The Indigenous Youth Residency Program is a land-based artist residency for native youth that centers Anishinaabe artistic methodologies and relationships to art. In this sense, relationship-building is artistic practice itself and youth explore relationships to self, community, ancestors and homelands while deeply interrogating the structures and strategies of settler colonialism that impact their lives. Engaging with knowledge that comes from the land, our bodies, elders and knowledge keepers, youth work towards the creation of a final collaborative project that communicates all they have learned during the residency. This intensive program is designed to give youth the tools to articulate their experiences of things like white supremacy and cis-heteropatriarchy, while creating a non-hierarchical space of knowledge transmission for youth to create deep and meaningful relationships with themselves, each other and the various artists we work with. The Indigenous Youth Residency Program has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and has run a total of 4 times in the past two years. Each iteration focuses on a different topic to meet the differing needs of youth across place. Click on the links below to see images of each cohort and the works they created. Check out my thesis in the writing tab if you are interested to learn more about the methodologies and curricula of this program.
