Land of None | Land of Us

Land of None / Land of Us

June 28-29, 2022

Curated by Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna & Paiute), Dgheyey Kaq’, Alaska; Jennifer Bowen (Dene), Denendeh; Alice Marie Jektevik (Sámi), Áttir, Sápmi; Jessica Winters (Inuk), Makkovik, Nunatsiavut with Pat Kane (Ashinaabe), Denendeh.

Arts Underground, Whitehorse, YK

Land of None, Land of Us is an exhibition of circumpolar photography that made its debut during the 2022 Arctic Arts Summit in Whitehorse. The exhibition was curated by four emerging curators from the circumpolar North – Alice Marie Jektevik, Jennifer Bowen, Jessica Bonnie Winters, and Melissa Shaginoff – guided by the mentorship of Pat Kane, co-founder and President of the Far North Photo Festival. Land of None, Land of Us brought together four sets of 13 works to be exhibited during the Summit and Adäka Cultural Festival, as well as in Toronto through a partnership with CONTACT Photography Festival during Nuit Blanche 2022.

Curatorial Statement

Regardless of the borders that we live between, Indigenous people of the circumpolar North share a common understanding: the land and its fluctuations are paramount to our livelihood. Our connection to the land shapes our everyday lives, values, traditions and art, and very little of these aspects of us are shaped by modern-day colonial boundaries.
The exhibition title Land of None / Land of Us refers to the Lockean principles of land ownership dating back to the 1600s, which gave colonizers the lawful right to claim Indigenous land by naming it Terra Nullius, meaning land belonging to no one.
These Lockean principles allowed for colonial advancement in, among others, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Nordic countries. Indigenous communities today still struggle to obtain ownership of the land, and are fighting foreign and domestic companies, supported by the colonizing states, that are establishing mines, pipelines, oil rigs, windmills, fishing farms and tourist expansion on their lands and in their fjords.
These principles are in conflict with Indigenous ways of being and are defined by the notion that we are separate from the land. That we need to take care of it or protect it from human presence. Indigenous beliefs center the opposite. We are the same as the land, the animals, and the water. We are thriving. The land is us.
This exhibition challenges how our homelands have been wrongfully labeled Terra Nullius - land of no one, and highlights the Indigenous inhabitants and guardians of the land who have dwelled here for thousands of years. In the exhibition, you will notice that the areas are introduced by their original names in the original languages of the areas.
Land of None / Land of Us features Indigenous photographers inspired by their Northern landscapes and our ongoing presence and engagement with these lands and waters. Combining the genres of lifestyle, documentary, landscape and portrait photography, these accomplished photographers create a collection of images that reflect each photographer’s Indigenous culture from within their traditional territories.

Featured

Pat Kane is a photographer in Yellowknife, located on Chief Drygeese Territory, the traditional homelands of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, Northwest Territories.

He takes a documentary approach to stories about people and life in Northern Canada with a special focus on issues important to Indigenous people, including the relationship between land and identity.

Pat is the co-founder and president of the Far North Photo Festival — a platform to help elevate the work of visual storytellers across the Arctic.

Pat is a National Geographic Society grantee, a Royal Canadian Geographical Society grantee, and an alumni of the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass.

Pat identifies as mixed Indigenous/settler as a proud Algonquin Anishinaabe member of the Timiskaming First Nation (Quebec).

He’s part of the photo collectives Indigenous Photograph and Boreal Collective. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide.

Instagram: @patkanephoto

Melissa Shaginoff is part of the Udzisyu (caribou) and Cui Ui Ticutta (fish-eater) clans from Nay'dini'aa Na Kayax (Chickaloon Village, Alaska). She is an Ahtna and Paiute person, an artist, a curator, and an Auntie. Her work is shaped by the framework and intricacies of Indigenous ceremonies and social structures. Melissa centers conversation in her art practice, searching for deeper understanding through moments of exchange and reciprocity. She has completed artist residencies in Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Alaska. She is currently engaged in a year-long artist residency designed in collaboration with The Nave, a historic building and community space in Dgheyey Kaq’ (Anchorage). She has curated and juried art exhibitions with the Anchorage Museum, Alaska Pacific University, University Alaska Anchorage, the Coe Center, the International Folk Art Museum, and the Fairbanks Art Association. Melissa has been published in the Alaska Humanities FORUM Magazine, First American Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center’s Learning Lab. She is a founding member of Łuk’ae Tse’ Taas (fish head soup) Comics, a new media collective focusing on Indigenous co-authorship and representation in science-fiction narratives.

Jennifer Bowen is a Ph.D. student of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She is an independent Indigenous curator of online exhibitions, short documentary films, and sculptural artists. Her curatorial exhibitions include Strength in Spirit: Living with COVID-19 (2020), Aakíí isskská’takssin: Woman thought (2017), Carrying Forward our Traditions (2015), Hands of Time: Bush Women on the Land (2014), My Healing Journey: Mary Caesar (2014), and Sewing our Traditions: Dolls of Canada’s North (2010). Jennifer received her BFA at the University of Lethbridge and MA at the University of Victoria where she was awarded the Governor General’s Silver Medal (2021). Jennifer’s research practice has explored the history of exhibition design of the Northern Athapaskan people and a copper dagger associated with the people. Her current research project looks at the emergence of Indigenous painters and sculptors within Denendeh from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Alice Marie Jektevik (born. 1989) is a Sea Sámi art and music producer living in Tromsø, Norway. Her homelands are on the island Áttir in Lulli-Romsa. Jektevik runs her own company focused around evolving Sámi art projects and the further development of the Sámi art and culture field. She has previously produced the indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu (2017-2020), and is currently the guest producer at the Sámi festival Márkomeannu (2022), and guest producer at The Lásságámmi foundation (2021-2022).

Jektevik produces in the space between art, politics, history and modern expressions. She works with different artists within different genres, and loves exploring new expressions and art forms. She is a member of the all-female Sámi DJ-collective Article 3, who exclusively play indigenous bangers from all around the world.

Jessica Winters is an inuk painter, printmaker, textile artist and emerging curator from Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL. She got her artistic start at an early age thanks to her family of accomplished craftspeople, including grandmother Nellie Winters, a celebrated textile artist. Jessica has been heavily influenced by her studies in biology, and uses her work to advocate for the preservation of Inuit culture, values and surrounding environment.

In 2019, she curated Billy Gauthier’s first major solo exhibition, Saunituinnaulungitotluni | Beyond Bone at The Rooms. Since then, she has worked on a photography exhibition titled Regeneration for the Bonavista Biennale in 2020, and a film screening titled Sanningajuk for Center Clark in Montreal.