Indigenous Accord

In November 2023, MAWA signed on to the City of Winnipeg’s Indigenous Accord, and this document continues to guide our actions into 2025 and beyond. Drawing upon the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s Calls to Action and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit+ Peoples’ Calls for Justice, MAWA pledges a commitment to work toward the following goals:

1. to create a space of visual art learning and engagement that is welcoming to Indigenous Peoples and is inclusive of Indigenous perspectives
2. to create employment and leadership opportunities for Indigenous people in the visual arts
3. to promote the artwork of Indigenous artists
4. to expand understanding of Indigeneity within the larger visual art community
5. to develop and distribute educational materials K-12 that feature Indigenous artists, so that children have Indigenous role models and see and hear Indigenous perspectives
6. to facilitate art education opportunities specifically for Indigenous people
7. to create a safer space for women, girls, trans, non-binary and Two-Spirit women-identifying people
8. to acknowledge the harms of colonization and its continued impact in MAWA land acknowledgement, publications and programming
9. to have more than one Indigenous person on the Board of Directors
10. to have a clear, publicly available anti-racism policy
11. to continue to work with Knowledge Keepers and Elders
12. to continue to learn best practices and protocol in working with Indigenous individuals and communities

As a partner in this covenant, MAWA is accountable to not just “talk the talk” but “walk the walk.” We ask you to help us uphold these goals. Reconciliation is an action that requires all of us to work together towards justice and respect. We are all Treaty People.

–Shawna Dempsey and Dana Kletke