Womxn and Waterways

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Marika Echachis Swan, "Becoming Worthy," 2013

hand-pulled wood block print with mixed media, 20" x 24"

The important role Indigenous women play in strengthening their communities, as well as the significance of water for all creation, is at the centre of qaʔyəxʷ- water honours us: womxn and waterways.

The group exhibition, on view until Oct. 2 at the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver, is guest curated by four members of the ReMatriate Collective, a group with members across Turtle Island, the name used by many Indigenous people for North America. 

With a variety of work, from video and photography to beading and carving, the show highlights women’s relationship with water through their roles as mothers, healers and doulas in matriarchal societies on the Northwest Coast. The show's title uses the term "womxn" as a less patriarchal and more inclusive term than "women" to recognize the complexities of gender.

Many works deal specifically with the notion of water, including The Space In Between and We Are Enough, photographs by Mohawk artist Lindsay Delaronde and Dionne Paul, a Nuxalk/Sechelt artist.

The pieces, which depict two naked women in a forest, represent what the artists say is the “transference of energy, knowledge and healing from woman to woman.”

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Lindsay Delaronde and Dionne Paul, "The Space In Between," 2017

photo on canvas, 24" x 60"

Elsewhere in the show, Richelle Bear Hat uses two gallery pillars in her piece, Call me home, which acknowledges the importance of water to both her Blackfoot family in Alberta and her Northern B.C. family, the Dane-Zaa.

“I’ve watched my father introduce himself,” Bear Hat says in her artist statement. “Instead of using Western ways I’ve grown accustomed to, he instead describes the rivers that surround his home: Blueberry River, Halfway River and Prophet River.”

Wanting to learn from that experience, she composed two poems about the rivers of her ancestors, one for the Bow River in Alberta and the other for the Blueberry River in Northern B.C. She painted the text directly onto two facing pillars using colours that reflect the land around the rivers – golden yellow for the Bow and forest green for the Blueberry.

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Kali Spitzer, “Portrait of Musqueam Waterkeeper (Audrey Siegl),” scanned tintype, 30” x 24”

These celebratory works contrast with an installation that features photo-based works with audio and cedar boughs. Created by Audrey Siegl and Kali Spitzer, it memorializes an Indigenous woman named Maria, presumably someone who is missing or murdered.

Siegl, a Musqueam activist from Vancouver, has travelled with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls since 2017. Spitzer is Kaska Dena and works in film.

“Safe spaces for our women are on non-existent … unless we build them,” they say in a joint statement. “As Indigenous women, we are inseparable from the land and the water. As we rise to protect our women, we inherently protect our water and land.” ■

qaʔyəxʷ- water honours us: womxn and waterways is on view at the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver from April 10 to Oct. 2, 2019.