ArtsEverywhere Festival’s introductory ceremony memorably skips the clichés
The 2018 ArtsEverywhere Festival started off with a bang with the introductory ceremony and land recognition speech by Peter Schuler (whose Ojibwe name, Ozhibiige Nini, means “The Man Who Writes”) of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
With a half hour scheduled for the ceremony at the Art Gallery of Guelph, the audience likely assumed the time would be taken to promote the importance of accessibility — the event included American Sign Language interpreters and an automatic speech-to-text translator — and advertise the rest of the festival, with a short time dedicated to the land acknowledgement. Usually, the land acknowledgement at such events sounds like the University of Guelph’s territorial acknowledgement (taken from the Student Life website): “[x] resides on the ancestral lands of the Attawandaron people and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. We recognize the significance of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant to this land and offer our respect to our Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Métis neighbours as we strive to strengthen our relationships with them.”
Peter Schuler did not say this. Instead, Schuler took the audience on a journey through creation and his life.In Ojibwe, he thanked the animals, mist, fog, trees, and more. When listening to land acknowledgements, people may assume the “white man” took the land away from the Indigenous peoples only, but they also took the land away from animals and nature itself. That all living beings are connected and that we are related to nature are not far-fetched realizations: “We are woven in with creation,” said Schuler.
“I don’t know why I was compelled to include this in the land recognition, but I asked for words to come with the tobacco I put into the fire before I came to do the opening and those are the words that came,” said Schuler, in a Facebook message. “I think I will do this in the days coming any time I’m asked to do land recognition. After all, when we only mention people we are not recognizing the land, the earth. And if you look around … it shows.”
Schuler also told a story of a spirit called the “wendigo.”
This spirit is often seen as “progress” or “success,” but this facade is dangerous. The wendigo is a greedy spirit that is never satisfied and always hungry, often portrayed as a giant beast who possesses people and makes them cannibals. Schuler compared the wendigo to the “white man,” who displaced the Indigenous peoples from their land, gave them smallpox blankets, and killed them in large numbers. There is an understandable amount of displeasure in this part of history, but Schuler insisted that people need to relearn the history of their culture.That is why, he said, the ArtsEverywhere Festival is so important for him: it is an opportunity to open doors and talk about things that might be uncomfortable. But the value of listening is more important than discomfort. The ArtsEverywhere Festival creates a safe learning environment in which individuals can listen to the struggles and achievements of those around them.
But we are not to forget, he declared: “We should not forget the beginning — the very beginning.”
Photo courtesy of Peter Schuler