Image: Garry Oker, Spirit Hammers, 2014-15. Installation view of Maps and Dreams, Audain Gallery, 2017. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

Talk: Hugh Brody on Maps and Dreams

WEDNESDAY, JULY 5 / 7:00 - 9:00PM
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, 149 W. Hastings St.

Hugh Brody is a British anthropologist, filmmaker and social philosopher. The author of Maps and Dreams (1981), he will speak to the book as it links up to the exhibition. Considering the way an agricultural heritage invades, transforms and militarizes the worlds it overcomes and creates, the talk will also consider resource extraction and the new intensification of pressure on the territories of the Treaty 8 communities. Brody’s continued work around Indigenous and settler communities considers how the modern treaty process unfolds.

Brody has been an important advocate in the field of Indigenous land use and rights, of which Maps and Dreams is only one project. He is the author of The People's Land (1975), one of the first close-up looks at how Inuit life and lands have been colonized by southerners; and The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World (2000). He has made films with many First Nation and Indigenous communities, and co-directed the NFB film Treaty 8 Country (1981). He has taught widely and currently holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Co-presented with SFU Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Reading Group: Kate Hennessy on Maps and Dreams

SAT, JULY 15 / 2PM
Audain Gallery

This event will approach the subject of Dane-zaa dream maps through oral and written texts. Lead by Kate Hennessy, participants will read aloud from sections of Hugh Brody’s Maps and Dreams that relate specifically to dream maps. The group will listen to recordings of Dane-zaa elders speaking in Dane-zaa Záágéʔ and English about the significance of these maps. No preparation required.

Hennessy is an Assistant Professor at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. She is the director of Making Culture Lab and member of the Ethnographic Terminalia Curatorial Collective. Her research examines the role of digital technology in the documentation, mediation and safeguarding of cultural heritage.

Maps and Dreams

JUNE 1 - JULY 29, 2017
Audain Gallery

Jack Askoty, Brittney and Richelle Bear Hat, Jennifer Bowes, Brenda Draney, Emilie Mattson, Karl Mattson, Garry Oker, Peter von Tiesenhausen

Maps and Dreams is a group exhibition of work by contemporary artists that explores conceptions and implications of land use through cultural and industrial lenses. The exhibition specifically considers the territory of the Dane-zaa people of northeastern British Columbia, now in Treaty 8. Borrowing the title from Hugh Brody’s book Maps and Dreams, a 1981 anthropological study of the Dane-zaa, the exhibition includes work by artists who consider how this land and its intersection with human use is articulated, represented and contested. 

Co-curated by Brian Jungen and Melanie O'Brian.