Co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

I am the Executive Director of Centre d’art daphne, the first Indigenous artist-run centre in Tiohtià:ke/ Mooniyang/ Montreal. I am also an independent curator, art educator and art historian. I identify as Michi Saagiig (Mississauga) Anishinaabe and Irish-Welsh descent. I am a citizen of Hiawatha First Nation at Rice Lake, Ontario. My curatorial work, art practice and research, articulates narrative and memory in the context of family and cultural history, and reflects on cultural identity, art education and self-representation.

November 13
9:15am – 9:30am – Welcome Remarks: Groundwork for Programming

Co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Reuben Friend (Ngāti Maniapoto, Pākehā) is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist, curator and writer. He currently works as the General Manager Community and Partnerships at Porirua City Council and is the former Director of Pātaka Art+Museum in Porirua, Wellington. Board positions include co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, committee member of the Te Haerewa Māori Advisory Committee at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, member of the Creative New Zealand NZ@Venice Executive Advisory Committee, board member of the Pātaka Foundation, and committee member of the Wellington Sculpture Trust. Major curatorial projects in 2021 include Toi Koru: “Sandy Adsett” at Pātaka Art+Museum, “Pan Austro Nesia” at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, and “Naadohbii: To Draw Water” at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada.

November 13
9:15am – 9:30am – Welcome Remarks: Groundwork for Programming

Moderator

Dr. heather ahtone is Director of Curatorial Affairs at First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She and her team developed the inaugural exhibitions for the 175,000 sq. ft. facility the stories, culture, and arts of the 39 Tribes of Oklahoma as a national story of survival, resistance, and resilience. She has worked in the Native arts community since 1993 and has an established career as a curator, arts writer, and researcher. Additionally, Dr. ahtone is serving as founding faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts’ MFA program in Arts and Cultural Administration. ahtone has worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (now MoCNA), the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts (Santa Fe, New Mexico), with Ralph Appelbaum Associates (New York), and in several positions at the University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK), where she served as the curator of Native American art at OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art for over six years. Her current research explores the intersection between tribal cultural knowledge and contemporary arts.

November 13
9:30am – 10:15am – Building Solidarities Through Creative Practice

Director of Exhibitions and Collections, Chief Curator at the Remai Modern

Director of Exhibitions and Collections/Chief Curator, Remai Modern, curator and writer Michelle Jacques was born in Toronto to parents of Caribbean origin who immigrated to Canada in the 1960s. She was raised on Dish With One Spoon Territory, and began working in art museums shortly after completing her graduate work at York University, where her research focused on thinking about Canadian Modernism through the lenses of feminism and critical race theory.

In 2012, she moved to Lekwungen Territory, to take up the post of Chief Curator at the AGGV. While at the AGGV, she facilitated projects with numerous contemporary artists; co-curated major retrospectives of the work of Canadian artists Anna Banana and Jock Macdonald; created exhibitions that offered critical entry into the work of local legend Emily Carr; and developed installations that used the AGGV’s collection to evoke cross-temporal and cross-cultural conversations.

November 13
9:30am – 10:15am – Building Solidarities Through Creative Practice

Panellist

Pablo N. Barrera joined Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center as the inaugural Curatorial Fellow before being promoted to Associate Curator. In 2024, he stepped down from his previous role and was named Adjunct Curator appointed to the upcoming retrospective, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Honor Song, scheduled to open in spring of 2025. Pablo collaborates with local art communities to produce exhibitions and explore innovative strategies that support formal/informal learning of art. He is committed to raising public awareness of Indigenous artistic practices through generating gallery experiences that invite audiences of all backgrounds to engage with art. Pablo has independently curated shows in London, Seoul and New York.

November 13
9:30am – 10:15am – Building Solidarities Through Creative Practice

Panellist

Erica Violet Lee is a nehiyaw writer, scholar, and community organizer. With an educational background in political and feminist theory, Lee’s work centers on decolonization and social activism with an emphasis on uplifting Indigenous women. Her political writing has appeared in The Guardian, the Globe and Mail, and CBC Indigenous while her poetry has appeared in Brick, Contemporary Verse 2, and Held Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, On The Prairies We Will Live Forever, is forthcoming in 2024 with Penguin Random House Canada. Lee lives in Treaty Six Territory (Saskatoon).

November 13
9:30am – 10:15am – Building Solidarities Through Creative Practice

Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery

Crystal Mowry is Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG). Her work often explores the tension between perceived authenticity and troubled forms of representation. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new projects. Her curatorial work includes group exhibitions such as The Brain is wider than the Sky, I’ll be your Mirror and The Perennials, as well as solo projects in 2020 with Deanna Bowen and Aislinn Thomas. Her solo projects with Ontario-based artists Maggie Groat and Ernest Daetwyler have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. In 2013 she co-curated Romancing the Anthropocene, one of the three zones commissioned by the City of Toronto’s for its annual Nuit Blanche event. She has written curatorial and experimental texts for various artist-focused projects, including Still Move: Brendan Fernandes, a monograph on the performance and installation work of Brendan Fernandes for which she also served as an editor. She regularly participates on advisory panels and industry juries, most notably for the Sobey Art Award (2015), the RBC Canadian Painting Competition (2018), and the Scotiabank Photography Award (2021).

November 13
9:30am – 10:15am – Building Solidarities Through Creative Practice

Senior Curator, Curatorial Manager at the Remai Modern Gallery

Sally Frater is the Senior Curator/Curatorial Manager at the Remai Modern Gallery and past Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Kansas. She holds an honours BA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph, a post-graduate diploma in Museum Management and Curatorship from Fleming College and an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art/The University of Manchester (with distinction). She has curated exhibitions at A Space Gallery, The Art Gallery of Peterborough, the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, the McMaster Museum of Art and The Print Studio. Her writing has appeared in Border Crossings Magazine, Fuse, C Magazine, Blackflash, NKA and Canadian Art. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is a member of IKT, the International Association of Contemporary Curators and a co-founder of Third Space Art Projects. She was a fellow the Core Critical Studies program at the Glassell School at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

November 13
10:30am – 12:00pm – Complicated Entanglements: Black and Indigenous Historical Intersections in the Plains

Panellist

Dr. Ryan W. Booth specializes in the history of the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries up to World War I. His two primary interests are in Indigenous and military history. He regularly teaches the US history survey to 1877, Native American history, US-Indian Wars, and courses for history majors. He is also a faculty member in WSU’s Native Programs and teaches a special course for the Tribal Nation Building Program, which focuses on training future tribal leaders. In 2019-2020, Dr. Booth served as a Fulbrigh-Nehru Fellow based in Kolkata, India. Keahu, Dr. Booth’s tribal name, is a member of the Upper Skagit Tribe in Northwest Washington.

November 13
10:30am – 12:00pm – Complicated Entanglements: Black and Indigenous Historical Intersections in the Plains

Panellist

Alaina E. Roberts is an award-winning historian who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. This focus originates from her own family history: her father’s ancestors survived Indian Removal’s Trail of Tears and were owned as slaves by Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians.

Currently an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Roberts holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She writes, teaches, and presents public talks about Black and Native history in the West, family history, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indian Nations), Native American enrollment politics, and Indigeneity in North America and across the globe.

November 13
10:30am – 12:00pm – Complicated Entanglements: Black and Indigenous Historical Intersections in the Plains

Moderator

Photo credit: Mika Abbott

David Garneau is a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. He is a painter, curator and critical art writer who engages creative expressions of Indigenous contemporary ways of being. Garneau curated Kahwatsiretátie: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial (Montreal, 2020) with assistance from Faye Mullen and rudi aker; co-curated, with Kathleen Ash Milby, Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2017); With Secrecy and Despatch, with Tess Allas, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia (2016); and Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery (2015). Garneau has given keynotes on issues such as: mis/appropriation; re/conciliation; public art; museum displays; and Indigenous contemporary art. His performance, Dear John, featuring the spirit of Louis Riel meeting with John A. Macdonald statues, was presented in Regina, Kingston, and Ottawa. David recently installed a large public art work, the Tawatina Bridge paintings, in Edmonton. His recent still life paintings, Dark Chapters, curated by Arin Fay, will tour Canada and be accompanied by a book in fall 2025. This year, Garneauwas awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art: Outstanding Achievement, and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.

November 13
1:00pm – 2:30pm – On Land: Artistic Relations to Space and Place

Panellist

Diedrick Brackens is best known for his woven tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through the artist’s autobiography, broader themes of African American and queer identity, as well as American history. Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making to create both abstract and figurative works. Often depicting moments of male tenderness, Brackens culls from African and African American literature, poetry and folklore as source. Beginning his process through the hand-dying of cotton, a material he deliberately uses in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens’ oeuvre presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration. Brackens utilizes both commercial dyes and atypical pigments such as wine, tea and bleach to create his vibrant, intricately-woven tapestries that investigate historical gaps, interlacing the present with his singular magical realist worldview.

November 13
1:00pm – 2:30pm – On Land: Artistic Relations to Space and Place

Panellist

Crystal Z Campbell, 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, is a visual artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descents whose works center the underloved. Working through archives and omissions, Campbell finds complex­ity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s recent works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps in the narrative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal” cell line, ponder the role of a political monument and displacement in a Swedish coastal landscape, salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification, or reference traces of US colonialism in the Philippines.

November 13
1:00pm – 2:30pm – On Land: Artistic Relations to Space and Place

Panellist

Yatika Starr Fields is a Native American painter, muralist and street artist, born in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His artworks were shown at numerous galleries and museums, including the APEC Young Artist Exhibition and recently in the Sam Noble Museum.

Fields’ artworks explores the themes of family, community, and cultural diversity to illustrate its significance in societal norms for Native Americans.

Yatika Fields grew up in an artistic family and followed in the footsteps of his parents, Tom and Anita Fields, who are both Native artists themselves. Yatika Fields is part of the Cherokee, Creek and Osage tribes. He is also a Bear clan member. In the Creek and Osage tribes, he is named Yvtekv (meaning “interpreter”), and has some multivalent projects that are open to the audience. The name Ho-moie was also given to him from the members of the Osage tribes. Fields’ techniques involve using oil, acrylic, and watercolour mediums on canvases and paper to create his works of art. He utilizes bright, vibrant colours which are visible in his large illustrations. His mural pieces are expressed inside galleries and outside on the streets, which is where he continues to produce his graffiti art.

November 13
1:00pm – 2:30pm – On Land: Artistic Relations to Space and Place

Facilitator

Dr. Joy James is an American political philosopher, academic, and author. She is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. Her books include Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Shadowboxing, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists, Resisting State Violence, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. James worked closely with Angela Davis, who was on the faculty, during a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz. James edited The Angela Y. Davis Reader, emphasizing Davis’s liberation theory and democratic praxis. Facilitated by Dr. Joy James | Photo: Cole Getty

November 13
2:45pm – 4:15pm – Solidarity Building Workshop

Artist

Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. In 2018, Arcand was shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her practice includes installation, photography and design and is characterized by a visionary and subversive reclamation and indigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics. She recently graduated from University nuhelotʼįne thaiyotsʼį nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills and is a member of Wolf Babe, an art and curatorial collective based in Ottawa.

November 13 at 6:00PM–9:00PM

Joi T. Arcand: ᐯᐦᐯᔭᐠ ᐆᒥᓯ ᐃᓯ ᐁᐊᑎᐦᑌᑭ ᑕᑿᐦᐃᒥᓈᓇ (pêh-pêyak ômisi isi ê-atihtêki takwahiminâna)
End of corridor outside Marquee Gallery, Level 3

Artist

Althea Thauberger is an artist, filmmaker and educator known for place-based experimental documentary projects that emerge from collaborative research and production processes. Her work—spanning photography, film, video, and performance—explores relationships between community stories and geopolitical histories. She was born in Saskatoon, and is of settler Scandinavian and Black Sea German descent.

Thauberger’s recent exhibitions include the Kaunas Biennial (2021); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2020); The Toronto Biennial of Art (2019), The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (2019); The National Gallery of Canada (2019); La musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017), and the inaugural Karachi Biennale 2017.

November 13 at 6:00PM–9:00PM

Althea Thauberger: Der Kleiekotzer (The Bran Puker)
Remai Modern Connect Gallery, Level 1

Artist

Mahlet Cuff is a AfroCaribbean queer femme born and based in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty 1). They are an interdisciplinary artist, curator, filmmaker, arts cultural worker, writer, film programmer, DJ, performance and sound artist. Through a primarily lens based arts practice they are interested in themes of memory, erasure, Black feminist citational praxis and interrogating their own personal familial archives. They use mediums of photography and video work as a way to look at the past as a way to re-envision the present and to create new futures. Cuff’s work has been exhibited in Winnipeg, Toronto, Windsor, New York, Vancouver and Hamilton, Paris and Milwaukee. Within their writing practice, they strive to make connections between contemporary art and socio political issues.

November 13 at 7:00PM–9:00PM

Panellist

Felicia Gay is a community member of the northern island community of Cumberland House, SK, on Treaty 5 territory and is a member of the Opaskwayak Swampy Cree Nation, MB. Felicia is a curator working with the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Before her role as curator, she was the gallery’s first Mitacs Fellow, a cross-appointment with the University of Regina, as a Ph.D. candidate. Her research investigates Swampy Cree-centred curatorial methodology and praxis in institutional spaces. In 2021, she received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Scholarship, and in 2018, she received the Saskatchewan Arts Award for Leadership. In 2006, with Joi Arcand, Felicia co-founded and was artistic director of the Red Shift Gallery, and in 2025, Felicia received the King Charles Coronation Medal for her impact on the arts in the prairies.

November 14
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) The Family Archive

Panellist

Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. In 2018, Arcand was shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her practice includes installation, photography and design and is characterized by a visionary and subversive reclamation and indigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics.

November 14
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) The Family Archive

Panellist

Paul Seesequasis is Willow Cree, a registered band member of Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree Nation, a curator, writer, editor, researcher and journalist residing in Saskatchewan. He is the author of the award-winning photobook ‘Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun’ (Knopf Canada) in 2019. His 2024 photobook, ‘People of the Watershed: The Photography of John Macfie’ was released by Figure.1|McMichael on May 07, 2024 and exhibited at The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, from May to November. “One of the 10 best things about visual arts in 2024.” – The Globe and Mail. He has several books upcoming, including Gaze (Knopf), planned for completion in 2026.

November 14
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) The Family Archive

Artist

Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. In 2018, Arcand was shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her practice includes installation, photography and design and is characterized by a visionary and subversive reclamation and indigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics. She recently graduated from University nuhelotʼįne thaiyotsʼį nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills and is a member of Wolf Babe, an art and curatorial collective based in Ottawa.

November 14 at 7:00 PM–10:30 PM

Opening Reception for Joi T. Arcand: ayâtaskisow and The Memory of Trees
Salon and Galleries

Performance

Jaime Black-Morsette is a Red River Métis artist and activist, with family scrip signed in the community of St Andrews, Manitoba. Jaime lives and works on her home territory near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Founder of The REDress project in 2009, Black-Morsette has been using their art practice as a way to gather community and create action and change around the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls across Turtle Island for over a decade. Black-Morsette’s interdisciplinary art practice includes immersive film and video, installation art, photography and performance art practices. Her work explores themes of memory, identity, place and resistance.

November 14 at 8:00pm – 8:30pm
A performance by Jaime Black-Morsette
Sim Gallery

Associate Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery

Lillian O’Brien Davis (she/her) is the Associate Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position as Curator of Collections and Contemporary Art Engagement at the Goldfarb Gallery of York University. She has curated independent projects with Nuit Blanche Toronto, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto), and the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba. Her writing as appeared in BlackFlash magazine, Canadian Art online, C Magazine, Insight Magazine, and RACAR Art History Journal. From 2021 until 2025 Lillian was one of two inaugural Visiting Curators at the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery. In 2023, Lillian was the recipient of the David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence. Lillian was born in Tkaronto (Toronto) and she holds a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies and a BA Hons. In the History of Art and English Literature from the University of Toronto.

November 15
9:30am – 10:30am – (Theatre) Sharing Seeds: A Conversation with Api’soomakha & Christina Battle.

Panellist

William Singer III is a member of the Kainai Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Named after his great, great uncle Running Coyote who was a Blackfoot warrior, he carries on his legacy by surviving in two worlds and maintaining the Blackfoot worldview. His main profession is as an artist/illustrator with 40 years of experience. His work is deeply rooted in the Blackfoot worldview and uses painting to teach. Along with his art, He devotes a lot of time being an entrepreneur and an environmental and political activist, utilizing Blackfoot Ecological Knowledge and protocol. Other areas of interest include food security and sovereignty, Blackfoot science and physics, watershed health and grassland restoration. Api’soomaahka has been involved in many spiritual, cultural events and activities and has always been an advocate for First Nations rights, knowledge and wellness. He currently operates Naapi’s Garden and Katoyiss Seed Bank and is a member Kainai Ecosystem Protection Association (KEPA) and the Oldman Watershed Council (OWC).

November 15
9:30am – 10:30am – (Theatre) Sharing Seeds: A Conversation with Api’soomakha & Christina Battle.

Panellist

Christina Battle is an artist based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Her practice focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster: its complexity, and the intricacies that are entwined within it. She looks to disaster as a series of intersecting processes including social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic … which are implicated not only in how disaster is caused but also in how it manifests, is responded to, and overcome. Through this research, Battle looks closer to both online models and plant systems for strategies to learn from, and for ways we might help to frame and strengthen such response. Much of this work extends from her 2020 PhD dissertation which looked closer to community responses to disaster: the ways in which they take shape, and especially to how artistic and online models might help to frame and strengthen such response.

November 15
9:30am – 10:30am – (Theatre) Sharing Seeds: A Conversation with Api’soomakha & Christina Battle.

A special conversation celebrating the publication launch of Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is Executive Director of Forge Project, Taghkanic, NY and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies, Bard College. She is curator of the exhibitions, Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, currently on view at the Hessel Museum of Art; Impossible Music, co-curated with Raven Chacon and Stavia Grimani at the Miller ICA, and the touring exhibitions, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts co-curated with Dylan Robinson, and* ᑕᑯᒃᓴᐅᔪᒻᒪᕆᒃ Double Vision*, featuring textiles, prints and drawings by Jessie Oonark, Janet Kigusiuq, and Victoria Mamnguqsualuk. She was the Senior Curator for the inaugural 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the fifty-eighth Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media collective Isuma; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Her notable essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” in the documenta 14 Reader; “Outlawed Social Life,” in South as a State of Mind; and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” in Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (New Museum/MIT Press, 2020).

November 15
10:30am – 10:45am – Announcement: Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance

Click here to visit publication website

Secretary, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Zoe Black (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Pākehā) is the deputy director of Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her curatorial practice focuses on community development and advocating for critically underrepresented craft and object art forms. For the past three years she was Norwegian Crafts’ Curator in Residence, working on projects that create a dialogue between Indigenous making practices in Aotearoa and Sápmi.

November 15
11:00am – 12:00pm – (Theatre) International Cultural Exchange Through Delegations Initiatives And Gathering

Panellist

James Tapsell-Kururangi (Te Arawa, Tainui, Ngāti Porou) is an artist based in Ōtautahi, where he is the Director of The Physics Room. Previously, project facilitator of Papatūnga at Te Tuhi in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2023 – 2024. James is a practicing artist whose moving image works build from his family whakapapa, his geological ties to place, sites of significant histories and oral histories told to him by his family. Recent exhibitions include: Leap to the Place of Two Pools, Circuit Artist Moving Image, My throat a shelter, The Physics Room, Ōtautahi, 2023; Indigenous Histories, Museo de Arte de Sāo Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Sāo Paulo, 2023.

November 15
11:00am – 12:00pm – (Theatre) International Cultural Exchange Through Delegations Initiatives And Gathering

Panellist

Chloe Cull is Pouarataki Curator Māori at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Previous curatorial roles include Arts Programme Coordinator at Te Ara Ātea in Rolleston and Assistant Curator at Govett Brewster Art Gallery in Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Chloe’s recently curated exhibitions include Whāia te Taniwha (co-curated with Madi Williams and Kirsty Dunn, 2024); John Vea: Ini Mini Mani Mou (2025) Edith Amituanai and Sione Tuívailala Monū: Toloa Tales (co-curated with Melanie Oliver, 2024), and Te Rā: The Māori Sail(co-curated with Felicity Milburn, 2023). Chloe is also a Trustee of Paemanu Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual Arts Trust.

November 15
11:00am – 12:00pm – (Theatre) International Cultural Exchange Through Delegations Initiatives And Gathering

Panellist

Melanie Tangaere Baldwin (Ngāti Porou) is a māmā, artist and curator based in Tūranga Nui a Kiwa Gisborne. Melanie’s work is largely focused on Mana Wāhine, Indigenous and marginalised peoples, and consistently questions the effects of capitalism, imperialism and settler colonialism on notions of power, visibility, beauty and worth. She is interested in expressing the necessity of connection – of whānau, and community – throughout her mahi.

November 15
11:00am – 12:00pm – (Theatre) International Cultural Exchange Through Delegations Initiatives And Gathering

Moderator

Nandini Gokhale is an emerging museum technician and administrator living in Vanier. As a graduate from Algonquin’s museum studies program and Carleton’s Bachelor of the Humanities, she has worked on projects ranging from archaeological object conservation to research and development for digital installations. She is interested in continuing to expand her exhibit installation technician skills while also becoming more involved in exhibit development projects.

November 15
1:30pm – 2:30pm – (Theatre) Carrying the Fire: Curators, Kinship, and the Future of Practice

Panellist

Cass Gardiner is an Anishinaabe Algonquin filmmaker, curator, and writer from Kebaowek First Nation in what we now call Quebec, Canada. She directed the short film JANELLE NILES: INCONVENIENT, part of Citizen Minutes Season 2 JANELLE NILES: INCONVENIENT premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in 2023 and is streaming on CBC Gem and Crave. She produced the short documentary JEWELS HUNT, which was supported by ITVS and TFI, and broadcast on PBS Independent Lens in 2020.

November 15
1:30pm – 2:30pm – (Theatre) Carrying the Fire: Curators, Kinship, and the Future of Practice

Panellist

Feather Miigwans is an artist and curator from the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians whose transdisciplinary practice bridges technology, fashion, storytelling, and exhibition-making to center Indigenous knowledge systems and futurisms. She creates immersive experiences using augmented reality, virtual reality, and 360° media to activate ancestral memory and explore survivance through digital ceremony.

November 15
1:30pm – 2:30pm – (Theatre) Carrying the Fire: Curators, Kinship, and the Future of Practice

Director of Operations, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Liz Barron is a Métis arts powerhouse with deep family roots in St. Francois Xavier and Pigeon Lake. Self-employed in the arts for the last 25 years, Liz has been a lifelong champion of Indigenous contemporary art. She is dedicated to building strategies and programs that target, motivate, and engage Indigenous artists and organizations working in all cultural milieu. Liz kicked off her career at Plug In ICA and went on to co-found Urban Shaman Gallery over 30 years ago. Her skills in arts management include experience working with CARFAC, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, and numerous Indigenous-led arts and culture not-for-profits. Liz has also served as a mentor with the Manitoba Music Indigenous Mentorship program. She was the project manager for one of the largest Indigenous contemporary exhibitions in Canada, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, led by four Indigenous curators which featured over 30 Indigenous contemporary artists. In 2021, she started the Barron Bursary at Digital Arts Resource Centre in Ottawa, to support an Indigenous moving image maker to study film at the University of Ottawa. Having also managed a baroque orchestra and a new music ensemble, Liz brings passion, humor, and a whole lot of lived experience to everything she does.

November 15
1:30pm – 2:30pm – (Theatre) Carrying the Fire: Curators, Kinship, and the Future of Practice

Panellist

Jason Baerg is a registered member of the Métis Nations of Ontario and serves their community as an Indigenous activist, curator, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. Baerg graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, and is enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Monash University. Baerg teaches as the Assistant Professor in Indigenous Practices in Contemporary Painting and Media Art at OCAD University. Exemplifying their commitment to community, they co-founded Shushkitew Collective and The Métis Artist Collective. Baerg has served as volunteer Chair for such organizations as the Indigenous Curatorial Collective and the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition. As a visual artist, they push digital interventions in drawing, painting, and new media installation. Select international solo exhibitions include Canada House in London, UK, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, and the Digital Dome at the Institute of the American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. They have sat on numerous art juries and won awards through such facilitators as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and The Toronto Arts Council. For more information about their practice, please visit JasonBaerg.ca

November 15
1:30pm – 2:30pm – (Theatre) Carrying the Fire: Curators, Kinship, and the Future of Practice

Gatherings Coordinator, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

David Krouse is a computational media artist from the Wikwemkoong First Nation, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Indigenous Studies from the University of Manitoba. For over two decades, David has worked at the intersection of art and technology, supporting artists and galleries in developing web-based and digital exhibitions, while also creating his own computer-generated artworks. His work has been exhibited at venues including Urban Shaman Gallery, the Winnipeg Indigenous Film Festival, Struts Gallery, and the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Reuben Friend (Ngāti Maniapoto, Pākehā) is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist, curator and writer. He currently works as the General Manager Community and Partnerships at Porirua City Council and is the former Director of Pātaka Art+Museum in Porirua, Wellington. Board positions include co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, committee member of the Te Haerewa Māori Advisory Committee at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, member of the Creative New Zealand NZ@Venice Executive Advisory Committee, board member of the Pātaka Foundation, and committee member of the Wellington Sculpture Trust. Major curatorial projects in 2021 include Toi Koru: “Sandy Adsett” at Pātaka Art+Museum, “Pan Austro Nesia” at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, and “Naadohbii: To Draw Water” at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Co-chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

I am the Executive Director of Centre d’art daphne, the first Indigenous artist-run centre in Tiohtià:ke/ Mooniyang/ Montreal. I am also an independent curator, art educator and art historian. I identify as Michi Saagiig (Mississauga) Anishinaabe and Irish-Welsh descent. I am a citizen of Hiawatha First Nation at Rice Lake, Ontario. My curatorial work, art practice and research, articulates narrative and memory in the context of family and cultural history, and reflects on cultural identity, art education and self-representation.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Secretary, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Zoe Black (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Pākehā) is the deputy director of Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her curatorial practice focuses on community development and advocating for critically underrepresented craft and object art forms. For the past three years she was Norwegian Crafts’ Curator in Residence, working on projects that create a dialogue between Indigenous making practices in Aotearoa and Sápmi.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Board Member, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Leah Johnson is an Afro-Indigenous interior designer, where she brings a unique and culturally rich perspective to her passion of design. She is also a practicing artist outside of work. With family roots in the Cherokee Freedman Nation and the Patawomeck tribe of Virginia, Leah draws inspiration from her heritage, seamlessly integrating those cultural elements into her design philosophy. Her distinctive cultural background informs her commitment to community engagement and advocacy for artists.

Currently in her second year as a board member for the with the ICCA, Leah is passionate about strengthening the arts and supporting practicing artists. Her role with the ICCA allows her to contribute to the advancement of the industry, foster collaboration, and work alongside fellow members to ensure that the voices of underrepresented communities are heard and supported within the art world.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Board Member, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

As an emerging Anishinaabekwe curator, being part of an organization such as the ICCA is an honour. To know that there is a community dedicated to upholding and uplifting Indigenous curators across Turtle Island is incredibly meaningful, which is exactly what made me want to be a part of the Board.

I’m currently the Curator at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, located in downtown Vancouver on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. My role encompasses anything and everything related to our exhibitions, collections, public programming, and education program. In addition to working at the Bill Reid Gallery, I also work on other independent curatorial projects, and am also an artist practicing within beadwork, photography, and illustration.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Board Member, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Dr. Mario A. Caro is a researcher, curator, and critic of contemporary art, having published widely on the history, theory, and criticism of contemporary Indigenous arts. He is currently a lecturer in the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an honorary board member of Res Artist, an international network of art residencies with headquarters in Amsterdam and Melbourne, where he was president for eight years. His work within the academy complements his endeavors within various arts communities to promote global cultural exchanges.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Board Member, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Daina Warren is a member of the Montana Cree Nation in Maskwacis (Bear Hills), Alberta. In 2000, she was awarded Canada Council’s Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts program to work with grunt gallery in Vancouver. This opportunity led to a permanent position with the artist-run centre as an associate curator and administrator until 2009. Warren completed the Canada Council’s Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, where she curated the group exhibition, “Don’t Stop Me Now”. She has received her Bachelor’s degree in 2003, graduating from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Warren graduated from a Masters in Art History program, completing the Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia (2012). Warren was awarded the 2015 Emily Award from Emily Carr University and was selected as one of six Indigenous women curators as part of the Canada Council for the Arts Delegation to participate in the International First Nations Curators Exchange that took place in Australia (2015), New Zealand (2016), and Canada (2017). She is currently the Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

November 15
2:30pm – 3:30pm – (Theatre) Where We’re At: Indigenous Curators in Conversation

Membership Coordinator, Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)

Amanda Ibarra is a Chilean / Kanien’kehá:ka (Kahnawá:ke) woman based in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal. She is a freelance graphic designer and beadworker (Wariso:se Beadwork). Her past experience has been in cultural and community organization, communications and outreach as well as project management. Amanda works part time at daphne, Tiohtià:ke’s first Indigenous artist run center.

November 15
3:30pm – 3:45pm – ICCA Membership: Connecting Community and Practice

Recipient

Cheryl L’Hirondelle (cree/halfbreed; german/polish) is an interdisciplinary and community-engaged artist; a singer/songwriter and a critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy waskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Kikino Metis Settlement, Alberta. Her work investigates and attempts to articulate the dynamism of nehiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place with a practice that incorporates Indigenous language(s), audio, video, virtual reality, the olfactory, music and audience/user participation to create immersive environments towards ‘radical inclusion.’

As a songwriter, L’Hirondelle’s focus is on both sharing nehiyawewin (Cree language) and Indigenous and contemporary song-forms and personal narrative songwriting as methodologies toward survivance. She has exhibited and performed widely, both nationally and internationally.

L’Hirondelle is the recipient of two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005, 2006), two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006, 2007) and she is a recipient of the 2021 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art. She holds a master’s degree in Design from OCAD University’s Inclusive Design program (2015). L’Hirondelle also the Director of Miyoh Music Inc., a small Indigenous niche music publishing company and record label.

November 15
3:30pm – 3:45pm – Presentations: King Charles III Coronation Medal

Moderator

Photo credit: Mika Abbott

David Garneau is a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. He is a painter, curator and critical art writer who engages creative expressions of Indigenous contemporary ways of being. Garneau curated Kahwatsiretátie: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial (Montreal, 2020) with assistance from Faye Mullen and rudi aker; co-curated, with Kathleen Ash Milby, Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2017); With Secrecy and Despatch, with Tess Allas, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia (2016); and Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery (2015). Garneau has given keynotes on issues such as: mis/appropriation; re/conciliation; public art; museum displays; and Indigenous contemporary art. His performance, Dear John, featuring the spirit of Louis Riel meeting with John A. Macdonald statues, was presented in Regina, Kingston, and Ottawa. David recently installed a large public art work, the Tawatina Bridge paintings, in Edmonton. His recent still life paintings, Dark Chapters, curated by Arin Fay, will tour Canada and be accompanied by a book in fall 2025. This year, Garneauwas awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art: Outstanding Achievement, and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.

November 15
3:30pm – 3:45pm – Presentations: King Charles III Coronation Medal

Dunlop Art Gallery

Sonny Assu is a member of the Ligwiłda’xw people of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations on Vancouver Island. This exhibition, called Confluence, brings together several bodies of work that respond to the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities, such as the loss of land, language, cultural belongings, traditional knowledge, and self-determination.

Working in many mediums, Assu sparks conversation about Indigenous life. He often uses humour and pop culture to connect with audiences, while also drawing on the visual traditions and histories of his ancestors. Through this blending of past and present, his work reclaims stories of power and identity, celebrating Indigenous strength, resilience, and perspectives.

Sonny Assu, an Indigenous artist of the Ligwiłda’xw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations, was raised in North Delta, BC, and now lives on his ancestral land on Vancouver Island. He studied at Emily Carr University and earned an MFA from Concordia. His many honours include the Emily Carr Distinguished Alumnus Award, BC Creative Achievement Award in First Nations Art (2011), Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (2017), and the Eiteljorg Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2021). Assu has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally, with works held in public and private collections across Canada, the UK, USA, and Australia.

November 15 at 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Artist Talk & Reception – Sonny Assu: Confluence