Sisiyutł & The Balance Between Dark & Light: A Kwakwaka’wakw Cabaret

Name: Sisiyutł & The Balance Between Dark & Light: A Kwakwaka’wakw Cabaret
Start: 2025-08-15T18:30:00-07:00
Location: 510 Fort Street, 2nd floor, Victoria, BC, Canada, British Columbia V8W 1E6

Schedule

Fri, 15 Aug, 2025 at 06:30 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

510 Fort Street, 2nd floor, Victoria, BC, Canada, British Columbia V8W 1E6 | Victoria, BC

Event Date: August 15th, 2025
Time: 6:30pm-9pm (doors at 6)
Location: 510 Fort Street
Entry: Free and by donation! No pre registration required. Limited Capacity, come early!
Curated by Alex Taylor-McCallum PINDN Productions
Performances by Krystal Cook, Ne’nagwas, Zero, PINDN and the Nation of Creation
The sisiyutł, in the Kwak'wala language, translates to the Two-Headed Sea Serpent, a great, powerful supernatural being which bears a more human-like face in the middle and can turn a person to stone with a peering glance of it's eyes and can bestow people with a great supernatural strength and abilities.
Metaphorically, my Gram-Mama, Liz Taylor, taught me that sisiyutł can also represent the balance which we need to maintain with the many choices we make in life between the good and the bad, the dark and the light, and so on and so forth. A balance between war and peace, ying and yang, love and hate, and so much more. A teaching commonly taught in the Namgis Treatment Centre to those of our people in recovery from addictions, trauma and the various many intergenerational effects of colonization, assimilation and the genocide of Indigenous people along the West Coast of B.C and beyond.
With this creative, unique, fun and wild, yet sometimes sweet and wholesome variety, Alex Taylor-McCallum hopes to highlight urban Indigenous Kwak'wak'wakw artists, storytellers, younger up and coming artists who will, in their own ways, share songs, stories and acts which explore this idea of balance with songs of love and honouring, but also bluesy ballads and an uproar of resistance as we collectively and surely rise above, despite oppression and the depression and anxieties caused by colonialism and its aftermath.