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Installations, Exhibitions
The Water We Call Home exhibit installed at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery
The Water We Call Home, an exhibition featuring a series of films created by SIAT post-doctoral researcher and filmmaker Dr. Jessica Hallenbeck, Coast Salish and Sahtu Dene artist Rosemary Georgeson, SIAT professor Dr. Kate Hennessy and team is currently installed at Steveston's Gulf of Georgia Cannery until 2025.
The exhibition is co-curated by Georgeson, Hallenbeck, and Hennessy, in collaboration with a circle of Indigenous women from around the Salish Sea called siyēye nii 'u tthu sut'ku'luts | siyēye tun’i ‘utl sqwun’u s—Eva Wilson (Coast Salish), Christie Lee Charles (xʷməθkʷəy̓ə), Fay Blaney (Xwe'malhkwu), Karen Charlie (Spune’luxutth) and Kimi Haxton (Potowatomi)—who returned to Galiano Island to share stories of connection and survival in order to begin healing an extended family after 100 years of disconnection.
Between 2020 and 2022, they have gathered with family members and residents of Galiano Island to share connections to fish, water, and family around the Salish Sea.
During these gatherings, siyēye nii 'u tthu sut'ku'luts | siyēye tun’i ‘utl sqwun’u s shared personal stories, harvested and prepared traditional foods, and reconnected to family—significant acts of re-presencing and the first gatherings of these family members on Galiano Island in over 100 years.
The Water We Call Home features a series of films about these gatherings by artist Richard Wilson, Hallenbeck, Georgeson, Hennessy, and their collaborators and also includes new works in photography by Dene photographer Kali Spitzer and a sound installation by Wilson.
The project is the continuation of a lifetime of research by Georgeson and emerges from her decade-long collaboration with Hallenbeck. Their work together has led to the recovery of the identities of Georgeson’s ancestral grandmothers and to a reconnection with their descendants.
Visitors and participants to the exhibition are encouraged to consider what decolonization means in a broader web of relationships and how families can bring back connections to ancestors and family on lands and water that continue to be owned by others.
The exhibition is an invitation to everyone to witness the enduring strength of Indigenous women’s connections to fish, water, and family, and to envision a future where Indigenous identity is structured through water and family rather than colonial law.
“This work by Indigenous women is changing the story, it is bringing healing back to a place that was ripped apart and turned over by impacts of colonialism, the racial attitudes of the old ones, the old grandfathers, in how they took the mothers away from the children,” says Georgeson. “We came back. We gave voice to these things that happened.”
The installation was originally displayed at the Yellow House Art Centre on Galiano Island has been brought across the water to continue sharing the stories of resistance against colonial fishing policies and reconnection with fish, family and water along the Salish Sea. The exhibit was installed at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site in June 2023 and will remain on display into 2025.
For more information about the exhibition visit: The Water We Call Home
For more information about the Gulf of Georgia Cannery and how to visit the exibition, visit: The Gulf of Georgia Cannery