Aboriginal Gathering Place Speaker Series
We are very pleased to present artist and composer Elisa Harkins!

Please join us at the Aboriginal Gathering Place on
Thursday, November 21 at 11:30-12:30pm

Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma. Harkins received her BA from Columbia College Chicago and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Muscogee and Cherokee languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She has exhibited her work at The Broad Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, MCA Chicago, MOCA North Miami, and Vancouver Art Gallery. Harkins is currently a mentor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow, and she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe.

https://www.elisaharkins.org/

Emily Carr University’s President and Vice-Chancellor Gillian Siddall and ECU Associate Director of Aboriginal Programs Connie Watts were among the presidents, vice-presidents and reconciliation leads from 31 colleges and universities to attend the inaugural Perspectives on Reconciliation summer institute which took place across Yukon in Dawson City, Whitehorse and Carcross last month.

According to the Yukon College, “daily sessions, facilitated by Mathieya Alatini, former chief of the Kluane First Nation and Dr. Robert Daum of the Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, explored ways to advance reconciliation through various aspects of post-secondary institutions — services and space, programs and research, and policy and governance.”

With wisdom and guidance from Yukon First Nations Elders Angie Joseph-Rear, Randall Tetlichi, Elizabeth Moses and Philip Gatensby, the post-secondary leaders shared experiences, challenges and best practices with regards to bringing reconciliation into practice in a substantive, meaningful way within their respective institutions.

At the end of the week, participants proposed concrete steps to accomplish meaningful, permanent institutional movement toward reconciliation for their students, staff and faculty.

Gillian left feeling inspired to find further ways for Emily Carr to Indigenize its programming, she told the CBC at the time.

In particular, she zeroed in on a remark from Connie, who suggested the phrase “art and design” might be replaced by the word “creation,” to encourage a broader, less rigidly Eurocentric conception of creative work, she said.

Full article by Perrin Grauer :
https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2019/perspective-on-reconciliation-event-brings-insight-on-indigenization-inclusivity

“If everything in this world is a living part of you, how would you speak to it?”

For Connie Watts, Emily Carr University’s recently-hired Associate Director of Aboriginal Programs, there’s only one answer.

And Connie — over the course of describing her extraordinary journey, and the ways in which her unique experiences as an artist, designer and educator interact with her perspectives as a woman of Nuu-chah-nulth, Gitxsan and Kwakwaka’wakw ancestry — gently illustrates that answer again and again.

Consider the process of critiquing an artwork, she offers.

“You’re not critiquing an object, you’re critiquing a living thing,” she says.

“And if it was a living being in front of you, you wouldn’t disrespect it. You would look and find what the strengths were, and how you could help build those strengths. You would learn to understand the piece through the life of it.”

The same goes in any learning situation, whether art or life, she adds. In acknowledging the fundamental equality between ourselves and the world around us, we find ourselves responsible to care for the world as we care for our own flesh and blood.

Applying such a worldview to the governance of spaces such as universities, businesses or professional relationships, she notes, is part of what decolonization is about.

“In this world today, we’re looking for this odd thing called ‘perfection.’ But’s that’s a ‘imposed human concept’,” she says.

It’s also an idea that begs further questions, she adds, such as “whose idea of perfection are we referring to?” The same goes for academia, she notes. Whose idea of what constitutes academia are we pledging allegiance to when we accept or reject strategies regarding pedagogy, scholarship and research?

To commit to interrogating our assumptions about these terms — perfection, academia, self vs. other — is to commit to developing our understanding “about how you open doors to different ways of understanding and knowing.”

This task, Connie suggests, is a crucial undertaking for contemporary educators, and is very much at the heart of her own approach to education.

Full article and Profile of Connie Watts by Perrin Grauer :
https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2019/faculty-profile-connie-watts

Emily Carr University of Art + Design is pleased to announce the hiring of four full-time Indigenous faculty members.

Gina Adams joins ECU as Assistant Professor, Foundation; Christine Howard Sandoval comes on board as Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Art Praxis; Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill will be taking on a role as Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Art Praxis; and Jay White joins the university as Assistant Professor, Foundation.

They bring their years of scholarship, achievement and experience to the university as part of a cluster hiring initiative designed to introduce an interdisciplinary group of Indigenous academics to the university at the same time. Their hiring nearly doubles the number of tenured and tenure-track Indigenous faculty at the university.

“Indigenizing the university is part of the serious responsibility we have to each other, the land and the future,” says Dr. Gillian Siddall, President and Vice-Chancellor.

“We are thrilled to welcome these new faculty members to the ECU community as we open up discourses on the role of art, design and media in the reconciliation process. It is our duty to foster diverse and inclusive environments that encourage our students to be part of transforming the institution and reflect the varied perspectives of our community.”
Indigeneity is a core priority of ECU’s strategic plan, which includes an ongoing commitment to increase the number of full-time Indigenous faculty. In pursuing this goal, ECU reaffirms its commitment to acting on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

The university continues to work on integrating Indigenous knowledge systems into its curriculum, pedagogy, governance and research. To that end, ECU is currently recruiting a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Futurisms and Artistic Research to join the university starting in 2020.

Full article and faculty Bios by Perrin Grauer :
https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2019/emily-carr-university-hires-four-new-permanent-indigenous-faculty-members

The new initiative aims to transform Indigenous people’s experiences in the BC healthcare system. Led by Emily Carr’s Aboriginal Gathering Place and Health Design Lab, the Decolonizing the Healthcare System through Cultural Connections project will work to improve healthcare practices and systems that have historically marginalized and harmed Indigenous individuals and communities.

The Vancouver Foundation’s ‘Social Innovation & Systems Change Grant’ will enable project leaders Brenda Crabtree, Director of Emily Carr’s Aboriginal Programs, and Caylee Raber, Director of Emily Carr’s Health Design Lab, to initiate change to healthcare from an Indigenous perspective, through the innovative use of Indigenous-led arts and material practice to facilitate dialogue, relationship building and knowledge sharing between Indigenous people and healthcare practitioners.

These ongoing harms, the grant proposal explains, are due to an inadequate understanding amongst many healthcare practitioners and policymakers of Indigenous worldviews, lived experiences and the impacts of colonial policy on the health of Indigenous people.

Monitoring and evaluation throughout the entire process will also provide an evolving model for best practices, and help inform what will eventually become a replicable framework for similar initiatives in other jurisdictions. Ideally, insights will be shared with the First Nations Health Authority and Provincial Health Services Authority as the program reaches its third year.

Full story by Perrin Grauer: https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2019/aboriginal-gathering-place-health-design-lab-push-for-systems-level-change-with-decolonizing-healthcare-project


Urban Access is a program designed to provide an opportunity for Aboriginal people living in urban areas to access and explore traditional and contemporary Aboriginal art forms and materials. The intergenerational participants will reflect a diverse representation of our urban Aboriginal community.
The program focuses on developing, promoting and perpetuating cultural material practice and technical skills. Participants will explore and apply their own cultural context to the design of their projects. The tangible outcomes include a diverse range of objects created from traditional and contemporary materials including : Drum Making, Cedar Basketry, Beadwork, Moose Hair Tufting, and Printmaking.
Urban Access will be hosted in the Emily Carr Aboriginal Gathering Place and is dedicated to promoting Aboriginal identity in a respectful, safe, and culturally welcoming venue that reflects Aboriginal philosophies and values.

Applications are open to Aboriginal applicants aged 15 and over. Applications can be emailed (msound@ecuad.ca) or faxed ((604) 844-3089) by May 15, 2019.

2019UrbanAccessApplication

The Indigenous Matriarch 4 Lab housed at Emily Carr University plans to continue providing VR/AR/360 Workshops free for Indigenous participants over the spring/summer months. For more details on upcoming events and workshops email im4@ecuad.ca to join the mailing list. IM4 intends to provide Augmented-Reality focused workshops this upcoming May. Watch out for the IM4 newsletter highlighting achievements, Indigenous artists, and media creators in VR/AR/360.

A 1996 ECU graduate and member of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations, Vancouver Island-based artist and advocate Marianne Nicolson will be presented with the Emily Award, an annual honour to acknowledge outstanding achievements by distinguished university alumni.

An internationally exhibited artist and outspoken advocate for Indigenous land rights, Nicolson explores traditional Northwest Coast artistic expressions through contemporary media. Her multi-disciplinary practice encompasses photography, painting, carving, video, installation, writing and speaking.

Exhibited in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, Nuit Blanche in Toronto, and many others, many of Nicolson’s works are monumental in size and scope. Her public artworks are currently on display around the world, in the Vancouver International Airport, the Canadian Embassy in Amman, Jordan and the Canadian Embassy in Paris, France.