Artist Collaborators

The following artists were invaluable in the creation of the Cultural Curation Training. With their insight, guidance, and personal stories from their experiences in the arts, this training was formed to represent ten artist voices from Turtle Island and provide actionable steps that art curators can take to re-imagine collaborations with Indigenous artists.

  • Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, M.F.A. is a proud Niisüü member of White River First Nation from Beaver Creek, Yukon and Alaska. She is an Upper Tanana Dineh, Frisian, and French visual artist, curator, and teacher currently residing on lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Territories. Her visual arts practice is invested in the awakening of sleeping materials and the (re)animation of found objects that speak to her identity. She began exhibiting her work in 2014 and now has three solo shows and over 20 group exhibitions under her belt. Her curatorial practice focuses on filling gaps and writing new narratives that highlight the importance of representation and visibility of northern Indigenous Peoples. She was the curator of We Are Our Language (2019), Emerging North (2020), co-curator for Elemental Transformations (2021) and TETHER (2022). Teresa has sat on numerous committees, advisories, and juries over the years and is a former Board Member of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective/Collectif des commissaires autochtones.

  • Kyana Kingbird is a 31 year-old Mi’kmaq and Ojibwe fancy shawl and jingle dress dancer, where her forms of dance are both textile wearable art as well as performance-centric.

    Since Kyana was very young, she has been dedicated to perfecting her craft and wants to share her passion for dance and culture with the world. As a beadwork artist and seamstress, Kyana takes pride in creating her own regalia for herself and her family, intertwining the beauty between dance and art. Kyana strives to create an experience that allows those who aren’t intimately involved in the sport to understand how much heart and drive is behind it.


  • Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Ancestor Artists. Morin’s artistic offerings can be organised around four themes: articulating Land/Knowing, articulating Indigenous Grief/Loss, articulating Community Knowing, and understanding the Creative Agency/Power of the Indigenous body. The work takes place in galleries, in community, in collaboration, and on the land. All of the work is informed by dreams, Ancestors, Family members, and Performance Art as a Research Methodology. Morin began art school in 1997, completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2001 and his Masters in Fine Arts in 2010 at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. Initially trained in lithography, Morin’s artistic practice moves from Printmaking to Poetry to Beadwork to Installation to Drum Making to Performance Art. Peter is the son of Janelle Creyke (Crow Clan, Tahltan Nation) and Pierre Morin (French Canadian). Throughout his exhibition and making history, Morin has focused upon his matrilineal inheritances in homage to the matriarchal structuring of the Tahltan Nation, and prioritizes Cross-Ancestral collaborations. Morin was longlisted for the Brink and Sobey Awards, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. Peter Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, and is the Graduate Program Director of the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCADU.


  • Quill Christie-Peters is an Anishinaabe arts programmer and self-taught visual artist currently residing in Northwestern Ontario. She is the creator of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a Masters degree in Indigenous Governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love and sits on the board of directors for Native Women in the Arts. Her written work can be found in GUTS Magazine and Tea N’ Bannock and her visual work can be found at @raunchykwe.

  • Valeen Jules is a genderless queer birth worker and wood carver from the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka’wakw nations. Valeen has been known to friends as “the doula that never leaves”, “the eagle soaring above”, and “the only top at the table”.

  • Wanahae is a Nakota Sioux Indigiqueer visual artist, two spirit youth defender and youth worker. He is based in Edmonton on treaty 6 territory. His work depicts and focuses on the visual and artistic representation of two spirit and Indigiqueer identities and bodies. His work addresses ideas around softness, tender love, kinship and the resilience that these identities intersect on.

    Wanahae ne Nakoda Sioux hecac nagu Îmâcagiya îs hecac. Taopiîciye ze dagu âptûtha ca hûna nâgu daca heca zeîs wîcagijihâ cac nâgu watejabiga îs om piîciye cac. Oyade Giciciyabi Owabi Sakpe zen Ti Tâga en ti îgac. Daca apiîciye ze Îmâcagiyabina ze daâ wîcabatzo nâthtiye cac. Snîzabin nâgu gicikbâxâbisî nâgu wahigicicobi ûth dagu tathâm hiyubi ciyaga.

  • Ella White is a Tsimshian and Japanese artist from Burnaby. Ella is currently pursuing her BFA in Visual Arts at Emily Carr University with a focus in print media and minor in Art + Text. She has recently contributed a piece to the YVR Airport’s Emerging Artist Program, and her work has been featured in Burnaby Art Gallery’s exhibition Transitions in 2019. Ella is currently working and publishing work for Woo Publication’s editorial team. Her practice is interdisciplinary, including printmaking, drawing, and ceramics. A lot of her work sources found photographs of family and through conversation, learning knowledge from her grandfather. She is gravitating towards learning and incorporating Smal’gyax language, Gitxaala stories and plant healing.


  • Alexis Nanibush-Pamajewong (she/they) is a Two-Spirit Anishinaabe interdisciplinary artist from Shawanaga First Nation (Robinson Huron Treaty). Alexis currently resides in Tkaronto (Treaty 13) where she is currently studying for her BFA in Indigenous Visual Culture at OCADU. Alexis’ practice began in London Township (Treaty 6) where she attended the Beal Art Program. Their work focuses on performance, installation, beadwork, photography, and video. Alexis’ work focuses on Indigenous storytelling, ancestral/intergenerational knowledge, presence/absence, land as pedagogy, act of care, love, and labour.

    Alexis’ emerging presence in Tkaronto includes exhibitions: Ascension of Abundance, Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto, ON, 2023), Nigig Diving the Depths: 10 Years of Indigenous Visual Culture at OCADU, Ignite Gallery (Toronto, ON, 2023), KPMG x MASSIVart, Bizindamowin’ (to learn from listening) (Toronto, ON, 2022), Spirits See Red, Rezonance Print Shop, (London, ON, 2022) . Alexis returned to London, ON, to give back to their community and curated, Alumni Art Talks at BealArt, (London, 2023). In 2022, they participated in The Out of Sound Rezonance Silk Screen Intern Program. Alexis’ is currently working at Evergreen Brickworks as a Curatorial Assistant for Indigenous Arts, (Toronto, ON).

  • Seth cardinal Dodginghorse is a Tsuut'ina/Blackfeet/Saddle Lake Cree, Prairie Chicken Dancer, experimental musician and cultural researcher. They graduated from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2019 with a BFA. seth grew up eating dirt and exploring the forest on their family’s ancestral land on the Tsuut’ina nation. In 2014 their family was forcibly removed from their homes and land for the construction of the South West Calgary Ring Road. This life changing event has been the focus of their creative work. seth is currently a part of the artist collective tīná gúyáńí (Deer Road) which also includes their mother, Glenna Cardinal. tīná gúyáńí was long listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2021. Their current music projects are lawrence teeth, Quiet Groove and Rain from Heaven.

  • Jess is a Two-Spirit visual artist of European, Métis and Algonquin Ancestry from Northern Ontario.