mapping infrastructure rivers identity partition
documentary | waterways by keesic douglas
ancestor’s path
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Keesic Douglas
I listened to the frogs and the bugs, the birds and the trees. I watched beavers and muskrats. It made me think about pollution and carbon emissions. It made me think about littering and garbage production. Because of my heritage I am automatically considered to be connected to the natural world and fighting mercilessly to protect it. I drive a car. I remember driving my car two hours each way to Toronto and back just to get a haircut. Being in a canoe travelling the same route really put some perspective on what is necessary for the world to survive. Looking back on the images I captured and being involved in such an amazing project as Beyond Imaginings , I am really starting to see the value in making art about the natural world. Maybe I am beginning to be an artist activist after all. c
I’ve always explored my Aboriginal identity through my work and my own perspective on the world around me. It’s not so much that I am trying to figure out who I am for myself, but more who we are as Indigenous peoples negotiating our place in this world. I’ve always used historical notions of Aboriginal-ness but this project had me focusing on a very specific history, that of the historical trading route of my ancestors. As I canoed and explored the winding Holland River over many days, it became apparent that there was this natural world that I was a part of and connected to at the water level, and there was another world slightly above, crossing the bridges and zooming down straight roads in cars and trucks.
Ancestor’s Path. Beyond Imaginings: eight artists encounter Ontario’s greenbelt. A photographic exhibition, 2010-2012, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto.
From an interview of Keesic David by Riley Wallace for Upfront, a Harbourfront visual arts blog, June 23, 2010
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