Posted on March 06, 2020 | Updated March 06, 2020, 11:06AM
The artists and ECU students behind the recent Aboriginal Students’ Exhibition talk politics, inclusivity and the challenges of being Indigenous in a settler institution.
Diane Blunt, Megan Jensen and Sydney Pickering all agree: the name came first.
Here.
Sitting in the Aboriginal Gathering Place, the artists and ECU students (and three of the four curators behind this year’s Aboriginal student art show) say that once they’d landed on that title, they knew it was right. (Here’s fourth curator, Kelsey Sparrow, was unavailable for interview.)
“The name was born from everything that was going on, everything that’s still going on now,” says Diane (who is of Ojibway and European ancestry, and a member of the Kawartha Nishnawbe First Nation).
She points to some of the current issues involving Indigenous rights within Canada, including the local, national and international showing of solidarity with members of the Wet’suwet’en nation and other Indigenous peoples who stand in opposition to the “current environmentally invasive and destructive projects” being built on unceded territories; the ongoing tragedy ofMissing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; and the broader and arguably failed project of reconciliation in Canada.
“We wanted to be relevant and react to what’s happening. It was like, ‘We’re HERE,’” she exclaims, bringing her open palm down on the table in emphasis.
Sydney (who is of Lil’wat and European ancestry and a member of Lil’wat Nation) notes that the decision to refer explicitly to political issues was one they all had to warm up to.
Full article by : https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/intersecting-paths-a-conversation-with-the-curators-behind-here