Module 1 Post 3 – Resignifying the Traditional: Walking with our Sisters

I stumbled upon Walking with our Sisters on Christi Belcourt’s projects webpage. This commemorative art installation is about addressing the histories of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada and The USA. This made me think of Helen Betty Osborne from Manitoba and the book I have read with my students: Conspiracy of Silence. There is a film that could be found with this title.

“Over 1,181+ native women and girls in Canada have been reported missing or have been murdered in the last 30 years. Many vanished without a trace with inadequate inquiry into their disappearance or murders paid by the media, the general public, politicians and even law enforcement. This is a travesty of justice.”

Moccasin vamps (uppers) artwork represent missing/murdered women and they are left as it to tell a story of an unfinished life, to remember, to mourn, to heal…Please see how art/ & technology is used here:

http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/about/

This collection also has a collection of songs contributed for this purpose. For example:

http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/artwork/music/

Ana K.

Background: 

My interest was piqued by Ginsburg, Faye D., “Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media, “ in Media Worlds: Anthropology on a New Terrain and my R. and Perkins’s work re: aboriginal filmmaking. I would like to extend this theme of Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media to other forms of art. My goal would be to further explore the relationship of technology/media that is used by indigenous peoples on their own terms and possibly without any cultural appropriation.

I am interested in Indigenous Art a part of everyday life/being that I have witnessed while living on a First Nation community where Art is place-based, inseparable from nature, land, well-being, surrounding living beings, spirituality, narrative, healing, the artist, etc. and it situated closely within each and comes an expression of this tight interconnectedness (and as such comes within a different set of relationships than when looking at Art as a separate discipline that is to be studied). I believe that knowing about this topic more in depth would enrich me as a person and consequently, as a teacher.  

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