Workshop 1
April 12th @ 5 PM
Basic orthography (alphabet, sounds, letter combinations, basic words) – how to read and write basic Smith Francis orthography.
Workshop 2
April 13th @ 5 PM
Basic conversation.
Register Here: https://goo.gl/forms/lXZLghCJjrEuVgAB3
Adult Class Registration Fee: $35 per class, or $50 for both.
Children’s Class Registration Fee: $20 per family
*Registration fees are waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous. Fees help cover Festival operating costs.
Shane Snook: Certified by Grenfell as a basic orthography teacher, Shane has been learning the language for roughly 5 years. He is an office administration student who has been working to produce learning materials in his spare time. Presently, Shane volunteers regularly with several cultural groups and teaching language basics in his community.
Marcella Williams: Certified by Grenfell as a basic orthography teacher, Marcella has been working teaching language with No’kmaq Village for roughly 4 years and was one of the first to begin learning the language locally roughly 8 years ago. She is a trained multi-media artist and volunteers her time with several cultural groups and language groups.
Workshop 3:
April 14th @ 11 AM
Kids games using Mi’kmaw.
Adult Class Registration Fee: $35 per class, or $50 for both.
Children’s Class Registration Fee: $20 per family
*Registration fees are waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous. Fees help cover Festival operating costs.
Register here: https://goo.gl/forms/lXZLghCJjrEuVgAB3
ONLY 3 SLOTS AVAILABLE!
Drum Making Workshop Day 1
LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria Street, St. John’s
Saturday, April 14th @ 1 PM
Drum Making Workshop Day 1
LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria Street, St. John’s
Sunday, April 15th @ 1 PM
Registration Fee: $250 for both classes
Registration fee for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous: $150 for both classes
Fees help cover Festival operating costs.
Register here: https://goo.gl/forms/npIVOLeT8qUqReS12
This workshop will teach you how to tie a drum from materials obtained in the old ways. The hides are harvested and scraped by hand using only a blade. Day one will involve instructions on assembling the traditional hand drum. Day two will involve teachings on how to care for the drum and carry it in a traditional way.
Scott Butt Bio: I was involved with the Mi’Kmaq culture from childhood, learning the living culture from my family out on the land. I began carving in my early twenties after picking up a stick while on a fishing trip and turning it into a staff sitting around a campfire that night. Since then I have spent the last twenty five years learning as much as possible about my Mi’Kmaq culture. I make my living from my carving, rustic furniture and tradition objects. I create many different items and have been building drums for twenty years now. My drums as with most of my work is built from materials I collect from the land and prepare by hand. I believe our old ways are best preserved by doing and sharing our knowledge with others.
WORKSHOP CURRENTLY AT CAPACITY
Sealskin Textile Workshop
LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria Street, St. John’s
Monday, April 16th @ 5 PM
Registration Fee: $75
*Registration fees are waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous. Fees help cover Festival operating costs.
In this workshop all participants will learn how to cut seal in a proper manner with a sensitivity to to proper fur grain. The participants will then learn proper traditional hand stitching methods using a simulated waxed sinew to construct the base of the bag. Once the bag is complete thin strips of fur will be cut and shaved to create the draw strings for the finished medicine bag. The finished measurement of the bag will be 5″x 7″.
Barry Buckle is an Irish\NunatuKavik instructor for the College of the North Atlantic’s, Textiles: Craft and Apparel Design program and a seasoned multi-disciplinary fashion professional. He is an advocate for the sustainable use of seal skin, frequently teaching the skills needed to work in seal skin and incorporating it within his own fashion designs.
Mawpile’n (tie it together)
Eastern Edge Gallery, 72 Harbour Drive
Saturday, April 14th @ 11 AM
Registration fee is waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous. Fees help to cover Festival operating costs.
Mawpile’n (tie it together) is an invitation to sit alongside artist Meagan Musseau and try your hand at basic beading techniques. In the process of learning participants will transform the space into one of conversation and listening. Within this context, the action of mawpile’n is to treat each participant as an individual piece of a structure that will be tied together by the act of sharing, listening, and making.
This workshop will function as space for community engagement to open discussion about intention, appropriation, and decolonization. Mawpile’n (tie it together) is an opportunity to experience the potential art and the act of making together has to foster understanding and community relationships.
Meagan Musseau is an interdisciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq, French, and Irish ancestry from the community of Curling in the Bay of Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador––Elamstukwek, Ktaqmkuk territory of Mi’kma’ki. Musseau has a BFA in Visual Art from Grenfell Campus Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and she is the Atlantic Canadian representative for the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC). Musseau received grants and awards for her work, including an Aboriginal Arts Development Award from the First Peoples’ Cultural Council and an Inter-Arts project grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work was recently featured in “Constellations: bonds, ties and networks in 10 emerging practices” by Erin Sutherland for Canadian Art, Summer 2017.
LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria Street, St. John’s
Wednesday, April 18th @ 1 PM
LSPU Hall, 3 Victoria Street, St. John’s
Friday, April 20th @ 11 AM
Registration Fee: $35 per class, or $50 for both.
Registration fee is waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous. Fees help to cover Festival operating costs.
The class aims to turn on all of the body’s senses, discovering a state from which the body can move that is ‘awakened’.
This ‘awakened-state’ is the place from which our bodies are intended to move.
It’s where economy of effort and peak performance are the same.
This state is achieved by first raising our awareness of how our body and its functions have come been colonized in our lifetimes; colonized by the jobs we work, our notions of gender, the concrete we live in and so on.
From this state of consciousness, we will investigate maximizing the body’s abilities.
We awaken all our senses in the warm up – paying particular attention to the functions of the senses we don’t normally associate with movement. We tap into the body’s instinctive awareness of semiotics as one large communicating body.
Our bodies are ancient, and we are meant to be in communication with this.
We find shapes in the body through semiotics.
We cut like a knife without cracking the handle.
The class progresses to exciting, ‘awakened-virtuosic’ and boundary-pushing movement phrases that will leave you feeling heavily worked while maintaining a vessel to last you 200 hundred years. We will create a substantial choreography collectively in this way. Traditional, Pow Wow, Martial Arts, Release, Street Dance and Classical forms are all
commonly drawn from within the class.
electric moose is the creative umbrella for the work of brian solomon.
solomon is of anishinaabe and irish descent, born in the remote community of shebahonaning / killarney, located in the manitoulin district of northern ontario, canada. the bedrock in the area is among the oldest on earth. there are white mountains of quartz, silica and granite. there are clean bodies of fresh water the size of seas in every direction. animals, plants and humans have thrived in the region since before the ice age, and solomon’s ancestors have been on that land a very long time. this immense fortune he was born into informs his work greatly. these were his first teachers.
solomon followed first in the tradition of visual art in the region – the surrounding lands are one of the birthplaces of eastern woodland art, and many contemporary artists are drawn here to practice. he began his visual art practice learning from some of these artists. while working as a portrait artist in his teenage years in sudbury ontario, solomon discovered theatre, traditional and contemporary dance. he moved to toronto to train at the school of toronto dance theatre, and later received a masters in performance from the laban centre (uk). solomon then performed in dance and theatre for dozens of creators from across canada, the us and europe, earning several dora and gemini award nominations.
as a creator his work is multidisciplinary, raw, challenging and present. he has created a community work with over 40 interpreters, solos in trees, and animated installations of landfill. solomon’s work has toured nationally and internationally. it has been presented at the art gallery of ontario, the mcmichael canadian art collection, toronto’s harbourfront centre and ngbk – neue gesellschaft für bildende kunst berlin. a co-creation with german visual artist judy ross on their film “the filmmaker”, won best prize for experimental film at watch out! film festival in macedonia. solomon was also a recipient of a reveal indigenous arts award from the hnatyshyn foundation.
he has taught his practice in numerous shelters, friendship centres, dance and theatre companies and in universitie. solomon is passionate about helping people relearn about their forgotten bodies, and take back the space those bodies occupy.
Saturday, April 21st from 9 AM – 11 AM
Homemade Pie with Local Fillings
Saturday, April 21st from 1 PM – 3 PM
Saturday, April 21st from 3 PM – 5 PM
All classes will be taught at the St. John’s Native Friendship Centre, 716 Water Street, St. John’s.
Registration Fee: $55 per class
*Registration fees are waived for individuals who self-identify as Indigenous
Join Vick Allen, Catering Coordinator at Four Fires Catering for lunch, an afternoon snack, or dinner! For lunch, you’ll learn how to prepare a modern take on a Mi’kmaq dish, eel. Before making the eel, we’ll make some salads with local ingredients to go with the BBQ eel. We’ll be preparing the eel in the kitchen and grilling the eel on the cedar planks in the BBQ. Later that afternoon, you’ll learn to make a pie crust and fill it with local pie fillings (partridgeberry, blueberry, local cranberry and apple – we’ll decide which you want). And finally for dinner, we’ll be turning local rabbits into a delicious stew, and no stew is complete without bannock.
*Bring a hat, apron (if you have one), and preferably non-slip shoes!
Vick Allen (St. John’s Native Friendship Centre) is an Inuk from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology from MUN. After finishing as the Conference Coordinator for the 2016 Inuit Studies Conference, she became the Catering Coordinator at the St. John’s Native Friendship Centre. It’s there that she blends her passion for cooking and advocating for Aboriginal rights.
