Indigenous Digital Artistic Hub: Talking Treaties in Tkaronto with Ange Loft

This presentation and workshop reflect on treaty-making and upkeep in what is now known as Toronto, through the lens of three main agreements: the Dish with One Spoon; the Covenant Chain and 1764 Treaty of Niagara; and the ‘Toronto Purchase’ with the Mississaugas of the Credit. Narratives of Nation-to-Nation gift-giving, kin building, resource sharing, and the role of oral memory are supported by excerpts from the 2016 Talking Treaties Audio Gallery and the 2019 film “By These Presents: ‘Purchasing’ Toronto”. Glimpses of the multi-year community-engaged process reveal the capacity of arts-based learning to foster personalized and active approaches to treaty knowledge.

Ange Loft is an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator from Kahnawake Kanienkehaka Territory, working in Toronto. She is an ardent collaborator, consultant, facilitator and mentor working in story-weaving, arts-based research, wearable sculpture, and Haudenosaunee history. Ange works within the community, art, and education sectors as a speaker, co-creator and advisory member. She’s also a vocalist with the Juno and Polaris nominated band YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN.

Register for the event and join in a conversation with Tannis Nielson on the pedagogy of place and the Simcoe Mural Project.

Date: May 7th, 2020

Time: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Indigenous Digital Artistic Hub relations of care for human and more-than-human be-ings

Welcome to the Indigenous Digital Artistic Hub: relations of care for human and more-than-human be-ings, a multiscalar site of Indigenous imaginings, futurisms, and land-ings that call us into radical relationality. The Indigenous Digital Artistic Hub is the first of a three-part series of online research-creation hubs curated by Karyn Recollet, featuring international and national Indigenous knowledge holders entitled: “We prepare a space: Conversations, happenings, and arts-based pedagogy.” The vision for this first iteration is to hold and sustain Indigenous artistic practice in accordance with the creation of radical ethical relationally between ourselves, our more than human kin, and lands. Particularly important are the ways in which we hold space for Ishpaadina as a space of water, land relationship, and celestial relationality. Join us as we transform New College into a hub of ‘happenings’ though conversation, artistic creation, and art-visim . 

In May 2020, New College was excited to host an artistic care hub during the annual Native American Indigenous Studies Association conference (NAISA), co-curated by Karyn Recollet (Assistant Professor, Women and Gender Studies Institute) and Jenny Blackbird (Ciimann/Kahuwe’ya/ Qajaq Indigenous Language initiative program coordinator, Centre for Indigenous Studies).  As well, the D.G. Ivey Library was excited to host Ange Loft’s Talking Treaties in Tkaronto multi-media installation. 

With the unfortunate cancellation of NAISA due to COVID-19,  the Indigenous Digital Artistic Hub, as an offering to our communities, we, alongside exceptional Indigenous artists and art-ivists offer creative ‘happenings’ including a multi-media ‘happening’ featuring Ange Loft’s Talking Treaties in Tkaronto;  a live digital studio visit with Nyle Johnston; a conversation with Tannis Nielson about pedagogy of place and the Simcoe Mural project; an activation of relationality and kinship through bead-work with Naomi Smith; reclaiming our bodies through somatics with Nazbah Tom; and an activation of relations of care through design and applique with Tala Tootoosis.