About the Tool

Traveling through Toronto/Tkaron:to, revisit all your favourite places through the living histories of the city’s Indigenous First Peoples. “Your Tkaron:to Companion Guide” is a passport to place and arts-based explorations of the complex and contested ways the city of Toronto was established. The activities in this guide will take you on field trips, explore hands-on learning, and inspire critical reflection through embodied understandings of land-based relationships; learners will explore Indigenous geographies and how colonialism has impacted both human and non-human connection. The Companion Guide investigates the city through three booklets:

  • Booklet 1: Day Trip to Humber River
  • Booklet 2: Day Trip to High Park
  • Booklet 3: Day Trip: The Waterfront Boundaries of the 1787 Toronto Purchase (Treaty 13)
A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, 2022

This tool has been adapted from an activity included in the publication A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, an artfully constructed examination of the complex intercultural roots of treaty relationships in the Greater Toronto Area. The Treaty Guide is part of Jumblies Theatre & Arts’ multi-year Talking Treaties project, led by Ange Loft and co-created with Martha Stiegman and Victoria Freeman, and includes scholarly historical research complemented by outdoor activities, theatrical pursuits, and contemporary writing prompts that help readers explore the modern-day subjective and physical embodiment of treaty relations. This combination of art-based research and Toronto specific knowledge inspires an active approach to treaty awareness through embodied learning tools.

FURTHER READING
  1. Loft, Ange, Jill Carter, Martha Stiegman, Victoria Freeman. A Treaty Guide for Torontonians. Toronto: Jumblies Press and Toronto Biennial of Art, 2022.

  2. Yellow Head Institute. Landback: A Yellowhead Institute, Red Paper. The Yellowhead Institute. Redpaper. yellowheadinstitute.org. 
Suggested Age/Grade

K-12, Families, Intergenerational

Curriculum Links

The Arts, Social Studies, History and Geography, First Nations, Métis and Inuit Studies, Canadian and World Studies, Native Languages, English.

Learning Outcomes
  • Explore Indigenous living and ecological presence in Toronto through arts-based activities;
  • Familiarize learners with the concept of a “strength-based lens,” as it relates to Indigenous knowledge, arts and activism;
  • Encourage learners to think critically about whose stories are reflected in the land and the cultivation of spaces in Toronto.
Downloadable Content:
About the Contributors

The Talking Treaties Collective includes Ange Loft, Jill Cartier, Martha Stiegman, and Victoria Freeman, a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/ researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. The Talking Treaties project has many branches and has engaged thousands of participants in generating symbols, poetry, improvised maps and performative explorations.

Jill Carter (Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi, born in Toronto, Canada) is a theatre practitioner, researcher, and educator at the University of Toronto. Based in Tkaron:to, where she was born and largely raised, she is an active member of the Talking Treaties Collective, serves as researcher and tour guide for First Story Toronto, and devises land activations, mapping interventions, and personal cosmography workshops.

Ange Loft (Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka, born in Kahnawake, Canada; lives and works in Toronto, Canada) is an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator. She is an ardent collaborator, consultant, and facilitator working in arts-based research, wearable sculpture, theatrical co-creation, and Haudenosaunee history. She is a vocalist with the music collective Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.

Victoria Freeman (born in Ottawa, Canada) is an author, historian, theatre co-creator, and educator of British settler heritage. Her work focuses on Indigenous-settler relations and the Indigenous and colonial past of Toronto. She has collaborated on numerous community projects, including with First Story Toronto, L’Arche Toronto Sol Express, Toronto Council Fire, and Jumblies Theatre.

Martha Stiegman (settler, lives and works in Toronto, Canada) is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her communitybased research and collaborative video work examine Indigenoussettler treaty relations in their historical and contemporary manifestations, with particular attention to food sovereignty and justice as well as participatory and visual research methodologies.

Image Credit: Jumblies Theatre & Arts, “Talking Treaties,” 2018. Photo: Liam Coo. Courtesy of the artists.