have finally made it to the top of the boat at dusk with my typewriter. And now, look, I’ve nothing to say. Except for how the mosquitos are out and perhaps its time to hide under sleeping bag covers for the night. 

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Meghann O’Brien, a weaver, looks back on the tradition with respect. Included are excerpts from her writing during her family trip to Alert Bay, the place where she learned to weave, in 2007.

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