CS5.1 - CS5.1 Maamiikwendan: How to Create Space for Indigenous Narratives and Commemoration

Session Chair(s)

• 

  Raymond Frogner

  Head of Archives, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

Speaker(s)

• 

  Michael Cachagee

  Founding Member, Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association
• 

  Trina Cooper-Bolam

  Independent Museology/Critical Heritage Scholar & Exhibition Curator/Designer
• 

  Crystal Fraser

  Assistant Professor, Dept. of History and Classics, University of Alberta
• 

  Carey Newman

  Indigenous Artist, Filmmaker, Author and Public Speaker

This session looks at several initiatives designed to highlight Indigenous commemoration practices. It considers the need for Indigenous spaces of encounter, memory and commemoration. The conceptual and physical Indigenous spaces where identities and values are expressed, discussed and experienced without the colonial ordering and judgment of settler cultural institutions. Trina Cooper-Bolam looks at international commemoration examples that could inform local practices to commemorate collective trauma. Carey Newman looks at the example of the National Witness Blanket, his creative process, and how the Blanket and the stories it carries holds responsibilities and rights. These have been recognized in a stewardship agreement struck with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights where the Blanket will live.

Learning Objectives:

• Upon completion, the participant will be able to conceptualize the physical and intellectual space required for a safe and respectful engagement with Indigenous communities.
• Upon completion, the participant will be able to hold a respectul dialogue with Indigenous communities on issues of colonization and Indigenous rights.
• Upon completion, the participant will be able to demonstrate a knowledge of some of the concerns Indigenous communities have when engaging with setller cultural institutions.
• Upon completion, the participant will be able to understand the importance of ceremony and local cultural protocols in Indigenous commemoration.

Presentations:

• The Witness Blanket and Collective Truth: Structural Change Through Art and Indigenous Perspectivemmemoration
  Carey Newman; Raymond Frogner
• "Whatever it Takes, Just Keep Fighting": Indigenous Narratives, Commemoration, and Indian Residential Schools in the Northwest Territories.
  Crystal Fraser; Raymond Frogner
• Commemorating Difficult Pasts: Negotiating Monuments in the 21st Century
  Trina Cooper-Bolam; Raymond Frogner
• Maamiikwendan: How to Create Space for Indigenous Narratives and Commemoration
  Michael Cachagee; Raymond Frogner