Indigenous Art Intensive 2024: Panel Discussion with Mariel Belanger, Sienna Belanger-Lee, Taylor Baptiste and Cori Derickson

The annual Indigenous Art Intensive gathers artists, curators, writers and scholars to engage in contemporary ideas rooted in Indigenous art-making.

Join us at the University Theatre on Wednesday, May 29 from noon to 3:30 pm for artist talks and a panel discussion with Mariel Belanger, Sienna Belanger-Lee, Taylor Baptiste, and Cori Derickson moderated by Tania Willard.

This panel discussion focuses on Syilx and Interior Salish Art, from performance to painting, dance, story, film making and installation artists connect to their lands and creative practices to amplify ancestral and contemporary art practices.

About the Artists:

Mariel Belanger (Syilx Nation) is a mother, land-based artist, Ph.D. Candidate, 2022-25 CGS SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship, and a Teyonkwayenawá:kon Graduate Scholarship awardee at Queens University. Belanger’s research is a portfolio of Digital Embodied Story Practice as an Indigenizing Research-Creation Methodology that explores digital story-making to subvert coloniality.

 

Belanger’s research contributes to the growing body of interdisciplinary artistic scholarship that engages Indigenous community, language, and culture, as a bridge for society telling stories of our time.

Sienna Belanger-Lee x̌ixutəm, Shongswiigeezus (she/her), is from the Syilx and Anishnabe Nations, and was raised on reserve at OKIB, located at the head of Lake Okanagan. She is a student obtaining a bachelor’s degree in the nsyilxcn/nqilxʷcn language through the BNLF program at UBC Okanagan. Sienna currently resides at nsəswl̓aʔxʷ – dry creek where she facilitates indigenous planting opportunities as well as her digital arts, language learning, and horse culture.

 

Taylor Baptiste is an interdisciplinary artist from the Osoyoos Indian Band of the Okanagan Nation. She draws upon her upbringing in Nk’mip – a field of sagebrush and wild roses nestled between the mountains and Osoyoos Lake on the Osoyoos Indian Band reservation. Raised by Richard and Colleen Baptiste, her art practice is deeply rooted in her family, community and ancestral history. Moreover, she incorporates elements of Syilx storytelling and epistemologies, reflecting a connection to the land and waters of the Okanagan.

 

Cori Derickson is an interdisciplinary Syilx artist. She has studied at the Enowkin Centre and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and Master of Arts degree at UBC (Okanagan). She published her book Stimtema:13 Grandmother Moons from her graduate work following in the footsteps of her Great Great Grandmother Mourning Dove the first published Native American of North America. Her works are inspired by her Syilx – Okanagan Indigenous traditional family knowledge and history. Her interdisciplinary practice includes that of dance, sculpture, music, song, writing, animation and production of multi-mediaworks. Cori has performed her beautiful, artistic and spiritually moving dances both locally and internationally.