National Indigenous History Month 2023 is being celebrated through the arts
On the unceded, traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, several public events are taking place throughout June
Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
JUNE MARKS National Indigenous History Month in Canada, while June 21 is National Indigenous People’s Day. Celebrations are taking place all across the country.
Here are a few arts-focused events happening in the region; Stir will update the story as information on more events becomes available.
Virago Nation Burlesque.
Talking Stick Festival
The 22nd annual festival by Full Circle: First Nations Performance is an ambitious month-long multidiciplinary celebration featuring live music, fashion, film, literature, roundtable discussions, an immersive sound experience, and more. (Read Stir’s feature here.) This year’s theme is Summer Reverb, meant to evoke the concept of amplifying Indigenous voices.
On National Indigenous Peoples Day, guest artist Logan Staats, a Mohawk singer-songwriter rooted out of the Six Nations of the Grand River, headlines a cabaret-style Summer Solstice Celebration. Other artists taking part in the fest include Tuscarora-Taino singer-songwriter-storyteller Pura Fé, Cherie Maracle of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, and Virago Nation Burlesque.
Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre.
Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
The beautiful venue on the ancestral territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Líl̓wat7úl Nations in Whistler (pictured at top) is celebrating throughout the month and beyond.
On June 10 from 5:30 to 9 pm, SLCC hosts the Spo7ez Wellness Feast. The gathering combines medicinal storytelling related to the land with a traditional long-table shared dining experience of seasonal foods in the Great Hall. Spo7ez performers dressed in regalia will sing throughout the evening. The event is part of Nourish Spring Series by Cornucopia.
For National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21, guests are invited to connect with cultural ambassadors as they share live carving and performances, storytelling, and craft activities. The Spo7ez Performance team will present powerful cultural sharing on the mezzanine Patio. The Spiritual Warriors, whose music is inspired by the land and life in the Coast Mountains of the Lil’wat Nation will share their blend of Indigenous chants and contemporary roots, rock, and reggae. An Artists Market and Guided Interpretive Forest Walk will be on offer; so will a Curators Talk for the Unceded Exhibition with Mixalhítsa7 Alison Pascal of the Lil’wat Nation and Tsawaysia Dominique Nahanee of the Squamish Nation.
On June 17 and 24 from 10 am to 12 pm, the cultural venue hosts a Holistic Tour and Indigenous Tea Offering. A welcome song opens the event, while cultural ambassadors will introduce visitors to the centre and guide them on an interpretive forest walk, showcasing herbs and medicinal plants that grow in the region. Back in the Longhouse, people will learn about the healing benefits of traditional teas, which will be served with First Nations traditional bannock.
On July 1, SLCC will host a thoughtful conversation with Rethinking Canada Day, a guest speaker series with Squamish Nation spokesperson Wilson Williams and Jack Crompton of the Whistler Podcast on the mezzanine patio. The Spo7ez Performance team will present cultural sharing in traditional regalia. Guests can explore the museum while families can enjoy a scavenger hunt as well as craft and colouring stations.
As part of the SLCC’s 2023 Summer Salish Carving Series and in honour of the 100-year anniversary of the Squamish Nation amalgamation (July 1923), Squamish artist Xwalacktun Rick Harry and SLCC apprentice Brandon Hall will begin live carving of a new 30-foot pole.
UNCEDED: S7ulh Temíxw / Ti Tmicwkálha / Our Land - A Photographic Journey into Belonging has been extended to October 8. Featuring photography by Logan Swayze, the exhibition features environmental portraiture of Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxwumixw and the Lil’wat7ul set in various beautiful locations on the unceded territories throughout the Sea to Sky Region and where their shared territories meet in Whistler, BC. See Stir’s feature here.
Les George.
Les George X Sam George Jr: Truth Comes Before Reconciliation
Les George is the 2023 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. On June 28 from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at the Central Library, he will be in conversation with his brother, Sam, who is the first great grandson of Chief Dan and Amy George. A member of the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation, Sam is knowledge keeper, elder, former Aboriginal support worker, and grandfather. For the past three years he has been doing traditional openings and welcomings for the federal and B.C. provincial governments as well as the cities and school districts throughout Metro Vancouver.
The siblings will talk about Indian Residential Schools and the truth and learning that must come before reconciliation.
Kelly Robinson, Silver bracelet, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist
Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
To mark National Indigenous History Month, the gallery is hosting a curatorial tour of Bright Futures on June 3 at 11:30 am. The exhibition brings together some of Reid’s pieces with works by contemporary emerging and established Indigenous artists of the Northwest Coast, making for a retrospective on how Northwest Coast art has evolved over the past 25 years.
The arts venue has also created self-guided walking tour of some of the local Indigenous art in downtown Vancouver (which will be available via the gallery after June 15). Highlights include works by Reid as well as artists such as Debra Sparrow and Sonny Assu.
The gallery is open on National Indigenous Peoples Day, operating on its usual daily hours of 10 am to 5 pm.
Wapikoni – Encounter in Kitcisakik.
National Film Board of Canada
The NFB has several offerings for National Indigenous History Month, including the online premieres of two feature docs filmed in the North: Fritz Mueller’s Voices Across the Water (June 12) and Tanya Tagaq and Chelsea McMullan’s Ever Deadly (June 16).
Starting June 1, the NFB will also highlight three channels of Indigenous films, including the debut of a new one from the Wapikoni collective. Founded in 2003 with the support of the NFB, the group works with francophone Indigenous filmmakers across Quebec. Included in the 15-film collection is Mathieu Vachon’s feature Wapikoni – Encounter in Kitcisakik, accompanying this celebrated studio on wheels as it travels through Indigenous communities, providing production training to youth.
Transmission of Indigenous Knowledge looks at Indigenous knowledge, practices, and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial in its 18 titles. The channel contains three films by legendary director Alanis Obomsawin, as well as Jennie Williams’s Nalujuk Night.
Indigenous-Made Animation Films features 22 animated short films made by Inuit, First Nations, and Métis filmmakers at the NFB. Highlights include Terril Calder’s stop-motion “Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics” and Asinnajaq’s “Three Thousand”.
Confluence by Raven Spirit Dance. Photos by Erik Zennström
Evergreen Cultural Centre
ECC has several arts experiences lined up for National Indigenous History Month, including performances by Raven Spirit Dance. On June 18 and 19, the company will present Joy of Jigging Workshop with Jeanette Kotowich. In this cultural sharing, people will learn basic and fancy steps. On June 19, , Raven Spirit Dance presents Confluence produced in collaboration with performers Michelle Olson, Starr Muranko, Jeanette Kotowich, Tasha Faye Evans, and Emily Solstice Tait. The dance work weaves their perspectives, histories, and bodies to speak to the resilience of Indigenous women. Play, prayer, grief, and gratitude all come shining through. A pre-show reception features members of Kwikwetlem First Nation and Raven Spirit Dance before the performance.
These public events take place alongside Indigenous perspectives exhibitions in venue’s Art Gallery. Métis artist Tracey-Mae Chambers has engaged with multiple public spaces across Turtle Island since July 2021, spanning historical residential school sites, cultural centres, museums and galleries to create #hopeandhealingcanada intricately constructed from knit, crochet, or woven red yarns and then later removed. #hopeandhealingcanada aims to encourage conversations about decolonization and (re)conciliation. Reusing the red yarns as she travels from place to place highlights the labour of this project as well as its connectivity. Chambers’s tangled webs of yarn symbolize a fractured society with themes of hope and healing. The images and stories of this project will culminate in an exhibition and a book at the end of 2024.
#hopeandhealingcanada is installed on the exterior of Evergreen Cultural Centre, located in the core territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nation. The kʷikʷəƛ̓ əm people have lived in their traditional and ancestral territory, known as the Coquitlam Watershed, and the surrounding areas, since time immemorial and never ceded this land. This temporary outdoor artwork is presented alongside the gallery exhibition Transmissions (to July 23), the artists drawing on complex histories and rich cultural and personal practices connected to textiles. Their artworks explore how this medium holds timeless knowledge transmitted over generations. See www.evergreenculturalcentre.ca for more info.
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