The Fabulous: A Panel Discussion

Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane (Anishinaabe/Three Fires Confederacy) is honoured as a Nokomis of eight grandchildren from her three children. She dedicates her life’s work of Mino bimaadiziwin, in keeping with the 8th Fire prophecy, as a 7th Fire prophecy community member. Karen’s path to social action and scholarly work started as a youth during the height of the civil rights era of the seventies (Toronto). She attributes her activism to her parents, who survived the Indian Residential School experience. Her early social justice engagement, established in idealism, artistic spirit, and free speech, provided a crucial beginning for her inquisitive spirit. Karen spent her early years as a dancer, artist, and writer, which evolved into education.

She spent the past forty years mentored by iconic Indigenous scholars from the Great Lakes of her people to Treaty Three, Treaty Six and currently in Treaty Seven. Her Euro-Western education includes a B.A. in Political Science and English Literature and graduate studies in Educational Policy Studies (M.Ed) from the University of Alberta. Karen is an Assistant Professor at Mount Royal University in the Treaty Seven region. She is cross-appointed to the Department of General Education, Office of Teaching and Learning, and the Department of Humanities–Indigenous Studies. She is also in completion of a PhD in Educational Policy Studies/Indigenous Peoples Education with the University of Alberta with a focus on Anishinaabe/Indigenous pedagogy and higher learning.

Maria Hupfield (she/her), a transdisciplinary artist, crosses boundaries at the intersection of performance art and design. She is deeply invested in embodied practice, Native feminisms, and ethical collaborative processes. Her work positions the art object as active belongings, with sculptures becoming performers in a form of object choreography between artist, audience, and art gallery; her works are engaged in an ongoing series of relations with community, places, ideas, and materials. She is an urban off-reservation member of the Anishinabek People belonging to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario. Hupfield is the inaugural City of Toronto artist in residence and was awarded the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Prize 2023. Her art travelled nationally with “Beat Nation”, grunt gallery, Vancouver; as a solo project “Nine Years Towards the Sun” at the Heard Museum, Phoenix Arizona USA; and internationally with “The One Who Keeps on Giving”, The Power Plant, Toronto. Her work was also shown at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de l’UQAM, Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, NONAM – Nordamerika Native Museum Zurich, National Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Abrons Arts Center, Center for Art – Research and Alliances (CARA), BRIC House Gallery, The Bronx Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and SITE SANTA FE amongst others. Hupfield is represented by Patel Brown Toronto and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau Montreal.

Mikinaak Migwans is a member of Wiikwemikoong Unceded Territory, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, and Curator of Indigenous Art in the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Their research focuses on the politics of place-making from the land to the museum, with special emphasis on textile arts in Anishinaabe territory. Migwans has worked with the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts & Culture at Carleton University, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M’Chigeeng First Nation, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Pablo de Ocampo is Director and Curator of Moving Image at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. From 2014 to 2020, de Ocampo was Exhibitions Curator at the artist-run center Western Front in Vancouver, Canada. His previous positions include Artistic Director of Toronto’s Images Festival from 2006 to 2014, co-founder/collective member of Cinema Project in Portland, Oregon, and in 2013, programmer of the 59th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, History is What’s Happening and is currently the President of the Board of Trustees for the Flaherty Seminar. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, BlackFlash, and in the catalogues Wendelien van Oldenborgh: unset on-set (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), Dissident Lines: Lis Rhodes (Nottingham Contemporary), and Low Relief: Lucy Raven (EMPAC, Mousse, and Portikus).