Open to adults and older youth of all experiences, backgrounds, and abilities, this workshop begins with a presentation and facilitated discussion of the key symbols of Toronto’s Indigenous presence and governance structures. Symbols found in the text of Treaty 13: The Toronto Purchase, further reveal another set of imagery to unpack, moving through the city’s changing coat of arms, to Indigenous names for local waterways. With a large version of the Toronto Purchase text, small teams collaborate to replace words with images, culminating in a site-specific visual installation to expand across the grounds of Small Arms.
Image Credit: Ange Loft, Talking Treaties – Text and Image, 2019. Photo: Yuula Benivolski.
Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)
1352 Lakeshore Road East
Mississauga ON
L5E 1E9
November 2
Bios
Alejandra Nuñez (born in Santiago, Chile; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) is a vocalist, percussionist, composer, and mother to Natalia and Mathew. Nuñez has lived and worked as a musician in Canada and the United States, and performed in Europe, as well as throughout North and Central America. Her training on percussion has taken her to Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, New York, and Egypt.
Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) is an avid theatre practitioner who has worked as a performer, director, dramaturg, and instructor. Carter is a graduate of the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto, where she completed her PhD. Her dissertation is focussed upon the Spiderwoman Process of Storyweaving and its development within Spiderwoman Theater. Carter currently teaches in the Aboriginal Studies Department and the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto.
Jumblies Theatre & Arts (founded in 2001; based in Toronto, ON, Canada) is an organization with international reach that collaborates with professional artists and diverse communities to create transient utopias and far-reaching ripples. Ange Loft (Kahnawake Mohawk, born in Kahnawake, QC, Canada; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) is Associate Artistic Director of Jumblies and an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator practising in Toronto. She is also a vocalist with Yamantaka//Sonic Titan. Her collaborations use arts-based research, wearable sculpture, and theatrical story-weaving to facilitate workshops and theatrical spectacle. Loft created the “Toronto Indigenous Context Brief” for the Toronto Biennial of Art’s Advisory Council.