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Cutting Copper Events
- Description:
- Cutting Copper
Indigenous Resurgent Practice
Two days of performances and discussions
Friday and Saturday, March 4 and 5, 2016
Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describe resurgence as “the rebuilding of Indigenous nations according to our own political, intellectual and cultural traditions.”
Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice, a collaborative project between grunt gallery and the Belkin Art Gallery, aims to bring together a cross-disciplinary group of artists, curators, writers, educators, scholars, students and activists to explore the embodied theory of Indigenous resurgence and cultural representation – both from the perspectives of their own disciplines and one another’s. The event will focus specifically on the role that contemporary Indigenous artistic practice does and can play in redefining cultural tradition, representation, and the relations between Settler and Indigenous peoples at sites of creativity, community and dissent. A series of performances at the Belkin Art Gallery will respond to the exhibition_ Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity_ by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick, and will be followed by thematic discussions held at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice is presented with support from the British Columbia Arts Council.
Admission is free, but space is limited and registration is required. Please register by February 25 to rsvp.belkin@ubc.ca.
PROGRAM
FRIDAY, MARCH 4
Recognition, Refusal and Resurgence
2 pm: Performance / Dana Claxton
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Discussion following / Panelists: Linc Kesler, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Alfred Taiaiake; Moderator: Shelly Rosenblum
Location: Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC, 6476 NW Marine Drive
This panel will address some of the theoretical interventions at play when considering the ways in which Indigenous peoples have sought to overcome the contemporary life of settler-colonization and achieve self-determination through cultural production and critique.
SATURDAY, MARCH 5
Creations, Insertions and Rebuffs: Cultural Institutions and Practice
9:30 am: Performance / Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Discussion following / Panelists: Jarrett Martineau, Wanda Nanibush, Tannis Nielsen; Moderator: Lorna Brown
Location: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University Centre, UBC, 6331 Crescent Road
This panel will address the role of performative, educational, curatorial or programming models to investigate how they might challenge or alter institutions’ interactions with Indigenous peoples.
Sovereignty Across Disciplines
2 pm: Performance / Tanya Lukin Linklater
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Discussion following / Panelists: Julie Nagam, Michelle Raheja, Dylan Robinson; Moderator: Tarah Hogue
Location: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University Centre, UBC, 6331 Crescent Road
This panel will explore intersecting fields of literature, film, media and cultural studies and dance as modalities of resurgent cultural expression.
Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity
- Description:
-
Lalakenis/All Directions
A Journey of Truth and Unity
January 16-April 17, 2016
On July 2, 2014, renowned Kwakwaka’wakw artist Chief Beau Dick along with 21 companions set out from the University of British Columbia on a journey to Ottawa which they called Awalaskenis II: Journey of Truth and Unity. Intending to raise awareness about the plight of the environment and to challenge elected officials to attend to the relationship between the federal government and First Nations people, the group brought with them a copper shield made by Haida carver Giindajin Haawasti Guujaaw. On July 27, the shield was broken on Parliament Hill in a traditional copper-breaking ceremony, marking a ruptured relationship in need of repair and passing the onus of the wrongs done to Canada’s First Nations people from them to the Government of Canada.
Once practised throughout the Pacific Northwest when copper shields were a symbol of justice and central to a complex economic system, this shaming right had all but disappeared until Beau Dick revived it in a similar ceremony in 2013 on the front steps of the British Columbia legislature.
Along the way, the travellers visited First Nations communities across the country to gather support, using social media to draw attention to the journey. Many artists and communities contributed sacred objects to be carried forward to the copper breaking.
Lalakenis/All Directions will present the broken copper shield along with the other five coppers, sacred and ceremonial objects taken on the journey and those gifted to the travellers along the way including pipes, medicine, thunder sticks and rattles, as well as the vehicle that carried them to Canada’s capital. Video, photography and narrative accounts will trace encounters along the way as well as document the social media presence of the month-long journey. Lalakenis/All Directions will reveal how ceremony and performance can be powerful tools of expression around very contemporary issues.
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the support of our Belkin Curator’s Forum members: Audain Foundation, Christopher Foundation, Nicola Flossbach, Henning and Brigitte Freybe, Michael O’Brian Family Foundation, Phil Lind Foundation, and Scott Watson and Hassan El Sherbiny.
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For further information please contact: Jana Tyner at jana.tyner@ubc.ca,
tel: (604) 822-1389, or fax: (604) 822-6689
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