1:00pm - 2:00pm
Experience the Gallery through the eyes of renowned artist Goota Ashoona. The initiative is an in-person version of Indigenous Language Sovereignty: Article 13 Experience, where you can experience the Gallery virtually, hearing from the Language Keepers themselves in videos.
Indigenous Language Tours@WAG-Qaumajuq are not just for Indigenous people, they are for anyone who wants to learn about the importance of Indigenous worldviews and art history.
This important step in decolonizing WAG-Qaumajuq and supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 13:
Indigenous Peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.
Language is also mentioned in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, Number 14i:
Aboriginal languages are a fundamental and valued element of Canadian culture and society, and there is an urgency to preserve them.
Tours will happen monthly in the gallery spaces and will be led by Indigenous knowledge and language keepers. Stay tuned for more dates!
May Tour led by
Goota Ashoona
Goota Ashoona is a third generation Inuit artist from Cape Dorset, Nunavut. From a long line of well-known artists, Ashoona, along with her late husband Bob Kussy and their twin sons Joe Jaw and Samueli Ashoona, founded Ashoona Studios, currently operating in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Produced both individually and collaboratively, their work is part autobiographical and part historical, detailing stories from their family life. Many carvings are made from whalebone and black argilite but often mixed with other materials such as caribou antler, soapstone, copper, and claws.
