Roxanne Charles: Honouring Our Women 2021

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Roxanne Charles, "Honouring Our Women," 2021

Design: Vicky Lum

PANEL  Roxanne Charles: Honouring Our Women FRI, OCT 29 2021

To celebrate the installation of her mural Honouring Our Women at 312 Main, Roxanne Charles brings five local Indigenous matriarchs — Ta'ah (Amy George), Sabina Dennis, Kanahus Manuel, Debra Sparrow, and T’uy’t’tanat (Cease Wyss) — together in conversation. Poet and activist Rita Wong moderates this Zoom webinar.

Roxanne Charles of Semiahmoo First Nation is a cultural historian employing means of visual representation, oral history, and ceremony. Roxanne holds two undergraduate degrees from Kwantlen Polytechnic University and a Master of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University. Roxanne's work directly responds to a troubling colonial present and documents a variety of issues that reflect her life experience such as spirituality, identity, urbanization, food security, resource extraction, trauma, and various forms of systemic violence.

Sabina Dennis is Carrier Sekani and an environmental leader who became the face of the Wet’suwet’en stand against the RCMP raid in January 2019 when media captured photos of her on the front line, where she was, in her words, “making sure everyone was safe and cared for.” 

Amy George (Ta‘ah) is a matriarch, leader, Elder, mother, grandmother, pipe carrier, sundancer and spirit dancer from Tsleil-Waututh Nation. She is also the daughter of Chief Dan George, and the mother of Rueben George, who is a Sundance Chief and critic of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. Ta’ah is well known for calling upon people to “Warrior Up” in response to the Expansion Project—guiding with passion and commitment to protect the lands and waters for future generations.

Kanahus Manuel is Secwepemc and Ktunaxa, a member of the Secwepemc Women Warrior Society, a mother of four, and a traditional Secwepemc birth-keeper. It is with this motherly power that Manuel continues to fight day in and out, to protect her traditional territories, her people’s rights to these territories, and the rights of all Indigenous Peoples. 

Debra Sparrow was born and raised on the Musqueam Indian Reserve and is self-taught in Salish design and jewellery-making. Her work can be seen in various museums and institutions. Debra is an acclaimed weaver who has been weaving for twenty years and is deeply involved with the revival of Musqueam weaving.

Rita Wong is a poet-scholar who has written several books of poetry.  Wong works to support Indigenous communities' efforts towards justice and health for water and land. She has co-edited an anthology with Dorothy Christian entitled Downstream: Reimagining Water. An Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University, Wong attends to the relationships between contemporary poetics, water justice, ecology, and decolonization.

Cease Wyss (T’uy't'tanat) (Skwxwu7mesh/Sto:Lo/Hawaiian/Swiss) is an interdisciplinary artist who works with digital media, writing, and performance as her multi-disciplinary arts practice. She is a community engaged, public artist and ethnobotanist whose work is focussed on sustainability, permaculture, Coast Salish Cultural elements and has included themes of ethnobotany, Indigenous language revival, Salish weaving and digital media technology.