The Indigenous Methodologies (IM) Working Group is focused primarily on research-creation projects driven by Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) methodologies and world views, with key ethical and historical considerations. They work in a consulting capacity to the Case Studies and other areas of the A/CA network.
Updates from the Working Group:
Members of the Indigenous Methodologies Working Group, in collaboration with imagineNATIVE, is planning the Traces & Care: Indigenous Archives Gathering, set to take place October 2022 in Toronto, ON.
Traces & Care will bring together Indigenous artists, film and media specialists, archivists, curators, Knowledge Keepers, Elders, memory workers and scholars from across Canada. Themes of traces and care, will be explored through three perspectives 1) access 2) engagement 3) activation of archives from different First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities as well as regions.
The central focus of Traces & Care will be media art archives and related intangible archives that exist within a range of situations: traditional memory institutions, artist-run centres, communities, homes/private life. The aim is to foster vital conversations and allow participants to share knowledge, identify needs, best practices and experiences about the current state of Indigenous media art archives in Canada. The presentations and outcomes of this gathering will be published as a part of Archive/Counter-Archive’s publication series.
Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to continue cultural practices of gathering and collaboration are incredibly important given the long history of colonial attempts through legislation and pass and permit systems to control our movement and our ability to come together. Gatherings help form the structure and foundation of our kinship and relationality to care.
By hosting Traces & Care: The Indigenous Archives Gathering, we aim to create a space for Indigenous individuals and groups who are doing the important memory work in collections to come together in conversation with each other.
Stacy Allison-Cassin
Dr. Stacy Allison-Cassin is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her work is centered in the areas of knowledge organization, metadata, and knowledge equity, with a particular focus on linked data and music. A Citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, she engages in work and research related to Indigenous matters in libraries and the larger cultural heritage sector. With a deep interest in increasing access and visibility for non-textual materials and marginalized knowledge, Allison-Cassin is a passionate advocate for change in information structures and metadata systems within the library profession and across the wider GLAM sector. As an Associate Librarian at York University she has held positions as music cataloguer, digital humanities librarian, and as a member of the Department of Student Learning and Academic Success she focused on critical pedagogy with collection responsibilities for Philosophy and History.
Karine Bertrand
My interest for cinema and films in general came from watching old black and white movies with my grandma on PBS on Sunday afternoons. Beyond these old Hollywood narratives, I have grown to love films stemming from all parts of the world. More recently, my research interests have been centered on Quebec cinema (intercultural collaborations), Indigenous films and poetry, road movies, transnational cinemas and oral practices of cinema.
I am also a member of the Vulnerable Media Lab at Queen’s and lead researcher for the Archive/Counter-Archive research project (financed by SSHRC) working with the Arnait Video Productions collective of Inuit women and with Québécois filmmaker Marie-Hélène Cousineau. I am co-director of the research group EPIC (esthétique et politique de l’image cinématographique) where we discuss the politics and aesthetics of screen images. My latest publications include a book chapter on the rock group U2 ( MacKenzie and Iversen, 2021) a book chapter on the exploration of Indigenous lands (Cahill and Caminati, 2020) an article on Indigenous women and testimonies (Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2020) on Québécois cinema and Americanité (American Review of Canadian Studies, 2019) and a book chapter on Canadian and Québécois Indigenous cinemas (Oxford Handbook to Canadian Cinema, 2019). I am presently working on a project involving the creation of an international network for Indigenous women filmmakers, and continuing partnerships with the Wapikoni Mobile and the INAAC (the International Network for Aboriginal Audio-Visual Creation).
Besides my research, which I am very passionate about, I love to be outdoors, connecting with nature. I have studied medicinal plants and take every occasion I get to play outside; canoeing, hiking, skiing, camping, gardening. I also love writing poetry and teaching courses where I can develop a strong connection with my students.
Camille Callison
Camille Callison, Tsesk iye (Crow) Clan of the Tahltan Nation, was the first Indigenous Services Librarian/Liaison Librarian now the Learning & Organizational Development Librarian and a PhD student (Anthropology) at the University of Manitoba. Camille is Vice-Chair, Indigenous Representative, Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA-FCAB) & Chair, Indigenous Matters Committee, Copyright Committee member, chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, an Indigenous Partner on The Response to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Taskforce, and is on the Advisory Committee for the First Nations Concentration at UBC iSchool. She is a member of IFLA Indigenous Matters Section Standing Committee and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO Memory of the World Committee and Sector Commission on Culture, Communications & Information. Camille has presented extensively on the importance of respectful curation, preservation, access, and protection of Indigenous knowledge and cultural memory in libraries, museums, and archives and developing meaningful relationship with Indigenous communities.
Jennifer Dysart
Jennifer Dysart is a short film director, set decorator, and archival researcher. She was born in Alberta (Blackfoot territory), lives in Hamilton, Ontario (Haudenosaunee territory), and has Cree roots from South Indian Lake, Manitoba. She was a commissioned filmmaker for the Home Made Visible project by Regent Park Film Festival and created Caribou in the Archive (2018/19), a short experimental found footage film. Dysart envisions more inclusive archives of the future that are relevant and accessible to the public, include the personal stories of individuals and small cultural groups, and expand the national and provincial narratives of history. She has a special interest in recovering historical materials about the large-scale hydro developments that have irreparably affected Cree territory in the north.
Linda Grussani
Linda Grussani (Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg) is a curator and art historian born and raised in the Ottawa area. Currently, she is working full-time towards completing a PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Over the last decade, Linda had held the position of Curator, Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (CMH); Director, Indigenous Art Centre for Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC); and has worked in the Indigenous art department at the National Gallery of Canada. Linda holds both a BA and MA in Art History from Carleton University and is a graduate of CIRNAC’s Aboriginal Leadership Development Initiative (2014-15) and the CMH’s Indigenous Training Programme in Museum Practices (2000-2001). Linda currently sits on the Indigenous Education Council for OCAD University, the Indigenous Collections Symposium Working Group for the Ontario Museums Association, and is a collaborator with the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative.
Heather Igloliorte
Heather Igloliorte is an Inuk Assistant Professor and University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement at Concordia University, where she serves special advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges, and co-directs the Indigenous Futures Cluster of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology with Professor Jason Lewis. Her recent curatorial projects include SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut (The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, touring 2016-2020); Ilippunga: The Brousseau Inuit Art Collection at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (permanent exhibition, opened 2016); and Decolonize Me (Ottawa Art Gallery, touring 2011 - 2015), and the forthcoming inaugural exhibition of the Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Igloliorte currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Inuit Art Foundation, Nunavut Film Board, Native North American Art Studies Association, and Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History.
Dolleen Tisawii'ashii Manning
Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is a Queen's National Scholar in Anishinaabe Language, Knowledge and Culture (ALKC), Department of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queen's University. A member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation and an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, she received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University (2018), and holds graduate degrees in critical theory (MA, Western, 2005), and in contemporary art (MFA, Simon Fraser, 1997). She points to her early childhood grounding in her mother’s Anishinaabe cultural lessons as her primary philosophical influence and source of creativity. Manning has wide-ranging interests in Anishinaabe ontology, critical theory, phenomenology, and art, investigating questions of Indigenous imaging practices, mnidoo interrelationality, epistemological sovereignty, and the debilitating impact of settler colonial logics. Her investment in archives stem from her family's land claim activism and the function of the archive in the colonial state, along with their counter archival counter narrative potentialities.
Jason Lewis
Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media poet, artist, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. Along with the artist Skawennati, he co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design, and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, critical, creative, and technical levels simultaneously. He is the Concordia University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary, as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Cherokee, Hawaiian, and Samoan.
Suzanne Morrissette
Suzanne Morrissette is a Métis artist, curator, and scholar from Winnipeg who is currently based out of Toronto. Her research in the areas of Indigenous histories of resistance, and the development of liberal political philosophy in Canada have come together in the form of artworks, exhibitions, articles, and her forthcoming book which examines the progression of Indigenous relations in Canada since the early 1900s against the context of growing inclusion in the arts. She has taught liberal arts and studio courses at various universities since 2011, and currently works as Assistant Professor at Brock University in the Department of Visual Arts.
Lisa Myers
Lisa Myers is a member of Chimnissing, Beausoleil First Nation. She works as an independent curator, artist and also as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her research encompasses both an art and curatorial practice. Through printmaking, stop-motion animation and performance she considers spaces of sustenance. She has exhibited her artwork in venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Peterborough, and Queens Museum. Recent curatorial projects include touring exhibitions: Beads, they’re sewn so tight (2018); Carry Forward (2017); and wnoondwaamin | we hear them (2016). Her writing has been published in many exhibition publications, in addition to journals and art periodicals such as Senses and Society, C Magazine and Inuit Art Quarterly. Myers has an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial practice from OCAD University. She is Toronto and Port Severn, ON based.
Dylan Robinson
Dylan Robinson is a xwélméxw artist and writer of Stó:lō descent, and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University. His current research focuses on Indigenous public art, and the incarceration of Indigenous songs in museums. Robinson’s publications include the edited volumes Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (2018), Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2016), and Opera Indigene (2011). His monograph, Hungry Listening, is forthcoming in 2019 with Minnesota University Press.
Carla Taunton
Dr. Carla Taunton is an Associate Professor in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the department of Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Taunton is a white-settler scholar whose areas of expertise include arts-based critique of settler colonialism, Indigenous arts and methodologies, contemporary Canadian art, museum and curatorial studies, as well as theories of decolonization, anti-colonialism, and settler responsibility. Her recent collaborative research projects include: The GLAM Collective, The Pilimmaksarniq/Pijariuqsarniq Project: Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership (2017), Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage (2018 - 2024), Transactive Memory Keepers (2016-ongoing); This is What I Wish You Knew: Urban Aboriginal Artists (2015-ongoing), and Theories and Methodologies for Indigenous Arts in North America (2014-ongoing). Her recent publications include “Performing Sovereignty: Forces to be Reckoned With” in More Caught in the Act (2016), and “Embodying Sovereignty: Indigenous Women’s Performance Art in Canada,” in Narratives Unfolding (2017). With Dr. Julie Nagam and Dr. Heather Igloliorte, she co-edited PUBLIC 54: Indigenous Art, and in 2017 with Igloliorte she co-edited a special issue of RACAR on Indigenous art histories.
