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Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity
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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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[1:00pm-2:00pm] Glen Coulthard / Intertextual Reading Group
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- Intertextual Reading Group
Please join us for a reading and discussion with Glen Coulthard, who will read from his critically acclaimed book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
Tuesday, March 8, 1-2pm
at the Belkin
Intertextual: Art in Dialogue is an ongoing reading group held across a range of visual art institutions in Vancouver that takes place between January and October 2016. The group aims to connect a series of readings that provoke dialogue about how art and its ideas are written, circulated, contested and rewritten. Texts are distributed at the event and read aloud; discussion is open to all and no prior preparation is required.
For more information on Intertextual, and a full reading group schedule visit:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/212400492424692/.
Glen Coulthard is a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and an assistant professor in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at UBC. Glen has written and published numerous articles and chapters in the areas of Indigenous thought and politics, contemporary political theory, and radical social and political thought. He lives in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories.
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