Ogimaa Mikana. Don’t be shy to speak Anishinaabemowin when it’s time. Bayfield St., Barrie, Ontario; Biskaabiiyang. North Bay, Ontario; Untitled (All Walls Crumble). Ottawa, Ontario; Anishinaabe manoomin inaakonigewin gosha. Peterborough, Ontario.
Ogimaa Mikana is an artist collective founded by Susan Blight (Anishinaabe, Couchiching) and Hayden King (Anishinaabe, Gchi’mnissing) in January 2013. Through public art, site-specific intervention, and social practice, we assert Anishinaabe self-determination on the land and in the public sphere.
The Ogimaa Mikana Project is an effort to restore Anishinaabemowin place-names to the streets, avenues, roads, paths, and trails of Gichi Kiiwenging (Toronto) - transforming a landscape that often obscures or makes invisible the presence of Indigenous peoples. Starting with a small section of Queen St., re-naming it Ogimaa Mikana (Leader's Trail) in tribute to all the strong women leaders of the Idle No More movement, the project hopes to expand throughout downtown and beyond.
“The Anishinaabeg endure. We do so through settler colonial time, and across space. We do so in contention. Untitled (All Walls Crumble) considers this movement. To be Indigenous in the city is so often a struggle for recognition, to be seen, and to resist the erasure that is common in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, etc. Yet with recognition also comes appropriation and co-optation. In this unease, we consider the benefits of erasure, or at least, covert movement.
Inspired by stories of our relatives and ancestors counting coup, and Basil Johnson’s description of warfare more generally, the Ogimaa Mikana Project considers the tension between visibility and invisibility to challenge settler colonial logic. Against a crumbling wall holding up Ottawa’s major highway - scheduled for demolition and replacement - we draw attention to the ways the settler state recycles itself, and by extension, affirms its legitimacy. We see it and resist in provocative ways that mirror a there/not there presence.
Against this crumbling wall, we reclaim space for an anti-recognition: to speak to each other, as Anishinaabeg, as communities pushed out by gentrification, as the colonized, and offer a refrain and a sign of defiance: “Wakayakoniganag da pangishin. Nin d'akiminan kagige oga ahindanize.”
Currently on view at the STRAAT Museum and gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands is the group exhibition, "Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions." This exceptional exhibition features the work of four eminent contemporary artists of Native American heritage, including Jaque Fragua, Danielle SeeWalker, Kaplan Bunce, and Anthony Garcia Sr.
In line with the institution's enduring commitment to familiarizing the public with the multifarious dimensions of global street art and graffiti culture, this exhibition pays tribute to a less-recognized subculture therein. "Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions" addresses the unifying spirit that pervades a culturally diverse society, while also highlighting the deep-seated historical connections of Indigenous artists and their continued engagement with public space painting.
Kaplan Bunce, one of the participating artists, has remarked, "To me, the contemporary urban art landscape resembles a fusion of culture-rich exchanges of artistic practices from around the world. I perceive unity within the community, and by perpetually embracing my Indigenous identity in these spaces, I am forging ahead on a path created by those who have left their marks on walls since time immemorial."
For #TurtleTuesday + #TwoForTuesday, two different versions of Two Long Neck Turtles, 2019, by Reuben Balarda Manakgu (Mandjuringunj clan, West Arhnem Land, b.1965)
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 26 x 43cm & 40 x 50 cm
I keep coming back to Annie. An incomparable artist and storyteller. She is deeply missed but her genius, care and strength lives on through the worlds she drew.
let’s meet at the confluence is a suggestion to all Calgarians to consider the site where the Elbow flows into the Bow river and question how settler-colonial history is privileged in public and site specific art. The piece references the different histories of gathering at the confluence of the waters, histories that long predate Calgary, Alberta. Despite histories of Indigenous uses of the land, queer cruising, sex work, trade, the arrival of the railway, and the North West Mounted Police, the site of the confluence is often overlooked and rarely used as the great meeting place that it once was. The simple map and text invites an audience of all backgrounds, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, to make their way from the The New Gallery along the Bow river to the confluence viewpoint and to consider their proximity to one another. The text is in English and the word confluence is repeated in multiple languages including Blackfoot, Cantonese, and Cree to honour the artist’s Michif roots and the specific location of the billboard on Treaty 7 and in Chinatown, pointing to the history of many different people living along the rivers.