Transformative Marks Podcast
A podcast that journeys through the world of Indigenous tattooing, amplifying the voices of ancestral skin markers, Indigenous tattoo artists, cultural tattoo practitioners, and those who wear the marks. Through a mix of interviews and solo shows, Dion Kaszas brings you the entertaining, challenging, and transformative stories behind every dot, line, and stitch. Embedded in each mark is a unique story that brings forward the reality of contemporary Indigenous peoples living a contemporary existence. Our Indigenous ancestors' struggle, pain, tears, resistance, and resilience are celebrated, honored, respected, and embedded underneath our skin. This podcast explores the stories, truths, and histories essential to us as Indigenous tattoo artists, cultural tattoo practitioners, and ancestral skin markers. These stories bring forward our ancestral visual languages and cultures' power, brilliance, and beauty. So that those coming after us are reminded of how amazing we are.
Dion and the Transformative Marks Podcast acknowledge the support of:
The Canada Council for the Arts
Transformative Marks Podcast
Artistic Resurgence and the Power of Indigenous Marks: A Conversation with Tania Willard
#044 Imagine a world where tattoos are not just skin deep but are powerful emblems of identity and cultural revival. Join me, Dion Kazas, as I share my journey in reviving ancestral skin marking practices that reconnect us with our heritage, alongside a fascinating conversations with Indigenous artist Tania Williard. Together, we navigate a vibrant tapestry of artistic expression, from the transformative power of Indigenous tattooing to the nuanced narratives woven into traditional basketry. Through these creative practices, we discover the diverse ways our marks leave an indelible impact on personal and communal identities.
This episode embarks on a path of visual repatriation, where often disregarded cultural artifacts reclaim their rightful place in our narrative sovereignty. We examine how artifacts, such as baskets held in collections across Canada, serve as a canvas for cultural expression and reclamation. The journey includes visiting these collections, revealing the stories behind them, and understanding the resurgence of traditional art forms within modern contexts. By integrating cultural philosophies and languages into our art-making processes, we challenge anthropological hierarchies that have long undervalued Indigenous contributions.
Through compelling anecdotes and rich discussions, we illuminate the intricate relationship between art, pedagogy, and the land. Whether through the creation of the Bush Gallery, a feminist art space rooted in Indigenous culture, or exploring the dynamics of teaching Indigenous arts in non-Indigenous institutions, the episode underscores the resilience and strength of Indigenous communities. We celebrate the role of art in reclaiming cultural identity, emphasizing the transformative potential of integrating traditional craft with contemporary artistry. This episode is a celebration of cultural resurgence, artistic adaptation, and the enduring strength of Indigenous heritage.
You can find Tania at:
Instagram @willardart
Check out my tattoo work at:
https://www.consumedbyink.com
Instagram @dionkaszas
Buy me a Coffee at:
https://ko-fi.com/transformativemarks
I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
yeah, it is devastating, but I but that's why it's like, well, maybe we can think of it another way. Look at me and you today talking about basketry, right? Yeah that's something that didn't exist when I was a young person.
Speaker 2:Just you know like, and so you know we got to think about the ways that those things are are coming back as well and the transformative marks podcast explores how indigenous tattoo artists, cultural, cultural tattoo practitioners and ancestral skin markers transform this world for the better, dot by dot, line by line and stitch by stitch. My name is Dion Kazas. I'm a Hungarian Méti and Intikotmok professional tattoo artist and ancestral skin marker. I started the work of reviving my ancestral Intikotmok skin marking practice over a decade ago. I have helped, supported and trained practitioners and tattoo artists here on Turtle Island. In this podcast, I sit down with Indigenous tattoo artists, cultural tattoo practitioners and ancestral skin markers from across the globe, bringing you behind the scenes of this powerful, transformative and spiritual work. Kelly Musket Le.
Speaker 1:Kealu Mutna Splachin. Squests Ethel Jones Ash Kana'a Ash Hapa'a. Squests Adeline Ash Isaac Willard. So that's a bit of my background. I introduced my family on my mom and my dad's side, so on my dad's side I'm Sokhaatukh, part of Nuskonlith Reserve, and related through the Willard family. And that's where I live today. And then my mom is a settler background, like Euro-Canadian Scottish background, and she lives nearby to Sokotmuk communities and Sokotmuk lands and, yeah, I grew up with those family influences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. Yeah, you know this is, I think, the first interview I'm doing with a non-tattooer. So you know, in the second season, as I move into recording the second season'm going to be talking to, um, just artists in general, indigenous artists, and that's why I called it transformative marks podcast, because it's not just about the transformative marks of tattooing, it's the transformative marks that we all make, and so for me, that includes academics, scholars, that includes artists who create in a variety of make marks in a variety of ways, whether that's digital, traditional mediums. So this is kind of why I'm reaching out. And then there's a nice crossover as well, because we're here going to be doing some work for you tattoo work and I know you have been marked, you know, for quite a long time. You know you've been embodying interior Salish and ancestral marks for a very long time. So I'm stoked to have you coming to visit with me on the podcast. And so I guess where do we want to start? You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'm excited to be here and it's yeah, exactly, it's this thread through my experience as a, you know, mixed Suquamish person growing up in small towns in the interior. My first tattoo, when I like turned 18, was of the what we use on our letterhead for an Eschatolith Indian band, which is a pictograph of an eagle. And I early on encountered James Tate's volume looking at our facial painting and marking and at a young age was always really interested in like okay, well, why is this so distant now?
Speaker 1:You know these beautiful things about our culture and was really interested to spend my life learning. And then now really committed to like do we, you know, um, bring those things back and reconnect them, and so that's, that's been, yeah, such an important part of how and it.
Speaker 2:You know, it actually started quite early on with looking particularly at um tattooing yeah, of course it's like one of those things that is just so intriguing, right, and I think because it was so like other things had threads that still existed.
Speaker 1:You know, like I, you know, see baskets, sometimes at families and yeah, I knew we had a language. You know that wasn't. You know, and I just didn't know a lot of it, like some plants, like there are threads of our culture there still, but with tattooing that was fairly uh, and you know, just the threads of it that existed were like, you know, the aunties and the uncles with the little tattoos on their hands, the initials yeah, exactly. Initials or the home job tattoos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always interesting too. Always interesting too and that's one thing I've actually been thinking about as well is, you know, just as you bring it up, just something to put out there for anyone who's looking for a research topic, is those auntie and those uncle tattoos, right? I think they are certainly a continuation of that work that we have always done, you know, to identify who we are. Yes, it looks completely and totally different than you know what our ancestors did 100 or so years ago, 150 years ago, but, you know, I think it's still a continuation of that impetus to mark our bodies, and so yeah, throwing it out there and really a continuation of the relationality, right, because it was always about them and groups of friends and relations.
Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just something interesting I've of friends and relations and yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just something interesting I thought about for a long time and it almost gets almost, uh, erased from the conversation or almost looked down upon. You know, and one thing that I've uh really been trying to do in the conversations I'm having in this podcast is to, like you know, get rid of some of that shame that people feel, you know, because it's like people say, oh, it's not traditional, if you're using machine, it's not this, it's not that, it's all of these things. And for me it's like, well, you're really putting shame on people for things that they're trying to do to lift themselves up. So let's like start erasing that shit and start holding people up in those good ways, and so I think it's a cool topic.
Speaker 1:I just I don't have time for it. So somebody who's listening pick it up, and there's so much like we were talking earlier. There's so much in terms of interior Salish art that has been, you know, either disappeared from the kind of records, not our own records, our own communities, but in other kinds of ways. And you know, we get told we don't have art forms. That's sort of something we grew up with, like only the coast has art forms.
Speaker 1:That's sort of the environment you grow up in and, yeah, I think like challenging. That is also about having people you know look at it, develop ideas and work, talk to our elders, talk to our communities and setting that record straight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually that's an important point is to ask those questions because, of course, somewhat we're assuming what they meant and what they are connected to. Yes, we have had conversations about it, but it hasn't really been looked at, and so, yeah, I think it would be pretty cool for somebody to pick that up and find out why the aunt that's what I call them too auntie and uncle tattoos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things I wanted to explore a little bit is some of the work that you are doing in terms of uh, I don't even know, I don't think you could say reclamation, but the reinvigoration of those interior Salish forms, and so one of the ones that I think of is the uh I can't remember exactly what the medium was, but it was uh of a basketry that you printed on, put onto a transparent vinyl yeah yeah, okay, well, and as well as colored vinyl.
Speaker 1:I've worked in both ways and for me that works. I did this one called gut instincts, which is cedar root baskets uh, that I digitally, um, you know, worked on kind of added emphasis to some of the design. That particular basket was from the American Museum of Natural History collection and was documented by Livingston Ferrand and his, you know, compilation on basketry as being a entrails design, and so I thought this was really interesting because I was also thinking about, you know, gut instincts, intuition yeah but then also that's like, in this graphic way, entrails, but also those are.
Speaker 1:That was, you know, it wasn't something kind of icky. In the same way, that's like that's we, you. You would witness those anytime you were hunting and gathering from the land, right, and so I just I liked this idea of this design being this entrails design, and thinking about it in relation to instinct and how to navigate archive and museum collections when things are so often not attributed. So I felt like I needed to listen, uh, and check myself right and we always got to check ourself with intuition to make sure it's not biased, but yeah, um, but I did kind of arrive at this space where I was like the visiting of our ancestor artworks and the intuition and the connection that's involved is important to recognize and speak to. And then, because they're so you know, if they're on display, they're often unattributed. We have very few documented makers that people cared to, you know, attach to the beautiful artworks and they're also really ubiquitous. They're in many collections across Canada as you know, as you know.
Speaker 1:But often even not contextualized geographically properly, and so I really wanted to think about valuing what is devalued. And so to do that, I wanted to use scale. And so and basket, as a vessel also carries so much it carries you know ideas, harvests from the land, like I think of it really metaphorically, and so I wanted to, in two instances, with gut instincts and a recent work called Basket, citation which used transparent vinyl and I'll talk about that one in a minute, because it was a little bit different process.
Speaker 1:I wanted to kind of make them this architectural scale to be like we're entering into this knowledge that this basket represents right, our visual sovereignty. You know our connection to our lands and culture and um and asserting ourselves.
Speaker 1:And so I did that in that um work. Uh, you know, it was like 25 feet or something squarish, uh. And then the recent one I did was a basket citation and that was a basket I photographed at the Banff Museum, so these were not specifically recorded as the Kwapmach, but I look at the relationship to all interior Salish territories and our art forms and it's one of our art forms and also I feel like I want to awaken those in collections, so I photographed it. And then what I did is because I also learn. I'm also learning how to make cedar root baskets with master silk art artist dolores perdue.
Speaker 1:And so I know that when you're doing basketry, you build it up stitch by stitch, and the inner coil is also cedar root, yeah, uh. And so when I drew it, I didn't want I did, I wanted to draw stitch, each stitch yeah and so I traced each stitch and then blew it up on this architectural scale um it was really lovely and that it was backlit at night because it was in a window space and also projected inward and created this space to enter into my work that was framed by everything, um, that is kind of goes into basketry, yeah, the way I talk about that.
Speaker 2:Uh, well, specifically, just because the medium primarily that I work in is tattoo is, um, a visual repatriation, you know just, and that's kind of what I hear when you talk about it yeah, is making it visible in the everyday.
Speaker 1:Because when I think back, that visual language was everywhere, yeah, even in size designs, in ochre designs on clothing. Exactly, it was part of our visual landscape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just everywhere. And then now you look and it's very, very, very rarely seen. Yeah, just everywhere.
Speaker 1:And then now you look and it's very, very, very rarely seen, even even the motifs. And then, and when it is and I love, you know, I love to see pictographs and different things represented, but I feel like they also come to represent the totality of our visual language and they're, they're not. There's the lot, there's a lot more to our visual language and so, and you know, as an artist, I want to, and I think it's important that we assert our rights to use those in contemporary kinds of you know, to recompose them, to revisit them, to you know, to advance them and to you know, uh, together work towards their resurgence and that visual repatriation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Oh, what was I thinking? I was concentrating on being present.
Speaker 1:I forgot what I was thinking. That's my constant interview technique. I'm like oh, what was that?
Speaker 2:No, it was, yeah, it was just. It's cool to begin to explore some of those works that you're doing and bringing them forward in a different way than I do, so it's really exciting right to see how you are bringing these art forms forward. And oh, part of it I think was now that I'm talking again is what has been your experience with visiting collections.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm often doing so often I'm visiting collections in ways that are just dovetailing with other work that I'm doing as an artist and when I have, like the American Museum of Natural History collection, that one I was visiting when I was a student at UBC, doing my MFA, yeah, and I felt like it allowed me to kind of have, you know, an official letterhead and be able to enter the institution in a way that I may have not felt I could do as an individual.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they were actually quite good and quite open. And then, funny enough experiences and that were not as great were with canadian museums, like national, federal canadian museums, uh, and those were uh, yeah, they were not as friendly or as forthcoming in some ways as a visit to american museum of natural history. But that was um, that visit happened a number of years ago now, and it was before they redid the first, the first People's Hall, and so I think they were, they had been facing a number of pressures, right. And so yeah.
Speaker 1:You know it's also relationships like who you get in the archive who's there on that day? Exactly generally like I was. I was saying um for me.
Speaker 1:I had to learn to also pay attention to kind of what my insides were saying yeah, uh, and to value that in the same way as some of the textual records, and you know I tend to be, uh, really invested visually and emotionally and sometimes I'm not paying attention to like details, and so I learned some of that, but also learned that there's details in inside ourselves that we need to pay attention to too, and they're just as valid. So yeah, you know, sometimes you bring stuff back.
Speaker 1:It's important to kind of you know, cleanse yourself going in leaving yeah but also I feel like yeah, you learn so much right oh yeah, and you've done more visits than me, so and more collections?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, I was just, uh, you know, wanted to get your sense of what that was like for you, and you know I can totally relate to really experiencing things visually because, you know, the first few visits I've I did like it was just, you know, like visiting and photographing, and, you know, seeing the visual. And then, as I started to work on the visual dictionary that I've been working on, I'm like, oh, I totally did not take enough notes for this.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, I think you're at first just so like wow. And you know, yeah, for sure, there's times I look at my photographs I'm like, oh, I like the edge of that is cut off. That makes no sense and like as I learn more. I think I'm like oh yeah, I should have spent a moment thinking about, or doing this or that or oh yeah, for me it was.
Speaker 2:It's really those first visits that I did, even when I was working, uh, with Jeanette, jeanette Armstrong on her, uh, canada research chair, um, some of that stuff. I just didn't slow down enough to get it. Enough of the notes, you know, those background acquisition notes and all that stuff, and so you know if you're a researcher. Make sure you get those acquisition notes. They're just so important. And then it absolutely they're a researcher. Make sure you get those acquisition notes. They're just so important.
Speaker 1:And then it absolutely they're really important, and then that's also important to acknowledge. You know, we're arriving there as artists you know, and we're not historic. Well, I'm not a historian you know and there's pressure to, and it's important to be responsible, of course, always to what the works that we're looking at, but I guess it's about valuing both approaches as well. There's value to you know. There's incredible value. Think of all the lives you've touched with the designs and the visual dictionary and the markings on people's bodies.
Speaker 2:That you're bringing back.
Speaker 1:That is, you know, ultimately as impactful as an academic paper. Yeah, big time. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Um, the other thing I was uh also wanted to explore a little bit is because, you know, I've experienced it with interpreting some of those, uh, the baskets for the visual dictionary and looking at the ethnographic record and all of that stuff and just thinking about that. I love how you put that together in terms of, like, this is an entrials design, but then you're like it's also about gut, it's about intuition, it's about all of those things, and for me that really relates back to part of the reason why I think our visual language was put down so much and across the world, indigenous world ethnographers would say, like, oh, what is this design? And somebody would say, oh well, that's a lightning design. And they ask somebody else oh, that's steps or that's ripples or whatever. And they're like these Indians are so dumb because they don't know what this is.
Speaker 2:But the reality is is that that interpretation is based on so many different things and based on the individual artist and experience, yeah, absolutely yeah, so it just brought that forward and I just wanted to highlight that and to you know, because I've written about it and I haven't had a chance to express it and people, people, will you know if, when you look at the ethnographic record, you know you don't always have to take what the anthropologist said?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, and sometimes what you're doing is reaching through to what your relation told them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know they're an intermediary, yeah, so, and if they've done their job well, then you know it's easier to reach through, and if they haven't, you got to go through a number of, like you know, camouflages and, yeah, and difficult kind of navigations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, the thing came back to me. What I was thinking about is that idea of the records of the basket makers etc. And when I looked I can't remember the exact title, but Tate did a really extensive research on our basketry and he wasn't able to publish it before he died, and sometime later I can't exactly remember the uh person who put it together, but I think it was in the 1920s they put it together and it in it it tate recorded the names of all the knowledge keepers and so it has a record of their name.
Speaker 1:You know who they're related to what what band Tate was good with that yeah.
Speaker 2:But I would also say that some of the sad stuff that I found out, specifically from the new book on Tate At the Bridge, talking about how Bowes actually destroyed all of the records of his notes I see After he passed and so he destroyed all of them. I don't know why you would do that, but I was just like what? Like how much valuable information was in there that was destroyed. Yeah, so I imagine all of those basket makers and knowledge keepers their names were there- they may have been recorded by Tate because he did record a number of things yeah, but yeah, they all got yeah, yeah destroyed and then all the ones that were collected in between.
Speaker 1:You know people would buy them and give them as gifts and never retain uh, or very often very seldom retain the name of the artist but, yeah, and then also many, many people practiced yeah, big time so you know, certainly there's some in my family that were great grandmothers you know, and I was talking to artist Christabel Stewart, who came to the Indigenous Art Intensive last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she went and visited back home. She's from Spachmund, she's the Ilk, okanagan, and they had a really beautiful she was showing me pictures. They had a really beautiful community meeting where people brought baskets from their family collections and just kind of all came together and, you know, got a chance to look at each other's baskets and look at the designs and the huckleberry stains inside and you know, like tell those stories yeah and uh.
Speaker 1:I thought that was a really cool initiative. I think about that in terms of home and thinking, oh, that would be fun to get people together and look at the ones that are in family collections and celebrate them exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, celebrate it was very jovial looking very fun looking event well, part of that also, when I think about it, is, uh, the fires really brought that home in lytton, um, john Haugen lost 70 baskets in the fires, right, and so those are from, you know, his family, his mom, grandma, and then just people, community baskets that he, you know, collected, the importance of, you know, documenting, talking, sharing those family heirlooms you know, uh, in the wider community and starting that conversation, yeah, so, yeah, that wrote really brought it home and you know. And then you just think of how many baskets, how many, uh, you know, visual material culture just got lost even in that one one event. It's just crazy yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe we can also think about it as fire, also helping to return things.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know in some different way, but yeah for sure, when we were on evacuation alert I noticed that I would grab, you know, cultural material right In terms of what you need to get out quickly was like you know your essentials and all those things like that. But also, you know, I grabbed all my baskets and then I made this artwork when I did basket citation on the walls of those gallery that were um a series of rubbermaid bins but, I, had sewn the tops of them with cedar roots like a birch bark basket.
Speaker 2:And then also.
Speaker 1:And then also, yeah, had other elements of cultural kind of material that I was thinking about in terms of, yeah, in terms of our changing landscape and what we have to kind of navigate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's also interesting too. Brings up another conversation or thought idea around. You know, how do we care for these beings? That are the baskets and the clothing? And you know, yes, I've loved the opportunity to go and visit with them. But then it's also a question of you know, do they have their own life cycle, like, do they need to be given the opportunity to go back? You know, so that is another. You know, when you talk about that, the fire, you know, even though it's devastating, that is the life cycle of that being yeah, it is devastating, but that's why it's like well, maybe we can think of it another way.
Speaker 1:Look at me and you today talking about basketry, right? Yeah, that's something that didn't exist when I was a young person you know, like, and so you know we got to think about the ways that those things are coming back as well. And yeah, but not to diminish the loss of that person in their collection. That's really gut wrenching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, it's absolutely devastating. But yeah, it just brings opportunity to start to look from a different lens and to start to think about some of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for me it was like a contrast of like what's important you know your insurance, your house? Yes, of course, all those things are important, but it was also like what I was grabbing was like the core of us you know and like the need to protect that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time, yeah, when uh.
Speaker 1:Which is what we've always been doing yeah, the urgency of wildfire, but we had many, many urgencies for you know the last 150 plus years that we had to retain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hang on to and bring, bring to the to the next generation. When I think about um, you know, the work that you're doing and the way that you are reinvigorating it and bringing it forward into a contemporary context, especially when I think of the material that you're using, which is a huge contrast to the weaving of the cedar root, etc. Or the birch bark birch bark you know what is your answer to people that would say well, how can we be using these things in the contemporary world in this way, in, you know, in a, in contrast to the way that they were built and constructed in the past?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I assert that as contemporary Indigenous peoples, we maintain a continuum of connection to our ancestors, who innovated, you know, in their daily lives, especially in the conflict and encounter with settler communities. You know, some of my favorite baskets are all those new forms, right Teacups, saucers, side tables, boats. You know ways that people were adapting the form of their baskets. So we have that precedent, so that you know, yes, when we change materials, there is things to consider, but I guess, like, yeah, there can be the feedback of like, oh well, that's not a natural material, or but that's just the reality of our lives too.
Speaker 2:Right, I drove a car here.
Speaker 1:you know I, you know we all navigate the capitalist world we're in in different ways and it's important to me to also have the um, the community work. So, uh, I've been learning cedar root basketry with Dolores Pertuby, who's a artist who makes still very large cedar root baskets, like some of the largest ones.
Speaker 1:I've seen uh in the interior and and she has been uh, not well respected or celebrated over her life for the incredible art form that she, you know, is a master at, and so I'm a very humble learner, but also don't just learn myself.
Speaker 1:We do that as uh, so we open up yeah and teach a number of other people what we're, what we're doing right now, as well as um build in uh knowledge of suhwet mksjeen language through the making of stoop cedar root baskets, through the making of mimh birch bark baskets, and so I'm doing that work, and then that also informs some of the ways that I'm working with industrial materials, and so I guess it's about reflecting our realities as a mixture of, like what we're up against, industrial and capitalist kinds of encounters, materials, and then the importance of carrying through uh our, our visual sovereignty, our visual languages, and and the ways that that connects to our lands, our philosoph our languages and our governance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time. Yeah, you know, two things come up, and the first one is is like the reality that the way that you're doing it and the way that you're bringing it forward and you're presenting it, I think probably gives opportunity for people to explore baskets in a new way, which I think would will inspire people to start stepping back and looking at those in a in a new, beautiful light, you know, because maybe coming in and looking at as a basket, maybe that's not going to be as exciting or invigorating to uh, to their being. Yeah, but they look at it, especially because sometimes you're using some nice bright colors and for sure yeah right light and it's, you know.
Speaker 2:So it really is like a pow to the old eyeballs, and then you see it and I think that it could help to spark some more interest yeah and I'm always yeah and I'm always doing it to.
Speaker 1:I'm very specific about the ways that I value it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, not only as an object, not only as art, but you know you have to know how to collect those roots, to prepare them. You know you have to take off that bark, you have to make it flexible. You have to split them. You know, there's many levels of knowledge contained in it is many levels of knowledge contained in it, and so that's why I have a little graphic sometimes of a basket that I've redrawn again stitch by stitch, and sometimes I say like this is a data storage device yeah this is a philosophy this is a governance structure yeah you know it's not just a basket, yeah, and then also that you know baskets are so, so global.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you know that it also, I think, is about like okay, and so what is your cultural background and what kind of basketry is part of your people's connection and how does that connect to the land?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or the vessel Exactly, or yeah, yeah, or the vessel, yeah, the vessel is maybe complicated because there's a whole anthropological hierarchy yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:About whether we had pottery or not, and we didn't have pottery because we had great baskets.
Speaker 2:So we didn't need pottery.
Speaker 1:But that means anthropological hierarchy means we're less civilized. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's so crazy to think about some of that stuff. And hey there, listeners, it's Dion Kazas, your host from the Transformative Marks podcast, where we dive deep into the world of indigenous tattooing, ancestral skin marking and cultural tattooing. If you found value in our episodes we've made you laugh or you've learned something new consider showing your support by buying me a coffee on ko-ficom. Ko-fi is this incredibly creator-friendly platform where you can support me directly for just the cost of a cup of coffee. No subscriptions, no hidden fees, just a simple one-time gesture that goes a long way in keeping me on the air. Plus, ko-fi doesn't take a cut, so every penny goes directly into improving the podcast, from updating equipment to visiting with new guests as I go into recording season two. So if you like what you hear and you'd like to help me keep the lights on, head over to my Ko-Fi page, wwwko-ficom. Forward slash transformative marks.
Speaker 2:The link is in the show notes. You know that's one thing why you know the exhibition I'm doing Two Tribal is about flattening those hierarchies of authenticity and those, like you say, hierarchies of civilized. Let's flatten not even flatten, but make that circular, because they each mutually support each other, especially in the contemporary time. And that was the other thing that I was thinking about is my friend Julie Pamapengali, who is a Maori Moko practitioner. Julie says you know, our most authentic selves are the selves that are living today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And plus, I mean there's so many problems with authenticity. You know it was used in terms of connoisseurship of Native art by non-Native people, right, and so when we really trace the threads of who's concerned about authenticity, you know it's we are, but relationally we are able to figure that out. And it's when it gets beyond our communities that the problem starts to, you know, the knot starts to get tighter or something?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, you know that's one thing get tighter, yeah, or something. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, you know, that's one thing I really have been thinking about is like the tendency to try to, you know, especially in terms of artists and that idea of authenticity and all of that type of stuff. It's like that isn't our concept, you know, like it just isn't, and so we get stuck in that and I'm like, nah, let's let that go, it's an ethnographic framing of ours, us as artists, right so, and there's, there's the part of it that is responsibility to community.
Speaker 1:That part is important, you know, in terms of being authentic in what you do, or honest or transparent, or you know, know always. For me, it's important to always try to support community in what we do Like that, must you know something that is very resonant in your work you support individuals through these transformational marks and that stuff.
Speaker 1:I feel like it is just naturally reinforcing its own authenticity you know, by the communities that we build and it's where it's concerned with valuing and collecting and connoisseurship that's outside of our communities. That, I think, gets more complicated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time. Yeah, and then is not as useful to us in terms of building our own communities and artworks and practices yeah, big time yeah, and then is not as useful to us yeah in terms of building our own communities and artworks, and yeah, yeah, big time, yeah, yeah, it's a pretty awesome conversation to you know, I don't always get to have, uh, these conversations, especially with an interior person. You know another interior salish person talking about them and being able to envision the symbols that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh yep, I know that one. So it's really, it's cool and, like you said, I think that was good to kind of highlight the fact that, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation about basketry in the way that we are now and valuing it the way that it should be valued.
Speaker 1:The people who are having conversations of basketries were the experts right? Who were the anthropologists, the historians who were not from our community? Not that they, not that there's not people there who learned lots and built good relationships, but but the whole problem is the displacement of our art forms and that language, that visual language from our communities, by taking them into the collections.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, yes, maybe some were preserved, but they've become dislocated. So now is the time to heal the dislocation, you know, and be able to bring those conversations, those art forms, those languages back to our communities Big time conversations, those art forms, those languages back to our communities Big time.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to shift focus a little bit just because I was thinking about you know this podcast is about tattoos and I know you have a lot of tattoos when you think about the importance of embodying those marks, especially because you said even the first one you got you know was connected to community and culture, as you said, even the first one you got you know was connected to community and culture, what are your thoughts and feelings around the importance of getting those marks for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, yes, I think when I was younger it was an important part of asserting my identity, as you know, as Sokotmuk, as mixed Sokotmuk or whatever, like it was important to go hey, okay, our communities do have value. We literally had to say that to ourselves, right? We literally had to heal all of the stereotype and things that were diminishing us and say, no, my community, my family does have value, I have value and our art forms have value and could be, and we're exciting right.
Speaker 1:It was exciting to see ourselves reflected, even if it was complicated, by the lens of ethnographic framing and anthropology. It was like, oh, I thought there was only you know, coastal art, and we didn't have that. And then there was this whole you know documentation of what we do have right. And so that was, I think, for me, affirming for my identity and affirming for the value of that and the value of our culture.
Speaker 1:And then, yeah, and then I have, you know, some more pop culture-y ones, and I have some that are more cultural and, yeah, I think they've always just been some kind of important part of my expression, you know, and I think as an artist also, just visually, we, you know, we, um, we paint things, we design things, you know, and that, and we reflect our identity through our, our, our, what we put on our bodies, clothing wise, but also, you know, marks, um, and so I think that's always just been part of my expression and and affirmation, particularly of cultural value when it comes to interior Salish work, yeah, yeah, and I think that's important to tug on that string just a little bit in terms of, you know, you saying that like we had to tell ourselves that we were valuable, that we were important, Like I think that's important to highlight because I think a lot of people look at our marks, look at our artwork, look at those things and you know, maybe take them.
Speaker 2:But the reason that we say hey, hands off to this stuff is because we're just beginning to build that relationship with it again ourselves and so that we don't really have the relationship maybe strong enough to be able to say like, hey, you can use that, because we're still rebuilding that relationship with it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and we need interior Salish peoples to be leading, you know, as you are, those art movements. We don't, we don't need them to be led by people who are not from our communities, because they have a whole world of influence to. You know, to pull from right as contemporary artists, you can pull from all kinds of art movements futurism, cubism, you know, impressionism over time.
Speaker 1:So, you know, leave our you know pocket alone because we've had to suffer and uh and sacrifice for what we have. Uh, and certainly I do see non-native artists using, you know, pictograph or different kinds of references in their work and and they need to be uh told, they need to be educated, they need to be told that that's damaging to our communities because we don't have the those, uh, artists profiled yeah in our communities.
Speaker 1:We, we need to, you know, we need to be supporting that yeah and unless they're mentoring young indigenous artists right, and thus they're in communities and they're doing work to support us, then they shouldn't be profiting either monetarily or in terms of cultural capital from from our work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's important to also put forward as the cultural capital of it, not just the monetary part. Yeah, no, I think that was just important, just because it maybe, in my mind, helped to tease out some of the things that I've been thinking about it. But the way that you articulated helped me to go ah yes, yeah, I'm. You know, it brought a certain type of understanding that I didn't have before, or I wasn't able to articulate.
Speaker 1:So I really appreciate you Well, because it is a bit rare to have a chance, as other interior Salish artists, to connect you know, yeah, big time For the Indigenous Art Intensive we youensive. We had some of the first, you know, cil artist panels or interior Salish artist panels. And that's why I'm really committed to like how we support our communities to build more around our art, which you've done so much with the, you know the Visual Dictionary Project and the tattooing, because that is creating a presence right and it's creating a reflection and it's creating interest.
Speaker 1:You've mentored other artists interior, like other artists, not only interior Salish, but other interior Salish artists in particular, who then are doing their own you know, visiting of of our art forms and building their own expression. I was mentioning learning with Dolores Pertubby. She's really such a gentle, wonderful teacher who has so many skills, but she's also so giving in her teaching.
Speaker 1:She's not like do it exactly this way. And this is my experience with her learning a few different times. She's not like do it exactly this way or it's wrong. She's really like oh, that's your way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:And she's giving you the license to be like oh, that's your way, yeah, you know, yeah, and she's giving you the license to be like to not have shame, yeah, and to just be like, oh, this is my way and I can improve it as I see fit and I can work on it as it has to be resonant to me Like I think I did a good job or I think I want to fix this or you know, and I thought that's such a powerful um example of cultural teaching yeah, big time that isn't just about you did it this way or this way is wrong, or uh, that it was gentle, and it was about how do you honor you?
Speaker 1:as the maker and your what's coming out in your making is a reflection of you and it's you know. I can teach you the basic skill of doing it, but you're going to make it your own. Yeah, big time which I think is such a gift and is really resonant with interior Salish kinds of philosophies, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ways of being, and I would say you know it also just when I think about it. You know there's so much value in that because the individual who's learning also has those layers of shame about being, you know, being, indigenous, being, uh, being, you know, uh, who they are. That you know, uh yeah, could so easily the learning process could so easily be hijacked by those insecurities.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and you see it all the time in language learning too right it's like we get um ashamed of like, oh, I don't know how to speak my language, or I'm ashamed of the sounds of my language. Right, an older generation sometimes have all that residential school and public in indian day school baggage. That is like I. I can't make the sounds of my language.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Though they can hear them and they're like latent speakers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know there's um, there's so many. Yeah, shame is, I think, one of the most damaging uh ones for us.
Speaker 2:That you know, yeah, yeah, big time. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because you know I'm always bringing it forward to people. Um, with everything that I talk about on here, just because it is such a like I said, it just hijacks you, you know, just hijacks you and prevents you from going forward. Right, and I don't think it's really ours. You know, I think that some of that stuff's learned and imported. But yeah, I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think your medium, your work, is also really interesting because it's pushing at what perhaps is still a difficult one for us, which is like the body. Yeah, big time, you know and so and all the shame, and you know Christian kinds of layers of shame of the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting to think of how transformational that experience is for your sitters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what I say is, you know, the way that I talk about the work is really from sitting with people and just listening to. You know, and sometimes it's just one thing that they say and that'll sit with me for a while and then I'll go. Oh, that's what that was about. You know, like just those insights come just from sitting with people and having those and sometimes I would say, you know, 80% of those insights I couldn't identify where that came from, but I know that it was actually from the experience of sitting with somebody and something that they shared. Or, you know, maybe a couple of weeks or a year later they'll come to me and go.
Speaker 2:I'll be, like oh, how's it going? They'll be like oh, tell me a story about what has happened in their life since they've been marked and how they see it fits with the markings that they have.
Speaker 1:And I'm just like whoa, you know which goes back to visiting our ancestral artworks yeah, you know, like when when did you start to put together? The tattooing and um the marking and the references that you were seeing in visual language, because, like the same thing you're saying I think happens to us as artists. When we are in contact, that it's something stays with us.
Speaker 1:Not everything, like not all my session notes and everything maybe try to keep those with me, but other things stay with us and they work through us and we find ourselves you know, I think in stronger connection to those art forms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me, I think it was. You know, of course I've I've reflected a little bit about my journey in that, and part of it was, you know, I was just excited that we had tattoos, right, and so I started to look at them and look at them and then I went in. I think it was 2012. I started looking even deeper into, like the ethnographic record of, you know, tate's notes, et cetera, and I'm just like there's nothing else here, like pretty much what he wrote is what we have written about our marks. And so I looked again and Tate said, oh well, these actually resemble baskets, these actually resemble pictographs. And I'm like, oh yeah, of course right, because I was stuck in that anthropological box. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:That these are only tattoo designs. Are these specific things? And then basket designs are these specific things? You know, painted clothing are these specific things? Or rock art, or whatever they are. And then, as I started to look at that, I'm like, oh, you know, plus, conversations with other practitioners from across the world is no, it's all a visual language that goes all the way across. And the example I always give is like nike, you know, if you come, you know 500 years down the road and the researchers go oh well, these are billboard designs right, yes, right.
Speaker 2:And then you look, and well, these are billboard designs, right, yes, right. And then you look and, oh well, these are footwear designs, right. But then you don't connect the footwear designs to the billboard designs, to, you know, whatever a commercial, whatever right, because it would be obviously technology. And so it's like, well, no, that swoosh is all the way across, and we could very easily get stuck in saying that, oh, I'm only observing billboard designs. When you lose the reality that's connected to so much else yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And then you know, we don't go just back to that product in our work, we go back to the land big time right, because all our materiality comes from the land. So it's all about our relationships to our lands, which is our land claims, which is our sovereignty, which is you know we're still in British Columbia today with many towns that exist all within our lands that are not ceded right, and so, you know, we have to also remind ourselves, and or no?
Speaker 2:those artworks remind us of our place and our land and our right to be here yeah, big time, and you know that's what I say when I uh yeah, that's also another good insight, because of course, I talk about it in terms of tattoo marks.
Speaker 2:Uh, give us remind us of our responsibilities to the land, right, because those identities, those responsibilities, are to geographies, and that was the reason why, uh, our tattoos and our identity was, you know, uh, the effort was made to extinguish it through the indian act, etc.
Speaker 2:Uh, enfranchisement, all that stuff is because our identities are connected to our lands, our geographies and our rights to those lands and those titles. And so what you've just shared has also helped me to think about that in a larger context, in terms of not only the tattoo marks but all of those other visual and material cultural objects and processes and practices, right, so the uh reinvigoration of, and I would say even almost well on par, you know, very similar is the basketry because of the traditional ecological knowledge, the knowledge of the plants, not only the knowledge of the plants, but the knowledge of the traditional ecological knowledge, the knowledge of the plants, not only the knowledge of the plants, but the knowledge of the geography, because you have to know well, where does this, where's the best cedar roots right, the straightest, longest, the ones by the creek that go straight and long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so this is part of our learning right, so there's so much in there. I'll tell you another one, which is like so, when we are translating for making baskets, we kind of talk about the materiality in our language and like then, you learn new things through the language and through the land which is like you know, often if there's a rotten log, the roots will run the length of it and that's a good place to dig them, because they're nice and long and straight yeah which is really great for your basket making.
Speaker 1:So yeah, being able to read, read the land so it really just it leads us back to um reading, reading the land so you know that basket is uh is a textbook as well, right?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, just so that. Yeah, that's beautiful, that's, it's cool. More, yeah, this conversational brings some more good, good percolating thoughts, I think, coming forward. Yeah, definitely yes.
Speaker 1:As we build, right yeah, as your work resonates and as work other people are, you know, to really lift us up back into, you know, our rightful relationship with our art practices and our art forms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing I was just thinking in terms of the tattoos that you have. We did a hashtag skin stitch. Oh, yes, yeah, at the Bush Gallery, right? So I really wanted to bring that up, just so that give you an opportunity to talk about the Bush Gallery and what you've been doing with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Bush Gallery is a collaborative project with a number of other artists Peter Morin, janine Freyna-Jutley, gabriel Hill and with Silquant McLeand and with my family, and so it kind of comes from a period of time where I was doing a lot of curating. I had this big touring show Beat Nation art, hip hop and Aboriginal culture and that was a fantastic opportunity to bring a number of Indigenous artists to different cities, and so you know the tour to Saskatchewan and Montreal and Toronto. That was all really fantastic and maybe a bit unexpected for the the scope that the show got. But I had young children at the time and the logistics of traveling were challenging and we don't have enough support for caretaking as in our field as creative practitioners, and so I felt that really deeply.
Speaker 1:and then I also, when I had kids, wanted to move back home so they had a closer connection to culture. And so when I had kids wanted to move back home, so they had a closer connection to culture, and so when I did that, I started to think about also the space of the gallery being largely borrowed from Western art traditions. And then so then it made me question OK, you know, great, I've been able to bring artists into this space, and also Indigenous artists are doing magnificent things.
Speaker 1:you know, great, I've I've been able to bring artists into this space and also indigenous artists are doing magnificent things, you know, and you know, considering we're such a small parts of the overall population, you know we're killing it out there in galleries and doing great things, uh, but I wanted to say, well, where is our gallery?
Speaker 1:one that's not embedded in western art traditions, how would? I guess? It was a question like how would I conceive of a suhwapmukh gallery, knowing and I had done some work with dolores purdaby at that point when I moved home, I learned birchbark, basketry with dolores, yeah and so thought about our art forms and was like our gallery is the land around us really you know or maybe what we wear on our bodies, or maybe the marks we put on our bodies is very, you know, situated around the landscape and ourselves and our communities, and not a whitewalled gallery right.
Speaker 1:I love a whitewalled gallery, so yeah but I had to think about this and kind of answer that contradiction for myself, and so it also was much easier to get artists to come and visit me, as opposed to me trying to bring my kids and, you know, breastfeed and figure all that stuff out and elimination communication and cloth diapering and all that stuff that I was doing, all that stuff that I was doing, and so and also I wanted to push back against this idea that you know.
Speaker 2:New York.
Speaker 1:Paris, toronto, montreal were the centers of culture, because that the reason it's like that is through, for example, canadian cultural policy, the Massey-Levesque report, and then you know resources were given to cities and you know artistic progress was made or whatever, and we were left out of that picture. Right, massey Levesque report is like so racist and so insulting to indigenous art is talks about us as it talks about our art forms as all dead or commercialized. It's like so offensive, yeah, and so how could I think about my work being part of this really racist structure? Um, so, instead of always asking indigenous people to come to the gallery, I was like, why doesn't the gallery just exist on our land?
Speaker 1:it is the land, it is around us all the time. Yeah, you know it has value and we have uh ways of working with it. That are artistic, uh, and and cultural right and those, those lines get blurry, but and so so it was also, yeah, just having fun saying this is bush gallery. I also was specific about it being a feminist space yeah playing on bush right yeah, and so I was having fun with it too.
Speaker 1:Uh and yeah, and just got got people together and we hung out there and we just talked about ideas, right? Yeah and we would make like indian ice cream and like camp out, and that was just really refreshing for me. It wasn't about always explaining myself or like what does that design mean?
Speaker 1:or you know people could just kind of come together and get it and be on the land, and and then that became more and more important. I visited um and learned a lot from dashinta uh up north and the deninda and those lands and thinking about the ways that they were doing land-based education yeah and that became uh also really important in terms of learning suquamish gene I needed to be home and in community to learn language and so so bush gallery kind of opened up the space for me to go hey, I can make, we can have galleries on the Indian Reserve.
Speaker 1:We do have galleries on the Indian Reserve, right. You have shows in terms of people wearing those marks right All over at different places, and it doesn't have to be restricted to the reservation as well. Those are diminished areas of our territories, so yeah, so I was thinking through all those things.
Speaker 1:so when we invited you out, we knew some of the work that you're doing I'd long been interested in, you know, particularly interior salish tattooing and designs, and so, yeah, we thought we had a tp studio at the time at my place and uh, yeah, we invited you out and I loved how how you got us to also help draw on and also at times do some of the tattooing.
Speaker 1:You were really specific and generous with you know, I think being like this is not super specialized, like it's specialized and you have, you know, training and like a great.
Speaker 2:But you also and I see this in your work You're also modeling and also encouraging others yeah which is so important yeah, just lifting people up, bringing people, you know, giving opportunities maybe that I didn't have right um and creating those spaces for these things to flourish, because it's not really about me, right, it's really about those who are coming, those who are coming after us and, you know, not having to worry about reviving a tattooing tradition. It's really about those who are coming, those who are coming after us and, you know, not having to worry about reviving a tattooing tradition.
Speaker 1:It just is, it's just part of what we do exactly. We're not having to spend so much time struggling to learn or whatever. So much gene because that you know languages of our communities, because it just happens and we see that with the young generation, right, my kids have been going to immersion school. I'm seeing it with them that things are normal to them.
Speaker 2:You know that were certainly not normal to me when I was growing up, and so that's really amazing to see how the financing of the Canadian art industry in those city centers also contributed to the stripping of Indigenous artists from their communities because they didn't have the opportunities back home.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, and so they had to go to Vancouver. Had to go to Toronto had to go wherever. That's pretty true today still. Yeah, you know, like I think you're doing work and I'm trying to do work. That is about you don't have to move. That was the other part of Bush Gallery is like no, I don't have to move to the city to a big city center Like my my uh roots and my work is here and I can be competitive and I can value the work that you know, I'm doing from anywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and then that changed during the pandemic, because then all of a sudden many people were remote and doing things differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, yeah, no, just an interesting insight that I never really considered. And another, what would you say, another contributing factor to some of the disconnection and dislocation in the diaspora of Indigenous people. You know, yes, it's true about other industries, other jobs, etc. But, yeah, I didn't think about it in terms of even the funding for arts.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and I thought of it as like often people like on my reserve and others around their small communities and people have to leave to work, often in resource or you know these kinds of industries and though mine was a positive experience in terms of, like, being able to work as a curator or an artist, it still displaced me, yeah, because that work wasn't at home exactly. Yeah, placed me, yeah, because that work wasn't at home exactly, and so it's been a real interest of mine to to contribute to building that yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's a.
Speaker 2:I thought it was important to highlight and bring forward and um, you know it's also an interesting conversation about um, asserting our rights to do the things that we need to do, uh, where we're at, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely which and you know that's so important to assert, because where we're at is often in our territories in our land right and so that's why I also think of bush gallery as like a continuum of land rights you know big time like. With that, I'm showing that I'm not going to be displaced from my land. Yes, there's complications to the Indian Reserve and all of the dynamics that happen, but it's our land and you know, and I'm going to be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so cool, you know, when I think about the continuation of the work that you've been doing. You are now moving into, or you have been for a while teaching, so what has that experience been like for you?
Speaker 1:Teaching. You know, I feel like I was doing teaching in different ways in the community work like you teach right in lots of different ways, but teaching as part of an institution is another kind of journey. It presents some opportunities and it presents a number of challenges as well. One of them is that you know the conversation we're having today. Like I want to be teaching young interior Salish folks right some of this and learning from them as well. It's not one way to teach, uh, but that's not primarily who my students are yeah right, and so it has to.
Speaker 1:So then I'm changing what I'm teaching because, uh, the audience yeah, right, I can't it's not responsible for me to teach uh all of this uh to well. It's not that it's not responsible, it's that I want to teach our communities you know, yeah, yeah, big time. Yeah, so there's, you know so there's complications with that but also building skills you know, for when? Maybe we can teach those things? Yeah, and we do.
Speaker 2:Right, we're doing that work in community in different ways, but yeah, yeah, no, one of the things that you know that I've had with universities is the admin stuff. You know, uh, all that stuff. But the students themselves are the ones that just, you know, uh, I always uh, sometimes you get down and you're like, oh, this world, shit, yeah. But then some of those students you're just like, wow, you know just so just amazing humans, you know. And so it gives me hope sometimes when I see those young ones coming and just having that For sure.
Speaker 1:You know I went to art school. I was like one of the only indigenous kids in my art school, and so I think of you know, maybe that one student who has this interesting experience that'll be worth it. But yeah then sometimes I often think of you know the suicidal tendencies song in an institution. Yeah, you know, you're kind of balancing things yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It is that delicate balance between those things and yeah, um, part of it is the you know what I think like, yes, those indigenous students are going to be there, and maybe it is only a handful, but it's important to have someone there. Then, on the other hand, I'm like what, what else? What is being crowded out in my life that I could be doing? Alternatively, that I can't do because I'm in the institution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's difficult. Indigenous faculty are saddled with a lot of service, a lot of extra demands, you know, and in our research as well, like we're always doing, triple the work is what it amounts to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time, you know all my grandmothers.
Speaker 1:They did work outside and in the bush and on farms and stuff. So I like to think that I can handle it, because they did work outside and in the bush and on farms and stuff so I'd like to think that that's.
Speaker 2:You know that I can handle it, because they did even tougher. Oh yeah, a ton more work, but uh yeah it's hard.
Speaker 1:I think it's hard for every indigenous person who's um in an institution that's not indigenous run at times yeah, and then, and then we have challenges in our own communities too.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's just the reality yeah, no, I just wanted to bring that up and kind of have a quick chat about it because, yeah, I think it's important to uh think about that. And when you think about that space, what is your dream? Uh, if you could imagine the future of an institution, not necessarily the one you're at, what would that look like for Indigenous arts?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. The one place I do achieve something close to what I would dream about is the Indigenous art intensive. So bringing other Indigenous artists together, learning from each other, also having students there and there being a kind of reciprocity and sharing that happens.
Speaker 1:that is more akin to the kind of learning I'm accustomed to in community and so I think there's real potential for that model. And also I just I love artist residencies. You know people love to see the final exhibition, but there's something very special about seeing the work develop and the thought process and the skill and the making and the connecting that happens, and I think that it's a really important model for teaching that a lot of people don't understand but I think is very also uh, resonant and adjacent to indigenous ways of being and and pedagogies.
Speaker 1:So, uh, yeah, so that program is really close to my heart. It's not well resourced. So, it's a you know. So that's the triple work, where you're doing the work to make it exist.
Speaker 2:Trying to find the money yeah.
Speaker 1:Despite all of the institutions you know commitments to truth and reconciliation and their strategic planning.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We are left to raise the funds for that kind of program because it's not well understood how those pedagogies work. Yeah, we are left to raise the funds for that kind of program because it's not well understood how those pedagogies work. So but uh, I think of that and I think that if we were able to mobilize and have that resourced and then also connect more to the land and not just be in the classroom, that's where I see the real potential and the real transformation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time.
Speaker 1:And I kind of split it up now and do some of that at Bush gallery. Some transformation, yeah, big time.
Speaker 2:And I kind of split it up now and do some of that at Bush Gallery, some of it on campus, but the dream would be to not have such a distance between those ways of teaching and being.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the one thing I really loved about well, all of the residencies that I've been a part of is the insights that you get, especially because there's so many. The mediums and the practices of all of the artists are just so unique and different that someone looks at your work and, you know, starts to talk to you about it and the way that they're seeing it, feeling it and all of that stuff, and you're just like, wow, I never thought of that Right. And you're just like, wow, I never thought of that. There, as opposed to, you know, seeing somebody put their work into the vat of water or whatever it is, or, you know, editing a video, you know all of that stuff is like there's just something different about it that helps to create that opportunity to talk about it in a different way helps to create that opportunity to talk about it in a different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's, you know, it's uh more consistent with a kind of cultural aspect than just a just the kind of artwork as objects and objects for sale. There's something about the role of artists that is also has a cultural role, and I think we witness that more when we get artists together and see the kinds of things that happen and the kinds of conversations and work that happens. I think it starts to get to the role of culture, which is a broader and more embedded and continuum kind of a continuance focused compared to an individual art career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not that people don't want to have individual art careers also, but you know, in our, in our work, often where we're wanting to do that, but we're also wanting to have indigenous resurgence in our communities, to lift people up to train other people. And that needs an ecology. That's the other thing about that. Bush Gallery has shown me that working that way, that the land has shown me is that. I started to think more about how can my art practice, how can I use my art practice to be more strategic, about creating an ecology, or a culture of practice than just, like me, doing well you know it's like how can things build?
Speaker 2:over time.
Speaker 1:How can things you know be in mutualist relationships? You know like we see on the land right. Like this feeds this you know, this grows from this.
Speaker 2:This death means this is nourished yeah, yeah, and also thinking, uh, that makes me think of the rhythms, uh, the cycles and you know, uh, creating on the land, uh, having relationship with the land in connection to creation. Uh, you know, oh, it's raining today. We had this idea about doing something with the sun today, but nope, we can't do that. And so I think it also teaches some like important lessons around, like patience and like just going with the flow and being a lot easier, and then also understanding that, hey, like I just got to go to sleep because there is no light for me to do these things that I wish that I could do, you know. So, some of those rhythms, it almost seems like it would also be a healthier way, you know.
Speaker 1:I really have found that what's important for that I've learned through that kind of way of working is responsiveness. To be responsive, I think, is different than a dominant pedagogical model, which is about absorbing information. Yeah, um, but what I see when we're learning on the land is really about being responsive and adaptive yeah, that is just a natural way of learning on the land. That is um is more difficult to kind of do when you're in controlled spaces. So, it's about like a kind of loss of control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it teaches you that environment, teaches you Adapt and work. Which is, yeah, it's interesting too because, you know, pandemic times also taught us a little bit of the reality that we're not actually in control of some of those things, and so why don't we put ourselves in more situations that we can learn how to be responsive and adaptive?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think it's an important principle for our social interactions as well. Right like to be responsive, to understand where somebody's at and yes, you know and model yourself and yeah yeah, so it's kind of filtered through. Everything I've done through there is kind of filtered through in a nice like ecological, cultural kind of form right where it's not that I just made one artwork. It's like it's all this stuff that has um changed me yeah, big time, yeah, 100, I would say.
Speaker 2:You know also from my own experience, and you know part of the reasons why I started into Cutmuck Blackwork like using the machine and really making an argument like these are cultural marks in the same way as hand poke or stitch are cultural marks is because of the conversations and the places that I've been. So, yeah, I totally see how those things change, the way that we conversations and the places that I've been. Um, so, yeah, I totally see how those things change the way that we create and the way that we, uh, start to move, adapt you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Respond yeah like yeah, people want you know larger work, it takes longer, you use, you use a machine, you know, like that's. That's all within our rights and abilities and adaptations. Yeah, yeah, what's important is carrying the thread through of our languages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time, just as we start to wind down, is there anything that comes up that you want to a thread, that you'd like to pull on a little bit more, or something that comes up that you'd like to share or put out there? Yeah, I just want to give an opportunity to allow you to respond, in whatever way, because I always say that sometimes I'll finish an interview. I'm like, oh, I wish I would have you know, had an opportunity to say that, or I wish they would ask that question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just uh, leaving that opportunity there yeah, I mean, I think we covered a lot, you know. Uh, I am passionate about our basketry and our other art forms, and so it's really exciting to see the work that you're doing and to to really put in the principles and ideas of responsiveness and building culture and ecologies and not be. You know, oh, I'm doing baskets.
Speaker 1:You better do pictographs or whatever you know like to be together and saying, yeah, no, we see it as really important for all of us to bring back, you know, the strength of our art forms. Uh, I often would think about like different ways of uh contemporary art functioning that I was interested in, like community engaged practice and eco art, and then I'd be like, wait a minute, we, we were doing that thousands of years ago. It's just contemporary art is just catching up with those ideas now, you know, and then I can read them back into like the ways that our art practices function, which are about community engagement and, you know, relationality.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, but it's not owned by. You know, western contemporary art we are contributing and you know, can work with our traditions and be contemporary you know and you know, be challenging and experimental and adaptive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we have systems that keep us all in check right yeah, which is each other, and the lands around us and what's possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I want to see our work thrive yeah I love seeing the you know transformational marking that you're doing um on people and seeing them out there you know, and uh, and thinking about that continuum of our designs, and, and and, seeing it everywhere again yeah, yeah, that's, and I would say part of that was some inspiration from the first time I went to Aotearoa to New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Yes, and just seeing people, just everybody, everyday people walking down the street with moko, you know it wasn't necessarily on the face, but everywhere, you know, on the arms. Wherever you could see people were wearing moko, just like you know every you know 20th person. You walked on the street in Auckland. You could see you know people marked with uh moko with Maori patterns, designs and symbols.
Speaker 1:I was just like, ah, that's just so badass yeah, I got an opportunity recently to take my children as part of a song and dance group.
Speaker 1:We did an exchange with a community in atiroa and I had been before and also witnessed the great like cook, stack cook. Thank you, maori people, for modeling strength to indigenous peoples globally. Um, but yeah, I had a chance to be there and and and see that, and also for my kids to witness. This was like the tattooing and the marking, but also what goes along with that right which is like the strength of culture and language yeah and, uh, you know, for them to see, like mcdonald's, having a sign saying how to order a coffee in maori yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:And then to think about that level of language acceptance and dissemination and proliferation compared to where our languages are at. You know, uh, it was just really incredible. So, yeah, they've done, um, and you know, more than their share in modeling that kind of strength and and giving us, uh, ways that we can also increase our strength, and that's the beauty of an ecology right. We're feeding each other. You know we're nourishing each other yeah ecology. Right, yeah, we're feeding each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we're nourishing each other yeah, big time just holding each other together. And you know, like uh nahan says, is you know, uh, you know, starting to mend those wounds?
Speaker 2:you know, stitch by stitch, yeah which is how you build a basket exactly stitch by stitch, as coiled together right you group them together for strength and you hold them together with the stitch and also the thing when I think about that is also the things, that some of the things, the most enjoyable moments, even though they're not necessarily connected to the work that I do in visual language, but it's seeing the way that those baskets are mended in the collection.
Speaker 2:So sometimes I'll take pictures when I remember. Take pictures because maybe I'm not going to be interested in how they mended it, but somebody will who is going back into. Well, hey, how would I fix this If I'm using it as a utilitarian object? How would I fix it? How would I make it increase its longevity? And I'm like wow, like that's so ingenious in terms of how they decided to mend that basket so it could continue to do its work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm gonna tell you one funny story, which is that my first birchbark basket I made my son was really young and I wrote a Canada Council grant to work with Dolores Purdeby. I was like, oh, I'll learn how to make birch bark basketry.
Speaker 1:It looks easier than cedar root and I started and we kind of did. You know, I didn't harvest that time but I did harvest later. But I had framed up a basket and I'd taken it home and I had a young dog at the time who was on the porch and I had left it on the table on the porch and the dog had shredded it. You know, at that time it felt really precious right Like I'd been living in the city. You know, she took me on as a student and I was just so ashamed of it that the dog had torn it apart and it was like just the rim or whatever. And I told dolores about it and I brought it and showed her and then she was like, oh, you can fix it like this, you know. And just like was like oh, to fix it, you put another piece inside, you do this and that.
Speaker 1:But it was just so funny because I was like it seemed beyond repair yeah but she was just like generous and like we could fix it yeah, which is that's a beautiful lesson in itself, right? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Like wow, yeah, yeah and I. It's just. That is such a beautiful lesson, is that? You know, no matter how tear to shit things are, it can always be fixed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can fix it. The land, our elders, the language, our own ingenuity, you know layer those together it gets strong again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it comes back to life. Well, I think that's an awesome place to end. I think you know I've really enjoyed being able to talk to you. It's cool to have another interior Salish artist. You know I don't consider myself a scholar anymore, but I would say you know you're definitely a scholar in the work that you do. Um, but yeah, uh, yeah, it's been really fun to have this conversation and to dive really deep into a variety of topics.
Speaker 1:So thank you, thank you. I also I do consider you a scholar, like you know, your visual uh practice the visual dictionary like that is taking an incredible amount of scholarship and we need to be able to, uh, redefine that scholarship right and it. That is our forms of the, those are our forms of scholarship, so those are the ones that are valuable to me.
Speaker 2:So yeah, cook's jam, thank you for talking today. Yeah, and I will just add, you know the reason I say that is because I just finished writing for the oxford handbook for the anthropology and archaeology of body modification, and if that's what being a scholar is, I don't fucking want it yeah, exactly that's what I'm like.
Speaker 1:We need to redefine what it is, because we need to find, we need to see ourselves there yep, big time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. This is awesome. Thank you, hey, everyone. Thanks for stopping by and taking this journey with me, uh, through this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll just ask that you would go and subscribe, uh, if you haven't already done so and if you have subscribed. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Uh, following this journey, I just want you to remember that, uh, no matter who you are, where you're from, what you've done or what you've been through, that you are amazing, that you are loved, and that we need you, here today and going into the future, so that we can transform this world for the better through our collective thoughts, actions, feelings and our compassion for each other as human beings.
Speaker 2:Head over to next week's episode, where I talk to Simon Ross. In this episode, we talk about the Banff Centre of the Arts and intercomic block work. Simon has received two sleeves and a front and back piece of intercom of black work, and so we discuss that process, as well as the world of Indigenous academia and Indigenous professional visual arts. Remember, every coffee helps me to bring you the content that you love, so head over to my Ko-Fi page and let's make something great together. And the last thing that I will ask you is to do me a solid and share this episode with somebody that you think will enjoy it. Thanks a lot and see you next week.