Lucy Quinnuayuak, Feathered Trio, 1968. Stone cut, 22.5 x 27.5 in. Blackwood Gallery collection.
This roundtable discussion seeks to unpack the concept of “stewardship” from perspectives rooted in place and culture. What is stewardship in relation to Native Feminisms, Indigenous concepts of land, gender, and territory? How does stewardship intersect with sovereignty, artistic practice, and collections?
This panel discussion is presented in conjunction with the exhibition #callresponse on view at the Blackwood Gallery from January 8–27, 2018, and as part of Take Care, Circuit 4: Stewardship
Jan 19, 2018 – Jan 19, 2018
Past
All Our Relations: The Art of Land and Indigenous Stewardship
Panel discussion with Beatrice Deer, Michelle LaVallee, Lisa Myers, Lindsay Nixon, Eve Tuck
Jackman Humanities Institute
170 St. George Street, Room 100
Toronto
Beatrice Deer is a singer, seamstress, and advocate for good health. Originally from Quaqtaq, a tiny village in Nunavik on the northeast coast of Quebec, Deer is now based in Montreal with her two children. Her music features both lyrical and throat singing in Inuktitut and English. Deer has released four albums, and received the award for Best Inuit Cultural Album in 2005 at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards.
Michelle LaVallee is a curator, artist, and educator of Ojibway ancestry and a member of the Nawash Band in Cape Croker, Ontario. She worked as a curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, SK from 2007-2017, and has recently been appointed as the new director at the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada Art Centre in Gatineau, Quebec. LaVallee won the award for Excellence in Arts Related Service at the Mayor’s Arts and Business Awards in Regina in 2013 and has been a chosen participant for a number of International Canadian Curator Delegations in Australia, New Zealand, and Italy.
Lisa Myers is an independent curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Myers has an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University. Since 2010, she has worked with anthocyanin pigment from blueberries in printmaking, and in her stop-motion animation. Her participatory performances involve sharing berries and other food items in social gatherings, reflecting on the value found in place and displacement; straining and absorbing. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and her writing has been published in a number of exhibition publications in addition to Senses and Society, C Magazine and FUSE. She is an Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Myers is a member of Beausoleil First Nation and she is based in Port Severn and Toronto.
Lindsay Nixon is a Cree-Métis-Saulteaux curator, editor, and writer. They are the Indigenous Editor-at-Large for Canadian Art, and the editor of mâmawi¬-âcimowak, an independent art, art criticism, and literature journal. Nixon currently resides in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyaang, unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territories (Montreal), where they co-founded the Black Indigenous Harm Reduction Alliance and Critical Sass Press. Their forthcoming creative non-fiction collection, tentatively titled nîtisânak, is to be released in Spring 2018 through Metonymy Press.
Eve Tuck is Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. She is a William T. Grant Scholar (2015-2020) and was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011. Tuck's writing and research is on urban education and Indigenous studies, and is the author of two recent books, Urban Youth and School Pushout (Routledge, 2012) and Place in Research (co-written with Marcia McKenzie, Routledge, 2015).
#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard. We acknowledge the politics of violence in North America as it relates to Indigenous lands and bodies including on the many Indigenous territories where the projects take place, whether they are ancestral, traditional, unceded, unsurrendered, urban, rural and/or reserve.
#callresponse, Blackwood Gallery, and Letters & Handshakes extend deepest thanks to all the participating artists, respondents, and the networks that support the important work they undertake at all levels. Thank you also to those who have led and participated in the programming around the exhibition.
The Blackwood Gallery gratefully acknowledges the operating support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the University of Toronto Mississauga.
The Blackwood Gallery is grateful for the generous support of #callresponse from the Jackman Humanities Institute Artist-in-Residence Program, the BC Arts Council, and grunt gallery, with additional support from the Department of Visual Studies and Women and Gender Studies (UTM).
Funding for staff support was made possible through the Young Canada Works in Heritage Organizations Graduate Internship program, Department of Canadian Heritage. The Canadian Museums Association administers the program on behalf of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
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