The Awen’ Waterplay Park Includes multiple water-play features including waterfalls, a splash pad with animal water activators, a washroom/change facility, an outdoor shower and parking. The site features three distinct play areas, including one for toddlers close to benches so parents can monitor play. Approximately 40 different apparatus make up the complement of jets within the entire waterplay area.

Ojibwa adviser, elder and knowledge keeper Dr. Duke Redbird was consulted on the design of the site, and designed the Thunderbird that is featured behind the waterfall with his son Jay Bell Redbird prior to his son’s passing.Thunderbirds (or Animkiig) maintain a protective relationship to the Anishinaabe people and serve the practical task of commanding storm clouds and bringing rain.

“Duke has an incredible mind that has one foot in history and tradition, and one foot in the modern world,” said Collver. “He is a great translator and interpreter and helped us to see these connections.”

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Declaration By Olivia Chow to the Office of Mayor Toronto

Olivia Chow officially took office as mayor of Toronto on Wednesday during a swearing-in ceremony at city hall, becoming the first person of colour to lead Canada’s most populous city.

Elder Dr. Duke Redbird, from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, says Olivia has been a friend of First Nations since she was first elected.

He recalls being impressed with the canoeing prowess exhibited by Chow and her late husband Jack Layton when he met them years ago

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Earth Dreams is an urban gathering meant to confront climate change and celebrate possibilities for Earth’s future. The Weather Network met with organizers and attendees at the event in Toronto to hear their thoughts on dealing with the climate crisis.

With simultaneous headlines of wildfires, flooding, and record-breaking temperatures, the scale of climate change has sometimes been described as overwhelming or even “debilitating.”

Climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety, has been used to define the distress stemming from the worries about the effects of climate change.

A study in The Journal of Climate Change and Health found that 78 per cent of respondents reported that climate change impacted their overall mental health, and 37 per cent reported their feelings about climate change negatively impact daily functioning.

To combat this, hundreds gathered in Toronto over the weekend to take part in a sensory experience led by designer duo Nocturnal Medicine called Earth Dreams, an urban gathering meant to confront climate change and celebrate possibilities for Earth’s future. Described as a party with a meditative journey, the night encompassed collective solidarity, dancing, and moments of contemplation while drawing from the histories and futures of The Bentway under the Gardiner Expressway.

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A Warm Welcome to Her Worship Olivia Chow, Mayor of Toronto

Olivia Chow and I have been friends for decades, but more than that, Olivia has been a friend of the Indigenous community since she was first elected as a Board Trustee in 1985…

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Wanda Nanibush & Georgiana Uhlyarik  

Moving the Museum

Moving the Museum documents the reopening of the J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art with a renewed focus on the AGO’s Indigenous art collection. The volume reflects the nation-to-nation treaty relationship that is the foundation of Canada, asking questions, discovering truths, and leading conversations that address the weight of history and colonialism.
Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 reproductions, Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO features the work of First Nations artists — including Carl Beam, Rebecca Belmore, and Kent Monkman — along with work by Inuit artists like Shuvinai Ashoona and Annie Pootoogook. Canadian artists include Lawren Harris, Kazuo Nakamura, Joyce Wieland, and many others. Drawing from stories about our origins and identities, the featured artists and essayists invite readers to engage with issues of land, water, transformation, and sovereignty and to contemplate the historic and future representation of Indigenous and Canadian art in museums.

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Ok. Ko. OK. Indigenous Education Magazine

In honour of National Indigenous History Month, the Toronto District School Board has launched its first student magazine OK KO OK on Indigenous education. The title of the magazine was inspired by Duke’s poem by the same name, which tells the story of the origin of the word OK. The magazine is the result of student’s submitting work from First Nations, Metis and Inuit Studies courses, and an opportunity to engage with truth and share stories, ideas and art.

“As we all know, no matter how beautiful the cup that contains the water, it’s the excellence of the taste that we remember. So too with this new magazine, it’s the First Nations, Metis and Inuit Studies course programs as told from the students’ perspective - expressed through their art, their poetry and the truth embedded in their essays - that makes OK KO OK unique.”

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Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful

An extensive survey spanning more than 50 years, Robert Houle: Red Is Beautifulcelebrates Houle’s ongoing career as an internationally recognized Indigenous artist, curator and writer, calling attention to First Nations and settler-colonialist histories through the critical lens of his impressive oeuvre. Painful personal experiences from the time he spent in residential school as a youth are brought into sharp relief through painting. Houle’s visual commentary tackles global topics including commercial appropriation, Indigenous resistance movements, land rights, religion and war, among others. A leader in challenging systemic racial biases, Houle has played a significant role at successfully introducing Indigenous art and its relationship to the contemporary art world in Canada and beyond. Rare excerpts from the artist’s archive are featured alongside major scholarly texts, poetic writings and personal anecdotes from fellow prominent Indigenous thinkers and creators, offering new insights about an artist ahead of his time.

“It was Houle who first posited that Indigenous art did not only belong in the category of folk art: rather, it could be favourably compared to the finest creations at the forefront of the broader modern and contemporary art scenes.”

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PATHS FORWARD

AS CANADA COMES TO TERMS WITH A BRUTAL COLONIAL LEGACY, TWO LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT-LED PLANS LIGHT THE WAY TOWARD RECONCILIATION. Landscape architects at Brook McIlroy’s Toronto office worked closely with the firm’s four-member, Winnipeg-based Indigenous Design Studio, which led the community engagement and concept design. “As a landscape architect who has been working for some time,” says Andrea Mantin, a senior associate at the firm, “it’s been wonderful to be learning something so different, and approaching landscape architecture through this new lens.”

The project’s cultural adviser, the Saugeen elder Duke Redbird, describes the resulting master plan as integrating traditional and contemporary concepts to model ecological and design excellence. Based on a hierarchy of creation in which the Earth, rather than humanity, is primary, the Creator’s Garden will restore Indigenous plant knowledge and demonstrate heritage teachings. From the benign and poisonous plants of the forest carpet, “we learned about truth: how to separate fact from fiction and good from bad,” Redbird says, while “all the food that’s available when we dig down to the earth to find roots and tubers teaches us humility. And when we see the vines and the ferns that run through the forest and embrace the other plants, that’s where we learn about love.” These ideas offer the potential for improved environmental decision making and the emergence of innovative, distinctive, and beneficent approaches to design, he says:

“The project represents the best of Indigenous ways of being, brought together with modern technology and techniques. It’s a blend that offers a new way of looking at the 21st century.”

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In Conversation with Duke Redbird and Tanya Senk

What were you taught about Indigenous history and culture in school? What were you not taught?

As more conversations surrounding Indigenous history and culture are happening locally, nationally, and globally we invite you to join us for this intimate conversation between Elder Duke Redbird and Tanya Senk which will be moderated by Kerry Potts.

This conversation will explore topics including:

• Defining education from an Indigenous perspective.
• The arts as important conduits of culture and education.
• The Urban Indigenous Education Centre and the work they’re doing.
• Comparing the work of ‘decolonizing’ to the work of centring Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

This conversation is part of the Wigwam Chi-Chemung Indigenous Interpretive Learning Centre and Floating Art Installation in partnership with Elder Duke Redbird.

“Resdential schools were never ‘residential’ or ‘schools’. They didn’t teach anything of value. It would be like calling a prison a hotel. We cannot say that ‘Education got us into this situation, and education will get us out’. The truth is that racism, ignorance and a policy of cultural genecide by the government and practiced by the churches is what got us into this mess, and education will most definitely get us out. When it’s education combined with something called ‘truth’.”

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Elder Duke Redbird shares poem he wrote for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Indigenous artist and activist Elder Duke Redbird wrote a poem this past weekend to share with the Global News audience. It’s about the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Orange Shirt Day is a legacy of the St. Joseph Mission (SJM) Residential School (1891-1981) Commemoration Project and Reunion events that took place in Williams Lake, BC, Canada, in May 2013. The events were designed to commemorate the residential school experience, to witness and honour the healing journey of the survivors and their families, and to commit to the ongoing process of reconciliation. Chief Justice Murray Sinclair challenged all of the participants to keep the reconciliation process alive, as a result of the realization that every former student had similar stories.

“Land acknowledgements in the Indigenous world are not about ownership of land.  We do not believe that we can own the land but rather, we are the stewards of the land and borrow its use for a brief time from our children.  However a land acknowledgement does not preclude the need to have a resolution to land claims that have been outstanding since Confederation.  So, it is incumbent upon us to continue to remind the dominant culture that they will not have legitimate occupation and control of two thirds of Canada until there is agreement with Indigenous Peoples.“

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Indigenous learning centre opens for summer at Ontario Place

Elder Duke Redbird is a poet, artist and educator with a passion for sharing his knowledge. In 2018, after noticing what he described as a non-existent Indigenous presence along Toronto’s waterfront, he had the idea to change that. He purchased a houseboat that would become a vessel for sharing and celebrating Indigenous history with Torontonians. “Retrieve the history. There’s 100,000 years of history here,” Redbird told Global News.

The boat is called “Wigwam Chi-Chemung” and in partnership with “Myseum of Toronto,” it will be docked at the Ontario Place marina through the summer. The houseboat, covered in Indigenous art will serve as an interpretive learning centre – offering a place for people to engage with, ask questions of, and learn from the perspectives of an Indigenous Elder.

“The history of the Wigwam Chi-Chemung goes back to 2018 when I realized that there was no Indigenous presence on the waterfront from Bluffers Park all the way to the Credit River. And yet, historically the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat were all here. Mississauga, Etobicoke, Mimico, Ontario, Canada, these words are used by people every day and it’s Indigenous lanugage. But people don’t ask “where did these words come from?”

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Why the otter is better than the beaver and other Canada Day lessons with Indigenous elder Duke Redbird

If Duke Redbird could make a suggestion this Canada Day weekend, he’d like to pitch you on the otter. Every country has a creature that represents its collective consciousness, the Chippewa-Potawatomi elder says as he sits on his houseboat-turned-art installation at the Ontario Place marina. England has the lion, the top of the food chain, the empire builder. India has its elephant, big like its population. And America has its bald eagle, a predator who soars high with arrows in its left talon. When he gets to Canada’s beaver, he recites a poem he wrote 30 years ago about the animal working all night, transforming a bubbling stream into a putrid pond that the more majestic animals want nothing to do with.

“My child, do not become a beaver and build for yourself a den,

this is what modern man does with his brick and stone and sand

until his mind is like that stagnant lake

filled with weird wicked wretches that get no peace,

then he cries to his Creator in desperation,

please God, my God, deliver me from damnation.”

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"Retrieve the history:" Elder Duke Redbird on why Canada Day 2021 is a time of reckoning

On National Indigenous Peoples Day, Elder Duke Redbird, a poet, artist and educator, shared his knowledge on the history and the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in a powerful, extended sit-down interview with Global News. 3:38 Redbird spoke about how Canada Day 2021 is an opportunity to reflect on the country's dark history and present failures of Indigenous Peoples, especially now that the country has "woken up" following the discovery of 215 Indigenous children in unmarked graves at a former B.C. residential school. He spoke about the suicide rates among Indigenous children and the lack of clean drinking water still faced by Northern communities today. "Our people in the north can't get fresh drinking water. And yet they found out that they can make water and uncreated on the moon." When discussing his opinion on the removal of John A. MacDonald statues across Ontario, he pointed to the Indian Act and all the rights and freedoms that were stripped from Indigenous Peoples.

"When you look at the policy that John A. Macdonald created where he said we ‘our government has to kill the Indian in the child’, is enough to not have a building named after him, or his or a statue erected to him."

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