A dialogue between photographer and documentary filmmaker Soloman Chiniquay and guest curator nicole kelly westman as they speak about the artist project in C Magazine issue, C152 "Extraction."

In Mâkochî Nîbi Îhonîach (The Land is Close to Death), Chiniquay looks with an “ethics of empathy” to the peripheries of the front lines of the Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade, which began in the summer of 2020 and is now the most longstanding action of civil unrest in this country. The blockade seeks to protect the many old-growth trees that meet British Columbia’s definition of being a minimum of 250 years old. As westman writes, Chiniquay actively works against the tradition of “photographers and photojournalists [who] act like hunters, focused on finding an image that precisely encapsulates complexities that are too challenging to succinctly summarize."

Soloman Chiniquay is an Îyethka Nakoda, Pomo, Wacîchu Thuba photographer, documentary film maker, living between xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory and Treaty 7 territory. His lens-based work explores the ways 
he is welcomed to witness expressions of Indigeneity, creating imagery that attempts to show, in sometimes raw ways, the land and the people on it, the ways people use and connect to the land, and the artifacts they leave on it.

nicole kelly westman is of Métis and Icelandic descent and lives with the chaotic pleasures of a dyslexic mind; she is surrounded in support by the interconnected care and plurality of her community. She is most delighted to be an Aunty but is also an artist who, these days, is mostly on hiatus.