{"id":16903,"date":"2015-11-03T09:57:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T14:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=16186"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:33","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:33","slug":"fass-blog-walking-with-our-sisters-and-other-journeys-by-sandra-dyck-director-of-the-carleton-university-art-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/fass-blog-walking-with-our-sisters-and-other-journeys-by-sandra-dyck-director-of-the-carleton-university-art-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"FASS Blog – Walking With Our Sisters and Other Journeys by Sandra Dyck (Director of the 杏吧原创 University Art Gallery)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n FASS Blog – Walking With Our Sisters and Other Journeys by Sandra Dyck (Director of the 杏吧原创 University Art Gallery)\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"Melody
Melody McKiver \/ Walking With Our Sisters<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of three weeks, beginning on September 25th<\/sup>, 2015, 杏吧原创 University Art Gallery, in partnership with Gallery 101, hosted Walking With Our Sisters<\/em> (WWOS), a commemorative installation honouring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people of Canada and the United States. They are sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, cousins, wives, grandmothers, and partners. They are not forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cedar
Cedar laid down on floor (Photo by Sandra Dyck). Boughs of fresh cedar were laid down on the floor of the gallery, prior to the taping down of the red fabric that demarcated the lodge.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Setting
Setting up the tipi (Photo by Sandra Dyck).Pinock Smith and his crew moved the tipi from the lawn outside Robertson Hall to the lawn between St. Patrick\u2019s Building and Russell House on Friday, September 18th. The Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education graciously lent the tipi for to the gallery during the presentation of WWOS.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many members of the local Indigenous community and Ottawa organizing committee formally welcomed the bundle\u2014the contents of the Walking With Our Sisters installation\u2014in a ceremony at Minwaashin Lodge in early September. On a beautiful day later that month, Pinock Smith, an Algonquin master canoe-maker from Kitigan Zibi, arrived on campus to move 杏吧原创 University\u2019s tipi to the lawn between the St. Patrick\u2019s Building and Russell House. Pinock and his crew deftly set up the tipi, wrapping the canvas exterior around the interior framework of long, lean poles of black spruce, and before leaving, laying down fresh cedar boughs on the grass inside. While I stood watching the set-up, a stranger approached to offer a gift of sacred medicines\u2014sage, tobacco, cedar, and sweetgrass\u2014wrapped in red cloth. I was surprised and touched, but as I came to understand, Walking With Our Sisters<\/em> is founded on countless such acts of generosity and kindness.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first day of installation began with a sunrise ceremony, held in the <\/span>tipi on a dark, chilly Monday. It was led by the Cree Elder Thomas Louttit, one of many local Elders who guided the organizing committee and volunteered onsite. A small sacred fire burned in the center of the tipi, as it would every day during WWOS. At the ceremony\u2019s <\/span>conclusion we emerged to the pale, pastel light of early morning. The tipi became a cherished place where visitors gathered around the fire, listening intently as Thomas and his fellow Firekeepers generously shared their stories, their knowledge, and always, their humour.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Completed
Completed tipi beside St. Pat\u2019s (Sandra Dyck)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many volunteers worked together for four days to realize the bundle\u2019s installation. They laid the floor with neat rows of cedar boughs over which huge swaths of brilliant red fabric were taped down, demarcating the lodge. On the second day, they opened the boxes holding the installation\u2019s heart\u2014more than 1800 pairs of moccasin vamps created by people across North America, who responded in overwhelming numbers to a public call issued by the project\u2019s founder, the M\u00e8tis artist Christi Belcourt. Pinock returned on the third day to place a five-foot birchbark canoe within the larger, canoe-shaped configuration of vamps at the centre of the lodge and to hang a bower of intertwined red alder saplings at its threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Looking
Looking up inside the tipi (Photo by Sandra Dyck)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Most of the vamps were arrayed on the floor in precise rows around the gallery\u2019s perimeter, beginning with a group of blue vamps sent from Vancouver\u2019s Downtown Eastside, in honour of the neighbourhood\u2019s long history of advocacy for the rights of Indigenous women. From the floor the vamps bloomed forth in an ineffable profusion of materials, colours, symbols, and images. The vamps powerfully, and with a protean emotional force and energy, evoked the spirit of the women whose lives they honour. As Christi Belcourt told President Roseann Runte, this collective honouring is, for her, the vital purpose of Walking With Our Sisters<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WWOS opening ceremony saw the gallery radically transformed into a space for <\/span>ceremony. A live audio broadcast brought the afternoon\u2019s events to the overflow tents set up outdoors, where Thomas Louttit led a pipe ceremony. Inside, the traditional Cree healer and Elder Juliana Matoush Snowboy oversaw a ceremony for family members. Several rose to speak aloud their grief and anguish, to bear witness to their loved one, and to have the vamps they had created formally feasted <\/span>in to the bundle. One family drove ten hours, from Ouj\u00e9-Bougoumou, to participate; for another, it was the first time they had spoken in public about their pain. It was a deeply moving event, marked by courageous acts of truth-telling.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Melody
Melody McKiver \/ Walking With Our Sisters<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the three extraordinary weeks that followed, nearly 6000 people visited Walking With Our Sisters, including more than 1500 杏吧原创 students. Each visitor removed their shoes, was greeted and smudged by an Elder or Helper, and took a tobacco tie in hand before entering the lodge to walk beside the vamps. WWOS created an inclusive public space in which these journeys could occur. It created countless opportunities\u2014in the gallery, in the tipi, and in the classroom\u2014for the forging of relationships, the creation of dialogue, and the sharing of knowledge. Most importantly, it enabled diverse peoples to come together to honour, to remember, and to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Melody
Melody McKiver \/ Walking With Our Sisters<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Juliana
Juliana Matoush Snowboy and Sharp Dopler (Photo by Sandra Dyck). Juliana and Sharp were among the local Elders who guided the WWOS Ottawa committee, providing guidance on ceremony and protocol and volunteering many hours in the gallery during the presentation of WWOS.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Gabby
Gabby and Brittany and Sandra (Photo by Fiona Wright). Gabby Richichi-Fried and Brittany Matthews with CUAG director Sandra Dyck, after the conclusion of the WWOS closing ceremony. Gabby and Brittany are two of the four co-leads of the WWOS organizing committee. Gabby is an Indigenous Studies undergraduate student at 杏吧原创.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On the cold October day we took the tipi down, I saw on its inner walls the beautiful residue of a month\u2019s worth of smoke from the sacred fire that had burned within. It symbolized, for me, the innumerable collective and cumulative acts of honouring enabled by Walking With Our Sisters, which opened our minds, our hearts, and all our senses. As Paul Allaire, a M\u00e9tis Firekeeper who volunteered many hours in the tipi, said one day, sometimes the longest journey a human being can take is from their head to their heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandra Dyck
\n<\/em>Director
\n<\/em>杏吧原创 University Art Gallery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CUAG thanks Gallery 101, the Elders, Helpers, and Firekeepers, the Walking With Our Sisters national and local organizing committees, and the many other volunteers who embraced WWOS and made possible its presentation in Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking With Our Sisters Ottawa was recently honoured by the Canadian Museums Association with an \u201cAward of Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions \u2013 Cultural Heritage\u201d and an \u201cAward for Outstanding Achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the course of three weeks, beginning on September 25th, 2015, 杏吧原创 University Art Gallery, in partnership with Gallery 101, hosted Walking With Our Sisters (WWOS), a commemorative installation honouring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people of Canada and the United States. They are sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, cousins, wives, grandmothers, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[37,52,120,90],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-16903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deans-blog","category-events","category-fass-newsletter-blog","category-fass-news","tag-walking-with-our-sisters"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16903"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34210,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16903\/revisions\/34210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}