Check out these titles and local performances; explore the creativity of amazing artists, performers, poets, and more!
Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada: Echoes and Exchanges edited by Anna Hoefnagels and Beverley Diamond
This collection narrates a story of resistance and renewal, struggle and success, as indigenous musicians in Canada negotiate who they are and who they want to be.
It demonstrates how music is a powerful tool for articulating the social challenges faced by Aboriginal communities and an effective way to affirm indigenous strength and pride.
For upcoming shows and music series in the lower mainland!
Where the Blood Mixes by Kevin Loring
A story about loss and redemption. Caught in a shadowy pool of alcoholic pain and guilt, Floyd is a man who has lost everyone he holds most dear. Now after more than two decades, his daughter Christine returns home to confront her father. Set during the salmon run, Where the Blood Mixes takes us to the bottom of the river, to the heart of a People.
For upcoming performances written and directed by Kevin Loring!
Children of God: a Musical by Corey Payette
A powerful musical about an Oji-Cree family whose children were taken away to a residential school in Northern Ontario. The play tells the story of one family: Tommy and Julia, who are trying to survive in the harsh environment of a religious school, and their mother, Rita, who never stops trying to get them back. The impact of this experience on the lives of them all is profound and devastating, yet the story moves toward redemption
For upcoming performances written and directed by Cory Payette!
Practical Dreamers: conversations with movie artists by Mike Hoolboom
Welcome to the world of fringe movies. Here, artists have been busy putting queer shoulders to the wheels, or bending light to talk about First Nations rights (and making it funny, to boot), or demonstrating how a personality can be taken apart and put back together, all during a ten-minute movie which might take years to make.
For upcoming films in the lower mainland!
Indianland by Lesley Belleau
This collection of poems written from a female and Indigenous point of view and incorporate Anishinaabemowin throughout. Time is cyclical, moving from present day back to first contact and forward again. Themes of sexuality, birth, memory, and longing are explored, images of blood, plants (milkweed, yarrow, cattails), and petroglyphs reoccur, and touchstone issues in Indigenous politics are addressed.
For live performances and readings in the lower mainland!
The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American modern dance histories by Jacqueline Shea Murphy
In this first major study of contemporary Native American dance, Jacqueline Shea Murphy shows how these concert performances are at once diverse and connected by common influences. Illustrating how Native dance enacts cultural connections to land, ancestors, and animals, as well as spiritual and political concerns, Shea Murphy challenges stereotypes and offers new ways of recognizing the agency of bodies on stage.
For upcoming dance performances in the lower mainland!
Xwi7xwa would like to thank Elena Pederson, Publications & Web Services Assistant, from UBC Education Library for her work on designing our digital signage.