Morning Star

Morning Star rises.

Waabanang is Ojibwe for Morning Star or the planet Venus and has been a beacon of light, serving as a navigational entity for Indigenous Peoples of this land for millennia. In response to the 2017-18 annual theme of the Jackman Humanities Institute, Morning Star ascends to shine light on presence, visibility and collective Indigenous agency to renounce naïve impressions of (re)conciliation that continue to be discussed throughout much of the settler culture across Turtle Island. By opening personal, psychic and linguistic pathways that simultaneously guide to one and lead away from another, Indigenous kinship and survivance come into sharp focus.

Anamnesis propels Morning Star forward as the reminiscent past collides with the future past. While the research of the JHI queries apology as a labored apparatus addressing indelible violence and the effects of conciliation alongside acknowledged colonial shame, may the individuals represented in this exhibition and the creators who manifest their likenesses guide both the thought and action of this immediate community and beyond. Informed by the full herstory of this land and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, we must walk alongside one another with respect to succeed.

Morning Star rises.