Ange Loft worked with TBA in 2022 to create the MAC tool series, “Your Tkaronto Companion Guide”: Booklet 1: Day Trip to the Humber River; Booklet 2: Day Trip to High Park; and Booklet 3: Day Trip: The Waterfront Boundaries of the 1787 Toronto Purchase (Treaty 13). These booklets took intergenerational learners across the city sensing and embodying and learning about Indigenous living histories and giving presence in present day. The companion guide booklets were based on the deep research presented in her book, A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, written with her collaborators, writers and educators: Victoria Freeman, Martha Steigman, and Jill Carter.
With this fourth learning tool in the Tsi Tkarón:to Companion Guide series, Loft again asks participants to get down on the ground and look, listen, and feel closely, becoming familiar with pottery patterns found across the city from Wendat Nation archeological sites. Ange focuses on pottery patterns because looking closely, we can imagine how these markings were created as a form of communication: about migrations, landscapes, family histories, oral storytelling, and more. These patterns are connected to families who lived in the region for thousands of years before movement outside the Tkarón:to area. With respect and imagination, Ange presents a suite of activities to honour the original producers of these patterns, reproducing and retracing their linework and bringing them into contemporary settings. By paying attention to these pottery markings, we are able to re-imagine how and where they were used, and give presence to the original stewards of the land where we work and live together.
Repeat these actions, remembering these patterns through motion, action and voice.
“One widely accepted version is that the word Toronto comes from the Kanien’kéha/Mohawk Tkarón:to (tree in the water there). This word may refer to ancient fishing weirs at the narrows (now Atherley Narrows) between Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching, where ancestors of contemporary Indigenous Peoples gathered for thousands of years.”
– A Treaty Guide for Torontonians
Suggested Age
Intergenerational
Curriculum Links
The Arts, Social Studies, Canadian Studies, First Nations, Metis and Inuit Studies.
About the Contributors
Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka, from Kahnawà:ke, QC, Canada; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) is an interdisciplinary performing artist. Her collaborations use arts based research, voice, wearable sculpture, theatrical co-creation and Haudenosaunee history to facilitate workshops and community-engaged spectacle. She was the director of the Talking Treaties initiative and co-author of A Treaty Guide for Torontonians (2022). Ange was the inaugural Indigenous Research Fellow at the Centre for Canadian Architecture (2023), Indigenous Artist in Residence at Centaur Theatre (22-25) and Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor at University College (2023/24). Ange received the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Indigenous Artist Award in 2023.
Image Credit: Carrying Patterns: Sound and Gesture, October 6, 2024. Facilitated by: Ange Loft and olivia shortt. Program held at 32 Lisgar Street as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2024. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.