Sayt-k'il'hl Wo'osim'

EDUC 311: Foundations in Aboriginal Education, Language and Culture (Group Installation)                   Cedar Bomb (2016)                                                                                                                                          

Cedar strips, canvas, ink                                                                                                                                    Various sizes

 

During Dr. Amy Parent’s EDUC 311: Foundations in Aboriginal Education, Language and Culture class during the summer session of 2016, students participated in a cedar and canvas weaving activity. As a class, students cut strips of prepared cedar and canvas and wove them together into small tiles. On the canvas, students were asked to write a personal commitment towards decolonization and reconciliation.

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The physical process of weaving materials symbolised the student’s personal journeys as Settler Canadians and their ongoing inquires into Aboriginal ontologies and epistemologies. This artwork demonstrates the students commitments to “understand the historic and contemporary relationships between Canadian society and Indigenous Nations and peoples that frame the topic of Indigenous Education in a Canadian nation-state founded in settler-colonialism” (Parent) a quote taken from the EDUC: 311 Syllabus.

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Below one of the students within this course explains their personal experience with the weaving activity.

Miranda (EDUC: 311 Student and a Cedar Bomb Artist):

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                        For me, this piece of art represents a commitment to the authentic weaving of Indigenous’                             perspectives and knowledges into the curriculum.  The unfinished ends of the cedar tile are                        representative of how this is still a work in progress. My own personal commitment of                                    dedication to this process is woven in the middle of the tile, as a symbol of how this is an                              integral part.

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The author Marlene Brant Castellano explains in Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge, “For Non-Aboriginal people the challenge is to open up space for Aboriginal initiative in schools and colleges, work sites, and organizations s that Indigenous ways of knowing can flourish and intercultural sharing can be practiced in a spirit of coexistence and mutual respect” (23).

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Interlacing Indigenous and Settler perspectives for reconciliation was not only the goal of this course, but the inspiration for the Cedar Bomb group installation. Cedar bombing is the first of its style (to our knowledge). Parent was inspired by yarn bombing a form street art, a subculture of graffiti, that places art in a non-art context. Cedar Bomb was exhibited within the Education Building, housed within Simon Fraser University. This installation was displayed for the entirety of the EDUC: 311 summer session. Street art is inherently political and relies on its environment and its surrounding community. Upon the completion of the course, students were asked to consider a new environment for their weavings that allows the public to experience an unexpected opportunity to consider their own decolonizing journeys and reconciliation with the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada.

 

- Nastasha Mol

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Castellano, M.B. (2000). Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge. In G. J. S. Dei, B. L. Hall & D. G.

                 Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World

                 (pp. 21-36). Toronto:University of Toronto Press.