Panel Presentations: March 10th, 2023

Panel Presentations: March 11th, 2023

Symposium Schedule and Bios

1:00 – Welcoming and Curators’ Introduction with Patrick Mahon and Jeff Thomas

Patrick Mahon was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Treaty 1 Territory). He is an artist, a writer/curator, and a Professor of Visual Arts at Western University (UWO) in London, Canada, situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations. He is a Distinguished University Professor at Western, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Mahon’s artwork has been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. 

Jeff Thomas is an urban-based Iroquois, self-taught photo-based storyteller, writer, pubic speaker, and curator, living in Ottawa, Ontario, and has works in major collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe. 

1:30 – Community Projects Presentation with host Michelle Wilson and presenters Brandon Doxtator, Tom Cull, Candace Dube, Reilly Knowles, and Marshall Stonefish

Michelle Wilson is an artist and mother currently residing as an uninvited guest on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples in London, Ontario. She was born in Calgary, Alberta, or Wîchîspa Oyade, the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3). In the Euro-American archive, the bodies of other animals are used to convey colonial knowledge systems. Their stories of survival are used to perpetuate myths of "settler saviours." As a feminist of settler descent working in colonial institutions, this is the legacy that Wilson has inherited and is confronting. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar with the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership at the University of Guelph. 

Brandon Doxtator is a bear clan member from the Oneida Nation of the Thames. He has been working with his Nation as the environment and consultation coordinator since 2018. His work involves providing policy and action implementation to our chief and council related to environment, energy and consultation projects.  

Tom Cull was born and raised in Huron County, Ontario in Treaty 29 territory. He currently resides in London, Ontario, on the banks of Deshkan Ziibi, which flows through the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples. He works at the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority, teaches creative writing at Western University, and was the Poet Laureate for the City of London from 2016-2018. Cull is the author of poetry collections and chapbooks, as well as the director of Antler River Rally (ARR), a grass roots environmental group he co-founded in 2012 with his partner Miriam Love. 

Candace Dube is a Cultural Justice Coordinator at Atlohsa Family Healing Services. She has a background in Social Justice and Peace Studies and a Bachelor of Education. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Therapeutic Herbalism. As Atlohsa's Cultural Justice Coordinator, she has been instrumental in developing and implementing cultural awareness and safety within the Zhaawenjigewag Justice program with her experience in Restorative Practices. 

Reilly Knowles is a settler interdisciplinary artist living and working in so-called London, Ontario — on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, Anishinaabek, and Chonnonton Nations, lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796, as well as the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. He is a graduate of Western University’s Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts program with a Specialisation in Studio Arts and has been exhibiting since 2015. He is a member of Good Sport Artist Collective and The Coves Collective.

Marshall Stonefish is a filmmaker and member of the Sweet Labour Art Collective. For the past few years, he has been working with the collective on Compost - Recomposing Relations, a video piece employing dance as a meditation on death, burial practices and making soil as a form of ecological care across the city of London, Ontario, and Oneida Nation of the Thames. In November of 2022, Sweet Labour held a community gathering, performance, and screening to celebrate the work, and Marshall was there to create a documentary about the event.

3:30 - Launch of Community Projects Almanac & On Site Review with Salah Hassan

Salah Hassan is an associate professor in the Department of English and  Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program at Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA. His recent publications include “Radical Revisions: Barbara Harlow and Criticism Beyond Partition” (Race & Class January-March 2019), “Mapping anti-Muslim Politics in the US” in Muslims and Contemporary US Politics (2019), and  “Passing Away: Despair, Eulogies, and Millennial Palestine” in The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (2020).

4:15 – Panel 1: On Community with host Tom Cull and presenters Nina Zitani, Ruth Skinner, Paul Chartrand, Olivia Masuto, Brandon Doxtator, and Michelle Wilson

Dr. Nina Zitani resides in London, Ontario, Canada (on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations). She teaches at Western University and is curator of the Zoological Collections in the Department of Biology. Nina is an accomplished field research biologist with a passion for teaching people of all ages and backgrounds about the wonders of the living parts of the natural world. She uses her extraordinary creativity and photography to enrich her lectures on evolutionary biology, biodiversity and conservation science. 

Ruth Skinner works as an arts organizer, researcher, curator, publisher and educator in London, Ontario (she is a contract instructor at Western University, Lakehead University, and Fanshawe College). Her current doctoral research encompasses experimental publishing practices, artists' books, forensics and clairvoyance. She has operated as the art imprint Edna Press since 2017, is a co-organizer of Support project space alongside Tegan Moore and Liza Eurich, and is a member of the Advisory Circle for the Embassy Cultural House. Ruth is also a member of the cross-disciplinary research team behind the Renal Community Photo Initiative, a participant-centric study which invites individuals undergoing dialysis to express themselves and their daily lives through photography. 

Paul Chartrand was born in London, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations. He currently resides in Dunnville, Ontario, which is situated within Haldimand Treaty territories engages with environmental issues through the construction of sculptural life support apparatuses populated with living plants. He repurposes objects and cultural signifiers like language to act as habitats and conceptual support systems. Currently he is focused on living text installations, hydroponic assemblages and interdisciplinary drawing practices.

Olivia Mossuto is an emerging artist, curator, and writer based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her practice engages painting, sculpture, and installation as a way to conceptualize affective and intimate encounters with beings, images, and objects. Her work interrogates how our memories function and what remains when memory fails. In more oblique ways, these ideas coalesce with topics of kitsch, craft, grief, and nature. She completed her BFA with honours specialization in studio art at Western University in London, Ontario. Olivia is a contributing editor for the Embassy Cultural House

5:30 – Keynote Speaker: Lewis Williams - Living well with Kin

Lewis Williams is an interdisciplinary, Indigenous, feminist scholar-practitioner of Ngāi Te Rangi (Māori) descent. Her scholarship and practice centre on Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation as key means of addressing Indigenous disparities and human-planetary well-being. An important part of this work is tackling cultural and ecological crisis, including climate change. Growing up in Aotearoa / New Zealand and initially qualifying and practising as a social worker and community developer, she has worked and lived within diverse communities and regions within Aotearoa / New Zealand, Turtle Island / Canada and Australia. Lewis is the Founding Director of the Alliance for Intergenerational Resilience (AIR), a Canadian-based international not-for-profit organization whose aim is strengthening human-ecological resilience through the resurgence of Indigenous knowledges and lifeways within all peoples. She is also Interim Director of the Indigenous Studies Program and an Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Western Ontario, Turtle Island / Canada. Lewis is the author of the recently released book "Indigenous intergenerational resilience: Confronting cultural and ecological crisis" (Routledge 2022).

6:30 - Reception

Saturday March 11th, 2023

9:30 - 5:30pm

9:30 - Activist Workshop: Paste-up Posters with Sean Caulfield at Central Public Library - Lawson Room

Sean Caulfield was named a Canada Research Chair in Fine Arts (Tier 2) from 2001 – 2011, Centennial Professor from 2011 – 2021, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, living and working in Treaty 6 territory, amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), Canada. He has exhibited his prints, drawings, installations and artist’s books extensively throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan. 

11:30 – Welcome Gathering and Smudge with Dan and Mary Lou Smoke

Mary Lou and Dan Smoke are an exceptional couple, who for many years, have fostered and advanced racial harmony and the elimination of discrimination in the City of London community. It has been through their individual and collective efforts of sharing knowledge of the First Nations faith, history and culture that they have greatly enhanced cross-cultural understanding, healed and improved the climate of race relations in London, and provided new means of overcoming barriers and differences. are an exceptional couple. Mary Lou is Ojibway Nation, from Batchawana, on Lake Superior, and Dan is Seneca Nation from the Six Nations Grand River Territory. They have hosted "The Smoke Signals Aboriginal Radio Program," since 1990 and continue with this Western University campus-based radio program offering interviews with indigenous cultural workers and advocates from across Turtle Island. They have collected an extensive archive and books related to their decades of working as journalists and advocates.  From 1999-2019 they worked with the London CTV Station. 

In 2022, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke received honorary doctorates, Honoris Causa, Noble International Environmental Peace University and are Adjunct Assistant Professors in the Schulich Interfaculty Program in Public Health, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University.

12:30 – Panel 2 - Women and Colonization with host Nandi Bhatia and presenters Jamelie Hassan, Katie Wilhelm, Sharmistha Kar, and Jessica Karuhanga

Nandi Bhatia is a Professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations. She is currently the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Her research interests include colonial and postcolonial literature and theory, British India, the 1947 Partition of India, diasporic literatures, and theatre. 

Jamelie Hassan resides in London, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples. She is a visual artist who is also a social justice activist and independent curator. She has organized both national and international programs and her work is represented in numerous public collections in Canada and internationally. With Ron Benner, she is the cofounder and curatorial advisor of the Embassy Cultural House, a community-based, cultural collective and not for profit in London.

Katie Wilhelm resides in London, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations. She is an award-winning designer and marketing consultant. She utilizes art and design to connect the community, revitalize spaces, and create knowledge-sharing opportunities. Wilhelm is a proud member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation at Neyaashiinigmiing with Canadian settler heritage. 

Sharmistha Kar is an artist from Kolkata, West Bengal, India and currently resides in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). She is currently pursuing her MA in Art Education at Concordia University. In her work, Kar employs traditional and contemporary adaptations of embroidery to explore mapping, migration and identity. 

Jessica Karuhanga is an African-Canadian artist who works through writing, video, drawing and performance. She was born in Ottawa, located on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin Territory. She currently resides in London, Ontario, where she is Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at Western University.

1:45 – Panel 3 - Artists, Museums, and their Work with host Sean Caulfield and presenters Mark Kasumovic, Amelia Fay, Quinn Smallboy, and Joan Greer

Mark Kasumovic is a Canadian artist and researcher, born in Hamilton, Ontario, situated on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. He currently lives and works in the UK. His work revolves around the inherent truth value of the photograph and the many limitations within the medium. His most recent projects have investigated the relationship between technology and knowledge production within the context of scientific research.   

Amelia Fay resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Treaty 1 Territory. She is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in the contact-period between Indigenous communities and various European newcomers in what is now Canada from a long-term, historical perspective. She joined the Manitoba Museum in 2013 as Curator of the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection and is actively building the collection to broaden the story of the HBC by exploring the relationships between European employees and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis fur traders as they negotiated space, material culture, and their daily activities.

Quinn Smallboy holds an MFA from Western University and a diploma in multimedia and production design from Fanshawe College. His current artistic practice investigates what it means to be a contemporary Indigenous artist. Specifically, he questions how customary symbols and icons of Indigenous culture translate into painting, sculpture, and installation. Smallboy was born in Moose Factory, Ontario and is a member of the Moose Cree First Nation. He currently resides in London, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations.

Joan Greer resides in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), in Treaty 6 territory and holds a PhD from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She is a Professor at the University of Alberta, where she teaches the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture. Her research engages with issues of artistic identity, landscape art, the history of environmentalism, and theories of nature and ecological envisioning, both historically (most particularly in the long nineteenth century) and in contemporary art and design, with a special interest in The Netherlands and Belgium.

3:00 – GardenShip Publication Celebration with Ruth Skinner & Katie Wilhelm

3:45 – Panel 4 - Land, Plants and Environment with host Patrick Mahon and presenters Jeff Thomas, Ron Benner, Michael Farnan, Laura Ramirez, Ashley Snook, and Adrian Stimson

Ron Benner is an internationally recognized, German-Canadian artist whose longstanding practice that includes mixed media installations investigates the history and political economy of food cultures. Benner originally studied agriculture engineering at the University of Guelph, however, found himself ethically opposed to industrial agriculture and bioengineering, so he began to travel and research the politics of food. Benner resides in London, Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations. 

Michael Farnan is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, living and working in Victoria Harbour, ON. Victoria Harbour is located on Georgian Bay, traditional and Treaty territory of the Anishinaabeg, now known as the Chippewa Tri-Council comprised of Beausoleil First Nation, Rama First Nation, and the Georgina Island First Nation. This region of Georgian Bay was also the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and is the homeland of the historic Georgian Bay Métis community, and the Métis Nation of Ontario. He holds a PhD in Art and Visual Culture from Western University. Farnan’s work addresses settler-based decolonizing strategies centred on disrupting and unsettling Canada’s history of colonialism and dominant Eurocentric ideologies of place and space.

Higuanameta Laura Ramirez Sanchez is Taíno Métis from Qiskeya - the Dominican Republic and Keewatin Kenora ONT. Laura is biawasia, or two spirit in the Taíno language, and a land based radical force of change. Other than spending time in the garden, Laura enjoys actively dismantling the colonial system.

Ashley Snook is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, born in North Bay, Ontario on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg peoples and within the lands protected by the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. Snook currently resides in Tkaronto (Toronto). Her practice examines interconnectivity between human and nonhuman animals, and vegetal/botanical life through drawing, installation, and sculpture. Her current studio-based doctoral research investigates the notion of animality to problematize a spectrum of human-centric, socio-cultural and scientific frameworks that have enabled rampant environmental degradation, racial injustices, and destructive human and animal relationships. 

Friday March 10th, 2023

1:00 - 7:00pm