Indigenous Youth Residency Program
The Indigenous Youth Residency Program is a land-based artist residency for native youth that centers Anishinaabe artistic methodologies and relationships to art. In this sense, relationship-building is artistic practice itself and youth explore relationships to self, community, ancestors and homelands while deeply interrogating the structures and strategies of settler colonialism that impact their lives. Engaging with knowledge that comes from the land, our bodies, elders and knowledge keepers, youth work towards the creation of a final collaborative project that communicates all they have learned during the residency. This intensive program is designed to give youth the tools to articulate their experiences of things like white supremacy and cis-heteropatriarchy, while creating a non-hierarchical space of knowledge transmission for youth to create deep and meaningful relationships with themselves, each other and the various artists we work with.
The Indigenous Youth Residency Program has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and has been running for the past 8 years! Each iteration focuses on a different topic to meet the differing needs of youth across place. Click on the links below to see images of each cohort and the works they created.
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HONORING OUR STURGEON RELATIONS
Youth residents travelled to Treaty 3 territory to learn about the sturgeon run and attend ceremony with knowledge keeper Al Hunter. During this 5-week intensive, youth learned about how settler colonialism impacts their bodies, homelands, communities and families. Their final artworks were exhibited at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
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DREAMING FUTURES OUTSIDE OF WHITE SUPREMACY
For this program iteration youth from Thunder Bay travelled down to Toronto to meet with past residents. This program we focused on how it feels to like in Thunder Bay, a city notorious for its anti-Indigenous racism. We dreamt about what our bodies, communities, homelands and ancestors feel like outside of the confines of white supremacy.
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EMBODYING WATER GOVERNANCE: TREATY 3 AND TKARONTO
Youth residents based in Toronto travelled to Treaty 3 territory to learn about water governance and settler colonialism. We visited the waters, learned about manoomin and met with Quill’s family. This cohort created a final piece that spoke to their conception of water governance and how they enact this governance as urban Indigenous youth.