Artist-led Workshops with Kayah George

Name: Artist-led Workshops with Kayah George
Start: 2025-09-07T11:00:00-07:00
Location: 2649 Dollarton Highway, North Vancouver, BC, Canada, British Columbia V7H 1B1

Schedule

Sun, 07 Sep, 2025 at 11:00 am

UTC-07:00

Location

2649 Dollarton Highway, North Vancouver, BC, Canada, British Columbia V7H 1B1 | North Vancouver, BC

Tickets: https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/village-under-the-sea-workshops
Join the Wild Bird Trust's Artist-in-Residence Kayah George for a conversation series in tandem with her current exhibition, Village Under the Sea. The collection of photographs follows a journey of connection to the waters of the Salish Sea, the life they hold, and the Coast Salish cultures that have always been intertwined with them.
Kayah George (She/They) is an Indigenous filmmaker, activist, and student from the Tulalip and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work blends storytelling, environmental advocacy, and cultural revitalization. She co-wrote, directed, and producedOur Grandmother the Inlet, which received an honorable mention for Best Canadian Short at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Kayah is currently co-directing a National Geographic funded educational documentary series on orcas and matriarchy with Danielle Khan Da Silva. Recognized inGlobe and Mailand named one of Corporate Knights’ “30 Under 30” sustainability leaders in Canada, she continues to push boundaries in film and activism. Alongside filmmaking, she studies Linguistics and Psychology at Simon Fraser University.
Morning Workshop: The Stolen Generations (11:00am - 12:30pm)
At the same time orcas were violently captured from Pacific waters for marine parks, Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in residential schools. This workshop draws meaningful parallels between these two traumas, including the disruption of community, language, and identity. Orcas and Indigenous communities are both social and interdependent, and their worlds were fractured by colonization. In this session, we’ll hold space for grief, story, and truth-telling. But we will also explore healing—how communities are rebuilding, returning, and reclaiming what was taken. Participants are invited to reflect on kinship, empathy, and the resilience of both peoples and whales.
Afternoon Workshop: Orca Time - Embodying the Future (2:00 - 3:30pm)
This final workshop invites participants to move from reflection into embodiment. After learning about the cultural and ecological roles of orcas, we ask: how do we carry this knowledge forward? Inspired by a journey out on the water with youth, this session is grounded in presence, imagination, and action. Through guided reflection and creative prompts, we’ll explore what it means to embody care for land and sea, not just in thought but in practice. It is a call to envision and live into a future where Indigenous teachings, orca kinship, and our own roles in the ecosystem are honored and protected.
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These workshops take place in the Nature House. The space is wheelchair accessible. The Nature House is reached from our parking area (paved asphalt), leading to a compact limestone trail, and then a concrete paved ramp that leads up to the Nature House entrance. The doors to the Nature House are not automatic, but there will be staff or volunteers in and around the space on the day of the workshops to open doors. Bathrooms are not wheelchair accessible.