Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards and Teaching Guide Launch

Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) is pleased to launch the publication of Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards & Teaching Guide, featuring the artwork of 50 Indigenous women artists.This event will begin with a short First Friday lecture by Lita Fontaine, who will discuss her art-making with students, using Indigenous teachings and models. After her talk, we will be joined by honoured guests Elder Albert McLeod and Traditional Knowledge Keeper Ally Stoneypoint, to launch this exciting new education tool with song, prayers and snacks.

Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards & Teaching Guide is an easy-to-use, bilingual, full colour boxed set is designed to assist educators from kindergarten to grade 12 integrate Indigenous themes, knowledge, history and contemporary realities into the classroom. The art cards and guide have been created specifically to engage with youth: our hope and our future. At the moment, almost all art-related classroom materials feature artworks by dead, white, European male artists. In contrast, the Resilience images are contemporary, provocative, relevant to the issues of today and celebrate the accomplishments of Indigenous Peoples. Through visual storytelling, they will inspire dialogue with respect to racism, our relationship to the land and the environment, Indigenous/Settler relations and more.

Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) created this educational tool in response to Call to Action #62 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards & Teaching Guide is a project developed from the 2018 exhibition Resilience, curated by Lee-Ann Martin (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory). Educators Yvette Cenerini (Métis), Lita Fontaine (Anishinaabe/Dakota/Métis), Dawn Knight and Elder Albert McLeod (Cree) were commissioned to develop the Teaching Guide, with support from MAWA’s community of art educators at all levels.

MAWA is giving one free copy of Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards & Teaching Guide to the library of every public school in Winnipeg, every rural and northern Manitoba school district and division, and every Manitoba Band school. Sets are available for purchase by out-of-province schools, educators and the general public for the low cost of $40.

Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards and Teaching Guide was produced by Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA), with funding from The Winnipeg Foundation, the Manitoba Government and the Manitoba Association for Art Education.

MAWA is located on original lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.