These investigations began sixty years on a father-son field trip where my father, Ross Sheldon Ingram (1905 – 1971), took me to and told me the story of the destruction of Skwácháy̓s a process of erasure of the sea and marshes that he witnessed when he was in his teens. He had vivid memories of the of Skwácháy̓s and the beachside neighbourhoods that had been built to the north and south. Growing up in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver and being fluent in xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Ross knew the heartbreak that the loss of Skwácháy̓s both as a source of food and as an intercultural space.
A decade and a half later, after Ross’s untimely passing, I studied with Salish theorist and early pioneer of Native American Studies, Mary Nelson. She taught deep time when few young people had much interest in hearing about it. Mary was born and raised near the mouth of the Skagit River with family connections to the upper part of that basin in and near Canada. As a Canadian university student in studying in a United States portion of the territories of the Salish nations, often hitchhiking home to Vancouver Island on weekends, Mary initiated a pedagogical space around Skwácháy̓s. She brought it up and instilled in me a curious kind of responsibility (even as a non-Salish indigenous person) about its continued presence. Mary knew Skwácháy̓s well as hole-in-the-bottom and as an important place in pan-Salish cosmology where the underworld met both the modern world of colonial logic in the marshes as well as the vastness of the skies. Mary taught me ways to explore the interface of a multitude of indigenous aesthetics and modern site-based sculpture — the work from those studies mostly lost over the decades.
More recently, this recent work was inspired by decades of bicycling around, conducting research and theorizing, and trying to make art in gentrifying False Creek. Eventually, there was too much information to not make something out it — at a time when the unresolved legacies of this problematic heart of Vancouver are increasingly collide between rising seas, real estate speculation, and pressures for ecological and indigenous repair. New York-based, environmental artist, Oliver Kellhammer, has been very generous in sharing the perspectives that went into his three, enduring (and evolving) site-based works and activism along Skwácháy̓s. In 2019, Catherine de Montreuil of Access Gallery, on the northern shore of Skwácháy̓s, kindly arranged a meeting space and some modest funding in cooperation with her colleague, Katie Belcher. Vancouver-based Alex Grünenfelder contributed performances and his own works in 2019 and Sharon Kallis, Rose Spahan and Debra Sparrow kindly offered to be part of a collaborative team that was postponed and then disrupted by the 2020-21 COVID pandemic. The recent work and collaborations has been possible because of the generous support of the Canada Canada for the Arts Inter-Arts Program through consecutive project grants.
In transforming the drawings, photographs, and notes from recent work on land art, found, conceived, and performed, two indigenous visual arts residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity were crucial for self-reflection and expanding my digital skills. Just before the COVID-19 lockdown, Nikki Little and Meaghan Byrne of imagineNATIVE (the Toronto-headquartered Centre for Aboriginal Media) lead Mixed Media 101 bringing together a score of artists, interactivity designers and teachers in the winter snows of the Rockies. As well as being deeply grateful to Nikki and Meaghan (and to administrators Reneltta Arluk, Janine Windolph, Allison Yearwood, and Howard Lee), the following members of the Banff media team (having no idea that most would soon be laid off in the pandemic), were superb and compassionate teachers: Aubrey Fernandez, Jennifer Chiasson, Tyler Jordan, Rylaan Gimby, Bojan Cosic, and Court Brinsmead. Roughly a year later, I returned to a very different Banff via Zoom for the at-a-distance phase of, Akunumusǂitis: Ecological Engagement Through the Seasons. Along with the leadership of Janine and Reneltta and Tyler’s technical acumen, Lillian Rose, a Ktunaxa leader and land artist rooted at Columbia Lake, Regina-based Nakoda buffalo artist, Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, and Toronto-based Cree multimedia performance artist, Cheryl L’Hirondelle took us to places where participants lived, along the North American Cordillera, in profoundly new (and old) ways. I remain in awe of this team of teachers! Thanks to the Slaight Family Foundation for funding my participation in the Banff Centre residencies.
HÍSW̱ḴE / Huy ch q / máh-sie / Marsee
SENĆOŦEN / Hul’q’umi’num’] / Chinook / Michif