Book Launch & Conversation: Making Space For Indigenous Feminism

Join us Wednesday, July 17th from 6-8pm for the launch of Making Space For Indigenous Feminism Ed. 3 by Gina Starblanket, in conversation with T'uy't'tanat Cease Wyss & Anne Riley.

Venue & Accessibility:

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. We are located in the former MING WO building.

Registration is free or by donation and required for entry.

The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.

Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.

For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

About Dr. Gina Starblanket: Gina Starblanket is an associate professor in the School of Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. She is Cree/Saulteaux and a member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation in Treaty 4. Dr. Starblanket studies Indigenous–settler political relations with a specific focus on Indigenous politics in the prairies, the politics of treaty implementation and Indigenous movements towards social and political transformation. She is the author of important sole and co-authored interventions theorizing relational responsibilities to the land, including Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial and the fifth edition of Visions of the Heart: Issues Involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

About Making Space For Indigenous Feminism:

This book bridges generations of powerful Indigenous feminist thinking to demonstrate the movement’s cruciality for today. Indigenous feminists in the first edition fought for feminism to be considered a valid and essential intellectual and activist position. The second edition animated Indigenous feminisms through real-world applications. This third edition, curated by award-winning scholar Gina Starblanket, reflects and celebrates Indigenous feminism’s intergenerational longevity through the changing landscape of anti-colonial struggle and theory. Diverse contributors examine Indigenous feminism’s ongoing relevance to contemporary contexts and debates, including queer and Two-Spirit approaches to decolonization, gendered and sexualized violence, storytelling and narrative, land-based presence, Black and Indigenous relationalities and more. Feminism has much to offer Indigenous women, and all Indigenous Peoples, in their struggles against oppression.

About Dr. T'uy't'tanat Cease Wyss: Dr T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/Sto:Lo/Hawaiian/Swiss Dr T'uy't'tanat- Cease Wyss is an interdisciplinary artist who works with digital media, writing, performance and land based remediations as her multi-disciplinary arts practice. She is a community engaged and public artist, Indigi-Futurisms developer/artist, land based artist and ethnobotanist/permaculture designer.

She is currently expanding on her research with wild mushrooms as not only a means for remediation of soil areas damaged by industry, colonialism, and other toxic waste, but as means of healing our bodies, minds, spirits and to go further and expand in to bringing their healing sounds out through biosonification through modular synthesizers. Wyss is working on bridging the languages of plants and mushroom as well as other forms of fungi, with indigenous languages and creating conversations between them all.

Her works range over 30+ years and have always focussed on sustainability, permaculture techniques, Coast Salish Cultural elements and have included themes of ethnobotany, indigenous language revival, Salish weaving and digital media technology.

In 2022 Cease was awarded an honorary PhD from ECUAD and was also awarded the MST [Musqueam/Skwxwu7mesh/Tseil watuth: aka Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ Lands & WatersSkwxwú7mesh Ux̱imix̱w'] AiR fieldhouse in Stanley Park for the next 3 years. She will be infusing all elements of her diverse practice into this time spent reconnecting to her ancestors whose spirits remain a part of this forest and shoreline.

About Anne Riley: Anne Riley is a Indigiqueer multidisciplinary artist living as a Slavey Dene/German guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̍əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Sel̓íl̓witulh Nations. She is a member of Fort Nelson First Nation. Her work explores different ways of being and becoming, touch and Indigeneity. Riley received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and has exhibited across the United States and Canada. From 2018-2020 she worked on a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver with her collaborator, T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss. Riley and Wyss’s project, A Constellation of Remediation, consisted of Indigenous remediation gardens planted throughout the city. Riley and Wyss were long-listed for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. Since this project, Riley participated in the Drift: Art and Dark Matter residency and exhibition, creating works that consider the possibilities of making and being beyond the confines of western institutions and extractive processes. Currently, they are a MA Candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen's University. Their thesis research is focused on Indigiqueer Feminist Dene love.

About Constellation of Remediation: T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley work together as an Indigenous feminist artist team. They are known as A Constellation of Remediation. They have been collaborating on land-based works since 2015. The City of Vancouver Public Art Program chose their project, A Constellation of Remediation, for their 2017 Artist-Initiated Public Call. Wyss and Riley were long-listed for the Sobey art award in 2021.

Host or Publisher Massy Arts Society