Naadohbii: To Draw Water Symposium

I am a Ngati Porou mother of two from the East Coast of Te Ika a Maui. My work involves advocacy for environmental, Indigenous and human rights. This includes local, national and international initiatives that highlight the role of settler colonialism in issues such as climate change and waste pollution, and promote Indigenous conservation as best practice for a globally sustainable future.

Nici Cumpston is a proud Barkandji artist, curator and educator; whose family are also of Afghan, Irish and English descent. Barkandji are the River people who belong to the Barka, the Darling River in far western New South Wales, Australia.

Having studied fine arts, specializing in Photography at the University of South Australia she has worked as a photographic lecturer at Tauondi Aboriginal Community College, Port Adelaide, as well as at the University of South Australia. She wrote and delivered the inaugural Indigenous Art, Culture and Design course to the South Australian School of Art students before commencing as the first Aboriginal Curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2008.

Cumpston is currently the Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia and since 2014 has also been the Artistic Director of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. An annual statewide festival featuring artists from across the country, with an annual Art Fair and a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

She has been exhibiting her works of art since 1998 and in that time has been invited to participate in many prestigious awards, group and solo exhibitions. She exhibits regularly and her work is held in major institutions and private collections nationally and internationally. Cumpston grew up in Manitoba and is thrilled to have an opportunity after all this time, to share cultural family stories from the Barka with everyone there.

Israel Birch holds a visual arts degree from the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ahuriri/Napier, and a Masters in Māori Visual Arts from Massey University’s Toioho ki Āpiti, Te Papa-i-Oea/Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Birch’s primary practice is contemporary whakairo-carving made through a process of etching, grinding, and shaping stainless steel. He uses pattern and repetition to engage with light, shape and form. Through this work, he acknowledges the influence of whakairo (carving), the relationship between Te Ao Mārama (the world of light) and Te Pō (the perpetual night), issues of the environment and our relationship to the landscape, and the intangible aspects of te ao Māori (the Māori world).

Maria Hupfield is a transdisciplinary artist and maker working with Industrial felt at the intersection of performance art, design and sculpture. She is an inaugural 2020-2022 Borderlands Fellow with her fellowship project Breaking Protocol at the Vera List Center, New School, and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist. Hupfield is a Guest Curator for the Artists of Color Council, Movement Research at Judson Church, and the New Jersey Art Center with exhibitions opening 2021 and 2022. Her solo Nine Years Towards The Sun at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, (2019) focused on exhibiting performance as living culture and follows The One Who Keeps on Giving her first major institutional traveling solo exhibition in Canada, a production of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Her work has shown in New York at the Museum of Arts and Design, BRIC, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, represented Canada at SITE Santa Fe (2016) and traveled nationally in Canada with Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-14); with recent performances at the National Gallery of Canada. Hupfield belongs to and is an off-rez Anishnaabek belonging to Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada, and is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Performance and Media, Canadian Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts, and Director / Lead Artist of the Indigenous Creation Studio at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada.

Marianne Nicolson is an artist activist of the Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nations. The Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw Nations are part of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwak’wala speaking peoples) of the Pacific Northwest Coast. She is trained in both traditional Kwakwaka’wakw forms and culture and contemporary gallery and museum-based practice. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1996), a Master of Fine Arts (2000) from the University of Victoria, as well as a Master of Arts (2005) in Linguistics and Anthropology and a PhD (2013) in Linguistics and Anthropology with a focus on space as expressed in the Kwak’wala language.

Nicolson works as a Kwakwaka’wakw cultural researcher and historian, as well as an advocate for Indigenous land rights. Her practice is multi-disciplinary encompassing photography, painting, carving, video, installation, monumental public art, writing and speaking. All her work is political in nature and seeks to uphold Kwakwaka’wakw traditional philosophy and worldview through contemporary mediums and technology. Exhibitions include the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; The Vancouver Art Gallery, The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Ontario, Museum Arnhem, Netherlands and many others. Major monumental public artworks are situated in The Vancouver International Airport, the Canadian Embassy in Amman, Jordan and the Canadian Embassy in Paris, France.

Nikau Hindin (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) graduated Elam School of Fine Arts with her BFA Honours and Masters at Toihoukura. She is a barkcloth maker who works with aute (paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyrifera) and one of many tapa cloth makers from Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, the Great Ocean. Hindin grounds her practice in Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems), our Māori Lunar calendar, language, genealogy and relationships with knowledge holders, the land, plants and the ocean. Hindin was influenced by her time in Hawai’i with teachers and students of kapa (Hawaiian tapa cloth), voyaging and celestial navigation. Hindin returned to Aotearoa in 2018 to reawaken the practice of aute, a tradition that hadn’t been practiced in over a century. Hindin straddles the worlds of Indigenous practice and contemporary art. Hindin’s first solo at The Dowse (2020) Kōkōrangi ki Kōkōwai, was based on the movement of celestial bodies as signs to not only find direction but also to delineate time as an important part of our stella lunar calendar system.

Ngā hapū o Te Uriroroi, Te Parawhau, and Te Māhurehure ki Whatitiri Ngāpuhi nui tonu.

Nova Paul artist and senior lecturer, Visual Arts in the School of Art and Design, AUT. Her filmmaking is underpinned with kaupapa Māori research (by Māori, for Māori, of Māori). Her art draws from early cinema, experimental film histories and fourth wave film discourse and traditional Māori places for learning, to consider the poetics and politics of place, self-determinacy and the image, and the role of storytelling in talking back to neo-liberal hegemonies. Her writing practice focuses on mātauranga Māori and moving image and its relationship to tino rangatiratanga / self-determinacy, rongoā (medicine) and Māori tikanga (processes).

Nova Paul’s films have screened nationally and internationally in film festivals and gallery programmes.

Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie is a 28-year old Anishinaabe Two-Spirit from Sagkeeng First Nation located on Treaty 1 territory and goes by They/Them pronouns. They graduated in 2017 at the University of Winnipeg with a Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies and Political Science. Currently they work as a graphic artist, poet and paint workshop facilitator and community educator. They are the Co-Founder of Red Rising Magazine working on the next issue themed Family/Kinship, and currently work as a budtender at Uncle Sams Cannabis, an Indigenous owned cannabis dispensary in Winnipeg.

Sadie-Phoenix is a well-known community advocate and water protector in Winnipeg that has travelled the world educating and raising awareness about Indigenous rights, social environmental justice, and two spirit identity. Sadie-Phoenix recently worked as the Community Coordinator for three years at Wa Ni Ska Tan: An Alliance of Hydro-Impacted Communities. Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie also commissions for artwork, graphic design and photography. They have done graphic design commissions for Frontier School division, Ka Ni Kanichihk, Rainbow Resource Centre, Idle No More Winnipeg to name a few.
During their years at University, Sadie-Phoenix formerly was the National Executive Representative of the Circle of First Nations, Mètis and Inuit Students of the Canadian Federation of Students; the Vice-President of External Affairs of the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association; Aboriginal Student Commissioner for the Canadian Federation of Students-MB; and Co-President for the UW Aboriginal Student Council. Sadie-Phoenix worked on numerous student-led initiatives including the Indigenous Course Requirement and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign, as well attended the UN COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco on behalf of the Canadian Climate Youth Coalition. They were also one of the 100 youth arrested on Parliament Hill protesting the Kinder Morgan Pipeline, and have been on the front lines of Standing Rock.

Since Idle No More, Sadie-Phoenix has participated and organized numerous community events, rallies, marches, as well done numerous presentations, workshops and panel talks around Indigenous inclusion; racism and privilege; two spirit teachings; Indigenous rights; systemic racism; violence against women and two-spirit; colonialism, decolonization and internalized oppression; Indigenous climate justice and youth empowerment. Sadie-Phoenix strives to honour their traditional roles of the Turtle Clan, spreading truth to all corners of society, and organizes action through a matriarchal approach of Indigneous leadership.

Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie received the Dr. Tobasonakwut Kinew Leadership Award at the University of Winnipeg in 2017. In Fall 2019, Lavoie also received the Next Generation Peacemaker Award from the Peace and Social Justice Studies Association of Canada.

Sophia Rabliauskas is a member of Poplar River First Nation, and has lived there all of her life. She has been a spokesperson for the Pimachiowin Aki World Heritage for over ten years. Together with people from Bloodvien, Little Grand Rapids and Puaingassi they were secured recognition of 43,000 square kilometres of their traditional lands as a culturally and ecologically significant UNESCO World Heritage Site. She is decorated member of the order of Manitoba and a grandmother.

Daniel Gladu Kanu is an Anishinaabe, Irish and Métis man from Animakee Wa Zhing. He moved to Winnipeg during elementary, but his heart is in the lakes and red pine forests of his home out of the Treaty 3 territory. He was first called to help the land and waters while canoeing on Kakagi lake, that convinced him to pursue a biology degree. With the knowledge and tools, he has worked the last 15 year to assist Indigenous peoples all around turtle island to strengthen their food, land and water self-determination, and has received many humbling teachings to seek out the ways of living and knowing of his ancestors. He continues to live in Winnipeg with his family, where he taps maple trees and mispronounce Anishinaabemowin.

Tansi, Chachakisiw Mikisiw Iskwéw nitisinikason. My western name is Kailey Arthurson. I come from the Ockékwi Sípí (Fisher River) Cree Nation and Kinoséwi Sípíhk (Norway House) Cree Nation. My tribal identity includes Omushkego (Swampy Cree) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway). I am 2 spirit, a mother and a jingle dress healer. I am currently enrolled in the Kenanow, Bachelor of Education program, through the University of College of the North. My passions include traditional ecological knowledge, holistic healing, Indigenous resistance and cultural revitalization. Ekosani.

A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized
multidisciplinary artist currently residing in Vancouver, Canada.

Rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, Belmore’s works make evocative
connections between bodies, land and language. Solo exhibitions include; Facing the Monumental, Art
Gallery of Ontario (2018); Rebecca Belmore: Kwe, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (2014); The Named and
the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (2002). In 1991, Ayumee-aawach Oomama-mowan:
Speaking to Their Mother was created at the Banff Centre for the Arts with a national tour in 1992 and
subsequent gatherings took place across Canada in 1996, 2008, and 2014.

In 2017, Belmore participated in documenta 14 with Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside) in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. In 2005, at the Venice Biennale, she exhibited Fountain in the Canadian Pavilion.
Other group exhibitions include: Landmarks2017 / Reperes2017, Partners in Art (2017); Land Spirit
Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and the IV Bienal de la Habana (1991).
Belmore received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award (2004), the Hnatyshyn Visual
Arts Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon
Iskowitz Prize (2016). She received honorary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr
University of Art + Design (2018), NSCAD University (2019) and Laval University (2020).

RACHAEL RAKENA (Ngāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi)

Rakena coined the term ‘Toi Rerehiko’ to centre, claim and name digital space within a Māori paradigm, she describes and locates Māori digital/video/electronic-based art practice in terms of continuum, motion, and collaboration. Water is a prominent feature of Rakena’s work and it is claimed as an indigenous space. Critiquing notions of fluid identity, Pacific understandings of space and water through metaphors of digital space as water space, inhabited by iwi Māori, her art installations have evolved to enculturate and politicize water itself, navigating issues of ongoing Pacific diaspora, flooding and rising sea levels, and decolonization/(re)vitalization. Rachael has used water as an amniotic medium to play out ideas of ‘otherness’, alienation, cultural loss, colonization, immersion, and narratives of creation, desire, consumption, belonging, connectedness and ownership.

Known for her collaborative practice, she has been exhibiting internationally for 20 years. Highlights include Aniwaniwa, the 52nd Venice Biennale; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada; Haka Peepshow, The Octagon, Dunedin; Māori Moving Image, Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt, NZ; Te Puna o Waiwhetu Christchurch City Gallery.

Rakena is a mum of one, a founding member of Paemanu, a collective of Ngāi Tahu contemporary artists, and an Associate Professor at Massey University Whiti o Rehua School of Art in Wellington. She co-conceived/co-curates Mana Moana, a waterscreen/online platform bringing together leading interdisciplinary Māori and Pacific artists to collaborate, exploring relationships with and across the ocean, climate change, and technology through indigenous perspectives, knowledge and narratives.

Victoria Redsun creates and walks through the world for intergenerational healing and the Indigenous world revolution. They are Indigiqueer; From the Denesuline & Nehito Nations from Etten Tue (Reindeer Lake) in so-called northern Manitoba. They are dedicated to Indigenous sovereignty, through art and education they share teachings passed down for generations. Redsun works in community justice with frontline movements across Turtle Island. They are currently being criminalized by British Columbian colonial courts for a criminal assault charge on police officers in solidarity with Line 3 Anishinaabe warriors protecting their sacred waterways and lands from extractive genocide by American and Canadian forces. They currently live in Tkaronto working in Indigenous film and television.

Jaimie is a curator and interdisciplinary artist, member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Treaty 1 Territory and is of mixed heritage. Prior to coming to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, she served as the Indigenous and Contemporary Arts Curator at the Winnipeg Art Gallery for more than 6 years and has been in leadership positions in arts and cultural organizations as well as many independent projects.

Asinnajaq is an Inuk filmmaker and visual artist from Nunavik. She grew up in Montreal, and attended NSCAD University in Halifax, earning a BFA in 2015. She has spent two summers traveling throughout Inuit Nunangat as a trainee aboard the Lyubov Orlova. In August 2016, she co-curated a three-evening film festival of Inuit films, games and country food with co-curator Stephen Agluvak Puskas. Asinnajaq’s work moves to honor the past, and think towards the future. As part of Toronto’s imagineNATIVE 2017, Asinnajaq curated a screening of films titled Channel 51 Igloolik that provided a retrospective of 30 years of video art making by Isuma, Arnait, and Artcirq. Assinajaq’s film Three Thousand is featured in the exhibition.

Jocelyn Piirainen is a curator, artist and filmmaker originally from Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay), NU and currently based in Winnipeg, MB. Piirainen’s educational background has focused on the arts, particularly film and new media, and her current artistic practice primarily involves analog photography. She has contributed to publications such as Canadian Art, Canadian Geographic and the Inuit Art Quarterly. Alongside, Piirainen has designed and developed various exhibitions, curatorial projects, screenings and arts festivals at numerous galleries and artist-run centres, including SAW Video Association in Ottawa, ON and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, ON, among others. In 2019, she became the inaugural Assistant Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Reuben Friend (Ngāti Maniapoto, Pākehā) is the director of Pātaka Art Gallery and Museum in Porirua. From 2009-2013 he was the Curator of Māori and Pacific Art at City Gallery Wellington, and in a previous life worked in policy as the Senior Advisor for Treaty Relations at Wellington City Council, and as the Art, Culture and Heritage Advisor for the Featherston, Carterton and Masterton City Councils.

Ioana Gordon-Smith is an arts writer and Curator Māori Pacific at Pātaka Art + Museum. Prior to this role, she was the inaugural Curator at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery. Ioana has also worked as Curator at Objectspace, a gallery dedicated to craft, design and applied arts, and as the inaugural Education Intern for Artspace, New Zealand, a role which came about through a partnership between Tautai Contemporary Arts Trust and Artspace to increase the accessibility of Artspace to its nearby Pacific audiences.

In addition to her curatorial work, Ioana also contributes regularly to a number of catalogues as well as magazines and journals, such as Art New Zealand, Art News New Zealand and un Magazine. She was the New Zealand-based project manager for the inaugural Honolulu Biennial 2017 and has been a regular Pasifika correspondent for Radio New Zealand.

Though Ioana’s areas of interest span a broad range of disciplines, what is consistent throughout is a curatorial process that prioritises a close working relationship with artists and arts communities.

Ioana is the Assistant Curator of Yuki Kihara, Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022.

I am a proud Yorta Yorta woman, curator and writer and Senior Curator South Eastern Aboriginal Collections at Museums Victoria. I have worked in curatorial roles at Melbourne Museum for over ten years (Bunjilaka Project Officer and Curator 2008-2015) and have curated over sixteen exhibitions with the Victorian Koorie Community at Museums Victoria. I was an assistant curator for the permanent First Peoples Exhibition at Melbourne Museum from 2009-2013. In 2018 I was the lead curator for the exhibition Mandela: My Life at Melbourne Museum, in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation and International Exhibition & Conference Group Pty Ltd (IEC Group Pty Ltd).

In my practice I work with knowledges, histories and futures at the intersection of historical collections and contemporary art and making. I am also interested in anti-colonial curatorial methodology and First Nations representation and access in museums and galleries. In my work at Museums Victoria I am the curator of and care for the South Eastern Australian First Peoples Collections (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria), which holds over 4,000 historical and contemporary objects from communities. I also work closely with the Ethnohistory Collection, which includes photographs and archives. I am focused on continuing to build community access and relationships with the collections and connecting contemporary First Peoples artists and makers with the collections across multidisciplinary areas to reframe collections and create new dialogues with object and community. I am interested in extending the paradigm of what a museum can and should be from a First Peoples perspective, with an acquisition focus on addressing the gaps in the First Peoples Collections through contemporary collecting and living makers, and also continuing various research projects on the existing nineteenth and early twentieth century material held in the custodianship of Museums Victoria.

In my work at Museums Victoria and independently I am passionate about supporting First Peoples cultures from Australia and the world, and their agency within cultural institutions. As part of my research over the last ten years I have critically engaged with collections, archives and contemporary art spaces across Australia, Europe, North America and the United Kingdom. My research and area of interest also considers what it means historically and for the future of cultural materials in institutions, connecting people to collections, and the role contemporary art and artists have in and out of museums and galleries.

I have written extensively for art and museum publications nationally and internationally and held research, curatorial and writing fellowships across Europe, North America, South Asia and the United Kingdom. Alongside my museum practice I have independently curated shows in various art museums across Australia and the United States of America.