Dying of Thirst : Thirst Days |
Jenny Fraser and Tannis Nielsen (Via Skype) introducing Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Mique'l Dangeli |
Lee Maracle on video for Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Jenny Fraser |
Lori Blondeau performing 'offerings' live for Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Jenny Fraser |
Feast for the Peace for Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Alisha Weng |
Mique'l Dangeli on video for Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Jenny Fraser |
'offerings' performance remains by Lori Blondeau for Dying of Thirst 2016 photo by Alisha Weng |
Dying of Thirst Curated by
Tannis Nielsen + Jenny Fraser
Thirst Days http://thirstdays.vivomediaarts.com
VIVO Media Arts Presents
thirstDays
No. 09
Love, intimacy and
(com)passion, in a
geopolitical context
facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/1824785947752218
Dying of Thirst Program :Tannis Nielsen + Jenny Fraser
Lee Maracle |
15:00,
video, 2016
Throughout
her entire career, Lee Maracle has advocated tirelessly towards
women’s, land and water rights. Known internationally as an
acclaimed poet, Lee’s voice and wisdom was immediately identified
to be a central component of our project as we recognized her as
being the impetus, embodiment – territorial and geographical
grounding of our concept.
Sm
Łoodm ‘Nüüsm (Mique'l Dangeli) + Tim-kyo’o’hl
Hayats’kw (Nick Dangeli)
Aks
Gyigyiinwa̱xł (water prayer)
video,
Sm'algyax
(Tsimshian) with English subtitles, Nick
Dangeli: camera; Duane R. Grant: sound, 2016
The making
of this film is a prayer offered by a mother and son (Diiłda Noo ada
Ługuułgm), spoken in Tsimshian (Sm’algya̱x). Bringing together
cedar, eagle down, copper, and ocean, it calls upon us to think
critically about our relationships to the precious life-giving
waterways inside our bodies and those of fresh and salt water that we
are surrounded by. It is made in solidarity with efforts to stop the
Dakota Access Pipeline, to protect the flora beds around Lelu Island,
to end Transboundary Mining, and with all people who are resisting
capitalism by challenging resource extraction, defending salmon
habitats, and praying with and for water around the world.
Jenny
Fraser
Saltwater
Freshwater
15:51,
video, 2016
Jenny
speaks toward the history, memory, arts, culture and society of her
home territory in Australia. She discusses the destruction of
territory – sacred places – and the negative effect upon her
Peoples, while simultaneously calling upon the audience to resist
environmental degradation and the importance of working together as
community to create change.
Mayan
Lords Knowledge
1:50,
video, 2016
Zoila
Jimenez presents teachings about her significant relationship to
water from a Mayan perspective.
NiiPii
- Water Teaching
6:33,
video, 2016
My
grandparents taught me if we continue to disregard the gifts of the
Earth, Water and the Sky then we are no longer living, we are merely
surviving.
Although
the verbal communication between Jules’ Cree grandparents and her
was severed because of the residential school experience, they
continued to build their relationship by spending a lot of time
together in the north. She spent much of her childhood observing her
grandparents and helping them clean and smoke hide, she also
supported the household with chores like preparing hide, cutting wood
and fetching water. Her family never really spoke about the
experiences of being Native;
they lived their lives together and enjoyed the company of family,
friends and community. Her family comes from the Moskekowok
territory, both her grandparents (non-English speakers) are hunters
and trappers, and lived off the land for most of their lives. This
land-based existence was part of the everyday, the respect for land,
sky and water was inherent, it wasn’t spoken about -- they lived
it.
Rona
Scherer
Spirit
Flow
1:46
video, 2016
"For
over 75,000 Aboriginal people of Australia have had a wonderful and
consistent involvement with water. It forms part of our stories, our
dreaming, our living, our agriculture, our play, in fact, it’s
pretty much a part of everything we are as Aboriginal people. In less
than 250 years since European settlement, our waterways are now
struggling. The new settlers to this country, had no knowledge or
ignored basic science of how trees draw water to the surface of the
land, cutting and clearing great swathes of land for their own
agricultural or construction purposes. This process not only denied
Aboriginal people access to traditional food sources and their own
country, but it has caused many parts to be now arid with high
salinity and slow running or dry river beds. Once crystal clear
waterways, now run murky with silt washed down through generations of
inappropriate farming techniques causing imbalance where dependent
ecosystems struggle to survive. In western countries, where a
household can use up to 20 litres of fresh water daily to flush
toilets, we must take advantage of innovative products humans so
brilliantly devise to stem this abhorrent waste of water. We must do
it now, before it is too late.”
10:00,
video, 2016
Dr.
Wilson is one of many organizers with the Idle
No More movement,
integrating radical education movement work with grassroots
interventions that prevent the destruction of land and water. She is
particularly focused on educating about and protecting the
Saskatchewan River Delta and supporting community based food
sovereignty efforts. Having co-developed a Masters program in
Land-Based Education at the University of Saskatchewan, she is now in
the process of creating an international Indigenous
Land
–based
PhD program.
Feast
for the Peace
Tonight
we’ll Feast for the Peace, sharing food in solidarity with the
Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land, who delayed clear cutting for 62 days
last winter. Helen Knott, from the Prophet River First Nation, is one
of the people named in BC Hydro’s SLAPP suit against Peace River
protectors. The Site C dam would flood and destroy 100 km of wildlife
habitat and farmland. This $9 billion dollar megadam violates treaty
rights and is challenged by several law suits. Not waiting for the
courts, BC has started clear cutting the river valley. There is still
time to stop this dam that would be used to power fracking and the
tar sands. We feast to honour the food that the land provides, and to
assert its importance to our future.
5:00,
video, camera: Reg Whiten, 2016
Helen
Knott, Dane-Zaa Activist from Prophet River First Nations speaks
about her call to protect the homelands of the Treaty 8 region and
development of a third Dam on the Peace River (Site C). Helen shares
her views on the importance of the sacred peace treaty, and doing
what she can to raise awareness about the potential for permanent
loss of critical heritage, old growth forest river ecosystems, and
fish/wildlife habitat in the Peace River Valley.
offerings
20:00,
performance, 2016
Appropriate
to the title 'offerings’ Lori is graciously offering us the
creation of a new work, specifically ‘gifted’ towards the dying
of thirst thematic
of water and resistance.
Deluge
1:30,
video, 2016
Being
screened in VIVO’s lobby entrance, inspired by Winona Laduke’s
quote
“women are the direct manifestation of Earth in human form”,
Tannis performs the idea of this, by embodying the pain and violence
upon Indigenous women’s bodies caused by resource extraction
industries.
Binaakwe-Giizis/falling
leaves moon
2:00,
video, 2014
For the
past seven years Tannis has been utilizing static electricity, water
and the reflections and sound of both the sun and moon on bodies of
water in order to speak toward Anishnawbe stories of creation. The
ambient images animated here were recorded under a full moon, on lake
ontario. The video was later mirrored and slowed down so that the
viewer may be better abled to access the sentient being of water.
Using two channel projections of water, Tannis provides the elemental
fundamental linkages between the women’s voices/video who are heard
speaking about water here.
Biographies :
As a Cree/Saulteaux artist, Lori Blondeau’s artistic practice continues to explore the influence of popular media and culture (contemporary and historical) on Aboriginal self-identity, self-image, and self-definition. She has been an artist, instructor, and curator for the last 20 years and is currently exploring the impact of the colonization of traditional and contemporary roles and lifestyles of Aboriginal women by strategically deconstructing popular images of the Indian Princess and the Squaw. Blondeau uses humour as a performative storytelling strategy to reconstruct these stereotypes, reveal their absurdity, and reinsert them into the mainstream. The performance personas she creates, like Belle Sauvage, refer to the damage of colonialism and to the ironic pleasures of displacement and resistance.
Mique'l Dangeli was born and raised in Metlakatla, Alaska. She belongs to the Lax̱sgiik (Eagle Clan) and carries the Tsimshian name, Sm Łoodm ’Nüüsm and Tlingit name Táakw Shaawát. She served her community for eight years as the director of the Duncan Cottage Museum. She has also worked for the Annette Island Service Unit in Metlakatla as the curator of their Healing Art Collection. She is a dancer, choreographer, and dance group leader. Since 2003 she and her husband, Nisga’a/Tsimshian/Tlingit artist, carver, and singer Mike Dangeli, have shared the leadership of the Git Hayetsk (People of the Copper Shield), an internationally renowned Northwest Coast dancing group. She is currently an Assistant Professor, at the University of Alaska
Jenny Fraser was the first Murri to have her video art broadcast into outer space in the 2015 Forever Now project – a follow-up to the NASA Voyager Golden Records sent into space in 1977. She has a PhD in the Art of Healing and Decolonisation from Batchelor Institute in the Northern Territory (Australia). Jenny recently received the 2016 Mana Wairoa Award for Advancing Indigenous Rights, and she received an Australia Council fellowship for her project Midden in 2012. She founded the online gallery cyberTribe in 1999, the Blackout Collective in 2002, andWorld Screen Culture in 2015. She is on the National Advisory Group for the Centre for Indigenous Story, and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at The Cairns Institute.
Zoila Jiménez was born in 1978 and is a native of Merida, Mexico. She studied at the Autonomous University of Yucatán in the Faculty of Anthropological Sciences in the specialty of Social Anthropology where she completed her thesis ‘Religious diversity. Beliefs and rituals in a Mayan community.’’ Her work focused on the the Department of Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Yucatan, in the CIESAS Peninsular, The University of Florida and the Center for Comparative Migration Studies at the University of California-San Diego. Zoila is part of theKayche Collective that runs El Festival de Cine y Video Kayche' Tejidos Visuales, “which is a window that evokes dialogue in order to promote self-representation, and demand catalysts for change in an unequal world.”
Jules Koostachin is Cree from Attawapiskat First Nation. She was born in Moose Factory, northern Ontario. Her grandparents in Moosonee raised her, as did her mother, a survivor of Ste. Anne’s residential school. After many years as a performance artist she completed graduate school at Ryerson University in Documentary Media where she was awarded an Award of Distinction and an Academic Gold Medal for her thesis Remembering Inninimowin. Her activism, artistic and educational endeavors focus on environmental and Indigenous issues. Jules’ companyVisJuelles Productions Inc. co-produced a youth television series entitled AskiBOYZ. The series was created, written and directed by her and is now airing on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
Lee Maracle is a member of the Sto:Lo nation. She was born in Vancouver and grew up on the north shore. She is the author of Ravensong and Daughters Are Forever. Lee has also published a book of poetry, Bent Box, and a work of creative non-fiction, I Am Woman. She is the co-edited My Home As I Remember and Telling It: Women and Language across Culture. Lee is an instructor at the University of Toronto, Traditional Teacher for First Nations House; the Centre for Indigenous Theatre; S.A.G.E. (Support for Aboriginal Graduate Education); and at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 2009, she received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University.Tannis Nielsen is of Metis (Anishnawbe) and Danish ancestry. She holds a Masters in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation addresses the need for asserting localized Indigenous contexts accurately within the structures of the academy by illustrating the negative consequence of colonial trauma on Indigenous culture, land, language, familial relationships, and memory. Tannis’ thesis also sought to decolonize the structures of an English literacy, by repudiating the politicized devices of punctuation and capitalization. In doing this, she refused to use the language of the colonizer because “to use the language of the colonizer was to pay homage to them” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o). Tannis is currently teaches at The Ontario College of Art and Design University.
Rona Scherer comes from the far North Queensland areas of Australia, born to a Mamu woman and a Kuku Yalanji man. Although her early interest in art through ceramics took a backseat to assisting her children with their education and living costs, a fat tax cheque some years ago allowed her to invest in a camera and begin exploring photography. She hopes to document her people and homelands in a meaningful and connected way. Rona is connected with elders and traditional custodians from other homelands and is looking forward to recording unique moments which do them justice in a cultural context.Alex Wilson gathered her first lessons on leadership in her home community Opaskwayak Cree Nation. “I have always been surrounded by women who lead, most of them leading steadily, some quietly, a few raucously, but always with love in their actions.” This understanding – that the most valuable leadership is driven by love for the people – has been borne out in her work as a scholar, educator, community activist, and mentor. In 2007, Alex became the first First Nations woman in Canada to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. Her groundbreaking work on the identity development of two-spirit people is widely cited and has become a touchstone for many LGBTQI Indigenous people. As Associate Professor, University of Saskatchewan’s College of Education, Alex co-developed a Masters program in Land-Based Education. She is an organizer in Idle No More, which works to honour Indigenous sovereignty, and the protection of land and water. Alex’s home remains in Opaskwayak, where she has helped to established a community garden and nutrition program.
a news article from The Koori Mail, p61, Edition 639 Wednesday November 16, 2016 |
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