Wednesday December 8, 2021 – 12pm to 1:30pm MT
Creatives Empowered presents
There is a space that is being created in the development of Indigenous Arts Practices with the engagement of community and Elder knowledge, that is our reference in storytelling and authenticity. We are experiencing a protocol that needs to be addressed, in how to utilize this knowledge in a very contemporary way.
Please join us in this virtual discussion with a diverse panel I have curated, that brings together varied experiences in how we engage and build trustful, meaningful relationships.
This sharing circle is how we can work together, as taught by many Elders, and we will seek positive outcomes through this approach – by listening and learning – about our work together, to foster the greatest understanding.
I have been speaking with many leaders in the artistic community on this topic and our sharing circle will be a wonderful and much needed discussion on the subject, with the intention to be as helpful as possible.
Kaatamatsin!
Troy Emery Twigg
PANELISTS
Adrian A. Stimson | Artist
Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta.
Adrian has a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. He is an interdisciplinary artist and exhibits nationally and internationally.
His performance art looks at identity construction, specifically the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. Buffalo Boy, The Shaman Exterminator are two reoccurring personas.
His paintings are varied yet his use of black and white monochromatic paintings that depict bison in imagined landscapes are melancholic, memorializing, whimsical, they evoke ideas, cultural fragility, resilience and nostalgia.
His installation work primarily examines the residential school experience; He has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss and resilience.
He was a participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program, which sent him to Afghanistan.
Adrian was awarded the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018. REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award –Hnatyshyn Foundation 2017. He was awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.
Beverly Hungry Wolf | Writer
Beverly Hungry Wolf is a Canadian writer and a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy. She was born Beverly Little Bear in 1950 near Cardston, Alberta, on Blood Indian Reserve No. 148, and studied at a Catholic residential school on the reserve.
The school discouraged interest in her tribe’s traditions, but as an adult, she started investigating and recording them after she married a German man, Adolph Gutöhrlein. Gutöhrlein was fascinated with First Nations’ culture, having immersed himself in it and adopting the surname Hungry Wolf.
Along with her husband, Hungry Wolf has published a number of books about her personal and her peoples’ experiences. She interviewed her female relatives and tribal Elders, collecting information about gender roles, domestic arts, child rearing, myths and legends, which she published in Ways of my Grandmothers (1980). Her interview subjects included her grandmother Anada-Aki, her aunt Mary One Spot, and tribal Elder, Paula Weasel Head.
Herman Yellow Old Woman | Elder
Herman Yellow Old Woman has left an indelible mark on not only Alberta’s museum sector, but the national and international sector as well. He was a key member of the committee behind Glenbow’s Nitsitapiisinni Gallery, created to reflect the Blackfoot worldview. The Gallery has been internationally recognized as one of the first exhibits told from an Indigenous perspective and is the epitome of the reconciliation and healing museums are now striving for.
One of Mr. Yellow Old Woman’s most impactful contributions to the museum sector has been his fight for the repatriation of Chief Crowfoot’s regalia from The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, UK, an effort that began over a decade ago. Alongside his colleagues at Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, Mr. Yellow Old Woman worked tirelessly to educate both the public and Exeter City Council about the importance of Blackfoot Cultural Patrimony, and encouraged them to see clothing not as objects or artifacts but as living beings – ancestors who, upon their return to their people, have the ability to help heal the harms done by the colonial legacy of museums. This year, the hard work paid off when Exeter agreed that Crowfoot should be returned to the Siksika Nation. Said Mr. Yellow Old Woman: “I feel like we’re bringing his spirit home.”
Mr. Yellow Old Woman was instrumental in the development of the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act (FNSCORA), and the repatriation of over 260 sacred and ceremonial objects from Glenbow’s collections and many more from other museum collections. He has cared for museum collections worldwide by conducting ceremony, visiting and caring for sacred bundles and the ancestors residing in museums in Canada and internationally.
“In selecting Herman Yellow Old Woman for the Lieutenant Governor’s Award, the AMA Board of Directors recognizes his spirit of giving and his important role in establishing best practice standards for the Alberta museum community,” said Meaghan Patterson, Executive Director / CEO, “His contributions to the sector are a gift to future generations, not only for the Blackfoot, but for museum professionals navigating the changing role of museums in society and the necessary work of reconciliation.”
Nicole Mion | Artist & Curator
Nicole Mion is an artist and curator. She is Artistic Director for Springboard Performance where she curates the Fluid Movement Arts Festival, a Signature dance presentation series, Interrarium creative practice workshops and residencies, and ContainR, an Art Park made of retrofit shipping containers used to connect communities through art. She is also an active contemporary choreographer and multidisciplinary artist whose creative practice transverses the fields of installation, choreography, new media and design. At the core of her practice is a focus on creating space that supports the making and experiencing of live performance. She is a condition-maker whose leadership and sensibility opens up space for her own creation and helps artists make their work possible, while connecting audiences to the awe-inspiring possibility of live performance. Nicole has been recognized as the inaugural award winner for Calgary’s Creative Placemaking Award at the Mayor’s Lunch for Calgary Arts Champions and was recently awarded an innovation award from the Calgary Chamber of Volunteer Organizations (CCOV) for “disruptive, adaptive, and innovative programming”. In December 2020, Mion was credited as more a primal force than AD inspiring Springboard and the Fluid Fest as “One of 11 Innovative Canadian Arts Groups Who Made the Pivot” by Ludwig Van, Toronto.
Mion views artmaking from the lens of the body, where the body is the political ground, body politic, an artifact of social control, where the history is held at the cellular level and the power and grace of possibilities – unending. Where choreography offers a somatic lens on presence, culture and future, within a cultivated parallel interior ecology. Through this wave, the resonances of historical and future creation and performance are manifested. She looks at diverse subjects who have mobilised their bodies to create systems of signification. Where the body exists despite the corporate, virtual world, ripe with its vulnerability, needs, and desires. A practice where each moment, interaction, movement, or reaction is a simultaneously set and improvised act, and so by extension, all experiences within the body and landscape, are facets of the art. A reminder that we exist beyond our digital presence, and art product, and continually considering performance to explore what it means to be a body in the world.
Lisa Doolittle | Professor Emerita, University of Lethbridge
Lisa Doolittle works in dance, arts-based community engagement, and scholarship. Her participatory theatre/dance projects include intergenerational performance with Age Exchange (London UK 1998) and health promotion in Malawi (2008-2016). In Alberta she has collaborated on workshops, productions and film with immigrants and people with disabilities, in partnership with local social service organizations. She has presented and published internationally on community-engaged performance, Canadian dance and multiculturalism, and Indigenous dance. Doolitte, Ann Flynn (University of Calgary), and Troy Emery Twigg, interviewed Kainai Elders and others on the role of dance in settler-Indigenous histories in 20th century Canada as part of SSHRC-funded research (Assimilating Bodies and Dance: Canada’s Choreography of Nationhood). The filmed interviews can be accessed in the Blackfoot Digital Library.
Sable Sweetgrass | Storyteller & Playwright
Sable Sweetgrass is a member of the Kainai Nation, born and raised in Calgary/ Mohkinstsis. Sable is a storyteller/playwright. Sable has been an active member in the Calgary Indigenous community working for organizations such as the Calgary Friendship Centre, Making Treaty 7, Calgary Public Library, The Glenbow Museum and is a founding member of the Urban Society of Aboriginal Youth (USAY). She is a graduate of the English/Creative Writing program at the University of Calgary and received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2006 Sable won 1st place in the Canadian Aboriginal Arts – Story Writing Contest. She has written and performed on stage for Making Treaty 7 and created a short film titled IPOWAHSIN AT HOME. Sable’s play, Awowakii, is currently being developed for the stage at Theatre Calgary. Sable works for the arts community in Calgary/Mohkinstsis and Treaty 7 as the Director of Indigenous Engagement & Reconciliation with Calgary Arts Development.
Troy Emery Twigg | Curator & Moderator
Troy is from the Kainai Nation in southern Alberta. He has worked as an actor, dancer, choreographer, director, dramaturg and instructor, but is primarily an artist in movement, choreography and staging, mostly creating his own works which have been presented nationally and internationally, including Iitahpoyii; They Shoot Buffalo, Don’t They?; Dancing the Universe in Flux; Pulse; and Static. Troy was one of the original visionaries and founding artists of the ground breaking Making Treaty 7 theatrical presentation. He is co-director for the young people’s theatre version of Making Treaty 7 titled We Are All Treaty People in partnership with Quest Theatre which has been nominated for a Dora Award in the Best Production, Theatre for Young Audience Division. Recently he has worked with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks; The Prairie Dance Exchange; the Iinisikim puppet project with the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry, The Banff Centre, and Jupiter Theatre. He has co-curated an exhibition called By Invitation Only: Dance, Confederation and Reconciliation for Dance Collection Danse.