Category Archives: Arts Activism

#CANADA150 ALTERNATE PLANS: #Reoccupation on #ParliamentHill #Ottawa 4 #Resistance150

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“We ask that you, your community, and your organization join us to send a loud and clear message to Canada and the world that we will no longer accept the colonial system of dispossession, expropriation, and oppression that Canada has imposed on us for the past 150 years.” ~ REOCCUPATION

A small group of students wanted to put together an action to speak to Canada’s sesquicentennial. On Wednesday night they went up to Parliament Hill to set up a tipi to host people arriving to perform ceremony on the Hill, unceded Algonquin territory, during the Canada 150 Celebrations. Arrests were made, thankfully people were released and the group went into negotiations with the RCMP and other security. Last night they succeeded in moving their tipi onto the Hill. This afternoon the Prime Minister and his wife met with the group that includes the Bawating Water Protectors. This is a monumental event and an important action. Tonight and tomorrow REOCCUPATION will remain on the Hill. Everyone is welcome to come in solidarity. Food, water, and tobacco is being requested.

Join the FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE to keep up to date.

SCHEDULE:

JUNE 30
5AM Sunrise Ceremony
9AM Breakfast
1PM Lunch
2PM Outdoor Panel: ‘Land Dispossession and Legal Technologies’ with Fredrick Stoneypoint, Ojibwe, Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation, Student in Sociology & Human Rights and more speakers to be confirmed
6h30PM Dinner
7h00PM-9PM Indoor Panel: ‘Cultural Appropriation in Art & Resurgence in Indigenous Art’
with Indigenous artists and curators Cody Purcell, Delilah Saunders, Alex Nahwegahbow, and Victoria Ransom (NOTE: This event takes place at The Origin, 57 Lyndale

JULY 1
5AM Sunrise Ceremony
7AM-4PM All Day Action! Join for Details.
6PM Feast and Debrief for Protectors and Participants. Location to Be Announced on Place.

Interested? Contact the organizers at: TurtleIslandwaterprotectors@gmail.com

National Call to Action: https://www.facebook.com/events/193248851194723/

OTHER WAYS TO OFFER SUPPORT:

DONATE –  (etransfer): mderia22@live.ca

#CANADA150 ALTERNATE PLANS: Our #Home on #Native #Land @HarbourfrontTO #Toronto 2day #OHONL

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Resisting Canada 150? Toronto has some options!

Starting today and running through until Monday July 3rd Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, a leader in diverse programming that speaks to our times, is hosting Our Home on Native Land Festival. Indigenous artists will be performing all weekend long. Some of the featured artists include:

Also on the bill this weekend is Vox Sambou, Beny Esguerra and Narcy, the JUNO-nominated Iraqi-Canadian artist who worked with Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) on A Tribe Called Red‘s “R.E.D” track.

From the Harbourfront Centre:

On the occasion of Canada Day, Our Home On Native Land aims to spark questions, conversations, and ultimately a rethinking of “what it means to be Canadian” by foregrounding, celebrating, and making space for the diverse voices and stories of belonging to this land that are often excluded from typical ideas and expressions of Canadianness.

By focusing on narratives of creative resistance, intersectional solidarity, social justice, and decolonization, Our Home On Native Land reveals the connective threads that exist between Indigenous and diverse, newcomer communities in their creative contributions to the artistic and cultural fabric of Canada, or Kanata.

This festival takes its title from a well-known act of resistance committed by Indigenous peoples across Canada, whereby they intentionally change the line “Our Home and Native Land” to “Our Home On Native Land” to re-ascribe Indigenous sovereignty over the lands now known as Canada.

View full event listing here!

TODAY 4 #CANADASCENE: On #Parliament #Metis #artist David Garneau performs “Dear John, Louis David Riel”

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Métis artist David Garneau’s performance “Dear John, Louis David Riel” (www.nac-cna.ca)

The National Arts Centre Ottawa offers more programming on Louis Riel.

Métis artist, writer and educator David Garneau is in town for a performance on the history of Louis Riel. The work is part of the programming for the NAC’s Canada Scene and follows the controversial Louis Riel opera that opened this past weekend at the NAC. The performance will take place on Parliament Hill today at the Sir John A. Macdonald statue.

From the NAC:

Join Métis artist David Garneau at the bronze statue of Sir John A. Macdonald on Parliament Hill for a powerful performative dialogue between the Métis leader Louis Riel and Canada’s first prime minister. Dressed as Riel, Garneau imagines an encounter between Riel and Macdonald, who charged Riel with high treason in 1885, leading to Riel’s execution by hanging. The artist’s performance touches on themes of masculinity and power display, Métis identity, and the complexity of reconciliation – which assumes that a harmonious relationship existed between the two parties in the first place. (read more…)

WHEN: Monday, June 19, 2017
WHERE: Parliament Hill, 111 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Canada at the Sir John A. MacDonald statue

FREE EVENT!

IN REMEMBRANCE OF CHANIE WENJACK: CBC Airs Gord Downie’s “Secret Path” Tonight at 9 pm

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This week Gord Downie premieres his project The Secret Path at the National Arts Centre and on CBC

I had the opportunity to attend the premiere of The Secret Path this past Tuesday at the National Arts Centre. It was not an easy event to get through. Gord Downie along with illustrator Jeff Lemire have created a work that invokes discomfort and deep pain – as it should.

Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack was a young Anishinaabe boy from Marten Falls First Nation. He was only one of 150,000 children that were taken from their parents and placed into residential schools often thousands of kilometres away. Far in physical and emotional distance, a large percentage of these children, an estimated 6000, never returned home.

The Wenjack family was present at the NAC and has been a part of this project to bring awareness not only to the past but also to the present – many Indigenous teenagers must leave their community to attend high school. Having high schools on all reserves would allow for kids to stay in their home communities. This is part of the message of Pearl Wenjack, Chanie’s sister, who shared with the audience at the NAC her memories of her little brother and her hope for his legacy.

Along with the production of The Secret Path video and album a foundation (The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Foundation) has also been established to raise money for projects that promote opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue between Non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities. In the spirit of reconciliation, as Gord Downie says “It’s time to get started folks, we had the last 150 years, now we have the next.”

Tonight, Sunday, October 23 at 9 pm CBC will be airing The Secret Path.

To donate to the Wenjack foundation visit www.downiewenjack.ca.

Images by Leah Snyder for Mixed Bag Mag. 

 

 

 

#JUSTICEFORCOLTENBOUSHIE

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Illustration by @zola_mtl & zolamtl.tumblr.com

Colten was a 22 year old man who was murdered on Tuesday, August 9. He was out for the day with friends. On the way back home they got a flat tire. They drove down a farmer’s lane to get help. They chose the wrong farm. While sitting in the back of the car Colten was shot by the farmer whose laneway they drove down. In one article I read the farmer’s wife was reported as saying “that’s what you get for trespassing” to the surviving friends.

Last week the farmer, charged with second degree murder, pleaded not guilty and was let out on $10,000 bail.

After Colten’s murder was released in the news social media was full of people posting in support of the farmer, Gerald Stanley.

1 person posted “In my mind his only mistake was leaving 3 witnesses.” That person was Ben Kautz. Kautz is (was) a councillor for Regina. He was not fired for his post that advocated for the death of 3 people. Rather, he “offered to resign” after social media responses to his post put pressure on him. Kautz’s wife was reported as saying “My husband removed his comment. I wish we could just leave it at that.”

Kautz himself said “It was a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t serious, (but) the damage is done. I’ve got to live with it.”

Why the callousness and such disregard for the lives of these young people as well as lack of grace for what the mourning family, friends and community of Colten’s must be going through? Because Colten was from Red Pheasant First Nation. Colten, as an Indigenous male, was in the wrong place at the wrong time looking for help from a bigot.

Another city councillor was reported saying about Kautz’s comments ““I think everybody says something sometimes that they regret 10 seconds after. I don’t think you’re human if you haven’t.”

Equating hate speech as something we all do? Only people with bad hearts say things like this and don’t consider the weight, the impact and the hurt those words have.

I have been in arguments with people that say Canada isn’t racist. I have had one person concede that that racism is well – “benign racism.” I am not really sure what that means as racism is never benign. Maybe it means that if that person doesn’t have a weapon that the person on the receiving end of the racism won’t be injured or even worse killed, that racism in Canada is different because the gun laws here differ from the States? Maybe Gerald Stanley’s Canadian brand of benign racism might have had different results if he wasn’t holding a gun that he felt justification for shooting because they were on his “property.”

A life has been lost, a community impacted and the other young people with Colten that day have to carry that trauma now throughout their life.

You can share this image (via instagram @zola_mtl) if you are in support of #JusticeForColtenBoushie.

 

 

ADEL ABIDIN: Iraqi-Finnish artist opens his show “Michael” tonight at Galerie SAW Gallery Ottawa

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Adel Abidin “Michael” (Clip 02) from El-Sphere on Vimeo.

Iraqi-born Helsinki-based artist Adel Abidin opens his show Michael tonight at SAW

WHEN: Thursday, June 9 from 7 – 9 pm and Live Bands in courtyard from 9 pm till late
WHERE: SAW Gallery (Arts Court 2 Daly Street)
BOTH EVENTS FREE!

Presented in collaboration with Ottawa Explosion Weekend, CHUO 89.1 FM, the National Campus and Community Radio Conference and the Embassy of Finland, Ottawa

From Facebook Event Page:

“Born in Baghdad in 1973, Adel Abidin currently lives and works between Helsinki and Amman. He explores the complex relationship between art, politics and identity, using a sharp palette of irony and humour to address themes of alienation and marginalization. He has presented his works in video, installation, sculpture and photography extensively throughout the world, notably at the Venice Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial (Guangzhou, China), the Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), the Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, Australia), the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), the Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, South Korea), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark), the MACRO (Rome), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo) and the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar).”

www.adelabidin.com

MORE ART & RECONCILIATION AT THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE OTTAWA: Going Home Star, Florent Vollant, & 100 Years of Loss Exhibit closes a full month of Indigenous programming

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TRC Commissioner Marie Wilson moderates a panel of cultural provocateurs speaking on Art & Reconciliation. 

“It’s time for the rest of Canada to do the heavy lifting” ~ I Lost My Talk composer John Estacio

On Thursday, January 14 the National Arts Centre hosted a panel discussion on ART & RECONCILIATION prior to the opening night of I Lost My Talk, a performance inspired by the poetry of Mi’kmaq elder and poet Rita Joe. The response to this event was tremendous. Hundreds of people swelled up the stairs from the lobby where the 100 Years of Loss exhibit on the impact of Residential Schools is installed until the end of this week. The event also drew political support. In attendance was the Prime Minister’s wife Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, the Governor General’s wife Sharon Johnston, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Perry Bellegarde and former Prime Minister The Right Honourable Joe Clark. I Lost My Talk was a commission by Clark’s family for his 75th birthday. A moving and lovely gift that we all got a chance to participate in and benefit from.

Canadian writer Joseph Boyden speaks on his commission to write the libretto for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Going Home Star. 

It’s encouraging to see a National cultural institution take such a leadership role in implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. It’s also poignantly symbolic to have a National cultural institution recognize, in the present moment, a fact that history has tried to obscure. Both the panel and the performance of I Lost My Talk opened with the National Arts Centre acknowledging that “we are on UNCEDED Algonquin territory.”

On the panel, along with Canadian writer Joseph Boyden and John Estacio, the composer for the musical score of I Lost My Talk, was Rachel Maza, “acclaimed Australian theatre director of Jack Charles V The Crown.”  I had the opportunity to attend this incredible play that delved into the impact of assimilation policies on Indigenous people in Australia. Over the course of 75 minutes Jack charmed us with his beautiful way of presenting his biography – a life full of identity confusion and much loss but also an amazing amount of grace due to Jack’s own incredible resilience. I left with many mixed emotions. Find out more about the play…

Jack Charles receives a standing ovation at the closing of his performance of Jack Charles V The Crown at the NAC. 

Going Home Star opens this week in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre.

As this month draws to a close the NAC is hosting Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of Going Home Star. 

“Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation is the brilliant result of a star-studded collaboration between the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, award-winning Canadian author Joseph Boyden, acclaimed choreographer Mark Godden, and renowned Canadian composer Christos Hatzis. Going Home Star was ten years in the making, first envisioned by late Cree elder/activist Mary Richard and RWB Artistic Director André Lewis. Searing and sensitive, this powerfully emotional classical ballet is the deeply resonant love story of Annie and Gordon, a pair of contemporary Aboriginal young people coming to terms with a souldestroying past. Hatzis’s multi-layered score incorporates music by Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq (winner of the 2014 Polaris Music Prize), Steve Wood, and the Northern Cree Singers.” Read more…

The creative team and performers of Going Home Star speak at the NAC about the ballet during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gathering in May/June 2015

Going Home Star runs from Thursday, January 28 to Saturday, January 30 and then will continue its tour in Vancouver. Click here for performance dates and tickets. Tickets will be given to Residential School Survivors, more information can be found here.

Also, this weekend at the NAC is Innu author, composer and singer Florent Vollant performing on Saturday, January 30.

“born in Labrador in 1959 and grew up on a reserve named Maliotenam, east of Sept-Îles. He began his musical career in the middle of the 80s and helped to create the Festival Innu Nikamu, which, since its founding, has brought together many musicians and singers from various Amerindian nations.” read more…

And the National Arts Centre has more in store so be sure to follow along with their 2016 programming around Indigenous Storytelling on their website, Facebook  and Twitter @CanadasNAC.

Photography by Leah Snyder for Mixed Bag Mag.

 

C MAGAZINE REVIEW: Jolene Rickard speaks on Indigenous Cultural Resurgance and Wampum at the Creative Time Summit Venice Biennale

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C Magazine looks at the curatorial presentation of the issue of Citizenship at the Venice Biennale.

The Winter edition of C Magazine is out. Inside the pages is a review I wrote on “Questioning Citizenship at the Venice Biennale.”  Here is a little sneak peek: 

I attended the Biennale this past August with The Power Plant’s delegation of artists and curators from Canada to take part in the Creative Time Summit (read CREATIVE TIME SUMMIT AT THE BIENNALE: Mixed Bag Mag arrives in Venice). It was an amazing time where we as creative professionals looked at ways we can critique and improve the Biennale culture from the inside. Along with the opportunity to meet other cultural provocateurs from around the world I also had the opportunity to meet Okwui Enwezor, the curator for the 2015 Biennale “All The World’s Futures.”

This edition of C Magazine is on Citizenship and features: 

“Derrick Chang, Victor Wang on the 12th Bienal de la Habana, Yaniya Lee on citizenship and Canadian art criticism, Krista Belle Stewart, Scott Benesiinaabandan, David Garneau and Cathy Busby responding to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, and Justin A. Langlois, Amanda Shore, Rinaldo Walcott, Leah Snyder, Elle Flanders, Tamira Sawatsky and Adrian Blackwell questioning citizenship at the Venice Biennale; plus an artist project by Tyler Coburn. Also included are reviews of exhibitions and books, as well as our regular sections On Writing by Critical Art Writing Ensemble, Inventory by Bambitchell and Artefact by acqueline Hoang Nguyen” Read more…

To purchase or download the digital version click here.

From the Creative Time Summit Venice 2015 website: 

“As the Director of the American Indian Program and Associate Professor in the History of Art and Art Departments at Cornell University, Jolene Rickard is primarily interested in issues of indigeneity within a global context. Her recent projects include serving as the advisor for “Sakahàn: 1st International Quinquennial of New Indigenous Art” at the National Gallery of Canada in 2013, conducting research through a Ford Foundation Research Grant in 2008-11, participating in New Zealand’s Te Tihi Scholar/Artist Gathering in 2010, and co-curating the inaugural exhibition for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. in 2004. She is from the Tuscarora Nation (Haudenosaunee). Her book,Visualizing Sovereignty will be published in 2016.”

Watch all the Creative Time Summit 2015 Venice presentations here.

 

CREATIVE TIME SUMMIT AT THE BIENNALE: Mixed Bag Mag arrives in Venice

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Mixed Bag Mag joins Artists & Curators from Canada at the Venice Biennale.

Mixed Bag Mag has been invited by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto to participate in the Creative Time Summit 2015 at the Venice Biennale. The Creative Time Summit’s theme this year is “Curriculum” and “throughout the Summit, conversations on curriculum will examine the social, infrastructural, administrative, and private conditions under which knowledge is produced and intertwined with social contracts.”

Mixed Bag Mag’s coverage will focus on how art has the potential to change the way we engage with social and political issues. With the appointment of Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor as the head curator, this year’s Biennale has taken on a more political tone. He is the first African to be in this position. He has pushed the discussion around immigration and economy using the vehicle of art. I will be exploring his curatorial approach to engaging with the intersections of art, politics and commerce.

10 Artists from Canada will also be attending along with The Power Plant Delegation.

“Each of these artists will share their distinct perspectives on the relationship between art and social change, either by delivering Summit-style presentations on their work, or by leading roundtable discussion groups exploring issues central to their practices.” Read more on The Power Plant’s websie…

The artists participating are:

• Adrian Blackwell (Ontario)
• Deana Bowen (Ontario)
• Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge (Ontario)
• Jen Delos Reyes (Manitoba)
• Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky, of Public Studio (Ontario)
• Justin Langlois (British Colombia)
• Duane Linklater (Ontario)
• Nadia Myre (Quebec)

Thank you to The Power Plant for this opportunity. Also thank you to each of organizations that made it possible for this trip to happen! Thanks to Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa for their support.

Images by Leah Snyder for Mixed Bag Mag.

 

NATIONAL ABORIGINAL DAY: Celebrating women who are making a difference for Mixed Bag Mag’s coverage of the TRC

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Walk for Reconciliation Ottawa, Rideau Hall Ceremony for Survivors and Buffy Sainte-Marie.

There is always that one little girl, at whatever march or demonstration I am attending, that grabs my attention. I begin to follow along to her skips and steps in an effort to come close to the lightness she contains in her little being. She is at once a promise but also a ghost of all the other little spirits who came before her, with similar promise, but who didn’t make it.

It’s been a few weeks now since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had their final series of events here in Ottawa closing the process of investigating and documenting the Residential School experience on generations of Indigenous children in Canada. Much has been written and said about the TRC. As I attended the events each day I came to the realization that what I witnessing was going to best be expressed without the use of words so here I deliver a message through the images of women. Throughout the four days I ran into many friends and made some new ones. One thing was clear, that despite the heaviness of what we were participating in, there was a lightness contained inside each of the women who you see here and that lightness will continue on as a promise for a different type of tomorrow.

Below are women, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who are putting their energies into ensuring this country will be accountable to the children lost and to the children yet to arrive.

All images by Leah Snyder for Mixed Bag Mag.