This is a project that I stumbled upon while perusing the agenda and session descriptions for the Indspire 2023 conference in Winnipeg. This is a teacher resource called Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards and Teaching Guide, which features First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women artists. The project highlights this connection to the topic of resilience beautifully,
“Most often, resilience is narrowly defined in the dictionary as the ability to recover from and cope with adversity. However, long before the European invasion of the continent, resilience was a central tenet within Indigenous traditional knowledge and customary practices, and it still is. For these Indigenous women artists, resilience is embodied as endurance, adaptability and sovereignty.”
Lee-Ann Martin provides an essay discussing the project. The project celebrates the Indigenous women whose artwork reclaims that traditional body of knowledge that has been silenced due to colonialism. This project provides another medium for exploring local Indigenous knowledge and perspectives. The use of technology is evident in many of the photos to enhance the artwork’s meaning and to further the learning of the resilience of Indigenous women and their knowledge.