NAC

It's complicated being a Treaty person, whether a Settler, new immigrant, Indigenous, Metis, Inuit, etc.. Me, I'm a white Settler of Anglo-Scots extraction... Treaty Canoe was made with many hands. About 25 years ago Dr. Brian Owens, then archivist at the University of Windsor, threw some Transcription Dinner Parties. I needed a lot of treaties to make a canoe. What I didn't know at the time was what Dr Owens had done would profoundly change Treaty Canoe forever, he was part of making it about community... But I need to back up. Maybe 28 years ago I started talking about this idea to make a canoe out of Treaties. In '94, sort of but not really inverting the conditions of exploration and discover, I had paddled down the Thames, in England, in a faux birch bark canoe, the skin being B&W photos of bark. Glenn Fallis of Voyager Canoe, in Millbrook Ontario helped me with that. That canoe became to model and mold for Treaty Canoe.

Primary location: North Bay