Virtual Roundtable Series Indigenizing the Museum: Ceremony in the Digital Space July 24th, 2020

 

“…our ceremonies keep the world going”

(Floyd Favel)

 

On July 24th, 2020, Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge hosted its fourth Virtual Roundtable as part of the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art (VPIA) project and its latest Indigenizing the Museum event series. 

 

Moderated by Gerald McMaster, this Roundtable brought together Floyd Favel, Jennifer Wemigwans, and VPIA visual and graphic designer Mariah Meawasige with the aim of exploring how Indigenous storytelling, spirituality, and visuality, can be represented and recreated online. This Roundtable discussion focused on the meaning and intention of Indigenous protocol and ceremony,  exploring the ways in which they can be introduced into digital spaces to create meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities in a digital environment, separated from the Land.  


The VPIA is a custom digital platform currently in development by Wapatah at OCAD University, designed to facilitate Indigenous access and contributions to Indigenous artworks in museum and gallery collections around the world. Using a wiki-style approach, the VPIA allows institutional artwork records to be transformed into living documents that integrate Indigenous knowledge, language, and protocols. 

The Roundtable Series, Indigenizing the Museum, has been developed as a way to increase Indigenous community and institutional awareness of and involvement in the VPIA as a resource and a knowledge building tool.

 

Our Guest Panelists

Floyd Favel is a theatre director, journalist, playwright, cultural theorist and nehiyaw (Plains Cree) traditionalist. He is the curator of the Chief Poundmaker Museum-winner of Indigenous Tourism Award 2018, and was instrumental in the Exoneration of Chief Poundmaker in 2019. He has presented at the National Museum of the American Indian and at the Museum of History in Gatineau. He is the director of the Poundmaker Indigenous Performance Festival and multicultural festival of global ideas and Indigenous performance and knowledge. He studied theatre at the Tukak Teatret of Denmark and at the Centro di Lavoro di Grotowski.

For more information: www.miyawataculture.com

 

Jennifer Wemigwans is Anishnaabekwe (Ojibwe/ Potawatomi) from Wikwemikong First Nation and President of Invert Media. She is a new media producer, writer, and scholar specializing in the convergence between education, Indigenous Knowledge and new media technologies. Her research is focussed on Indigenous Knowledge Education that reflects and embraces diverse Indigenous Nations nationally and internationally, and explores how Indigenous Studies and knowledge contribute to research ethics and to relationship building by challenging us to think about how meaning is derived. 

For more information: www.fourdirectionsteachings.com

 

Mariah (Makoose) Meawasige is an Anishinaabe/settler and creative from the northern shores of Lake Huron. Her practice specializes in graphic design but questions the bounds of communication through illustration, sculpture, video, and performance. She created the logo for the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge and is currently working on the centre’s visual identity. Through her love of stories and storytelling, Mariah’s body of work aims to explore temporalities and place, map memories, and build relationships.

For more information: www.makoose.com

 

Wapatah Team

Dr. Gerald McMaster

Dr. Michael Rattray

Natalja Chestopalova

Brittany Bergin

Mariah Meawasige

Rezvan Boostani

Yiyi Shao

Maya Filipp

Panya Espinal Clark

Alessia Pignotti

Jananda Lima

 

   

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