Intertribal Lifelines (2017)

Intertribal Lifelines (2017) is a collaborative installation with Charlene Vickers which utilizes multiple mediums, including quilted and knit blankets, tape and sonic elements to call attention to water pollution disasters while calling in water protectors. 

These installation elements invoke various stories which visually weave a narrative between various waterways and their use as networks colonial exchange. As SF Ho writes in Water is Money, "Blankets can be used for ceremony, honouring, shelter, protection, rest and care. Historically, as carriers of smallpox in the settler colonial project, they also act as symbols of biological warfare. The blankets in Intertribal Lifelines call out the Mount Polley gold and copper mine where a tailings pond leaked into salmon-bearing waters. They name the Rio Doce, where the collapse of a dam owned by the Samarco mining company destroyed nearby communities while releasing iron ore tailings into the Doce River and eventually into the Atlantic. The blankets name mercury poisoning in Minamata Japan, as well as the mercury poisoning of the Wabigoon River which brought Minamata disease to the Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nations."

This installation pulls elements from Hands Across the Sky (2016), an earlier collaborative multi-medium performance at VIVO Media Arts.