Montreal's 'Welcome to Indian Country' looks to the past for the future

Canada and Montreal are throwing themselves anniversary parties this year, which for Indigenous artists offers the perfect time to reflect and respond.

With the upcoming show Welcome to Indian Country,the MAI, Montreal's interdisciplinary performance space, will present worksranging from film to contemporary powwow.

Choreographer Lara Kramer selected them in light of Montreal's 375th anniversary and Canada's 150th anniversary.

"We're not here to honour these anniversaries, but to respond," Kramer told CBC News.

Kramer is Oji-Cree (Ojibwe and Cree) and worked with the MAI's artistic director Michael Toppings on the show's concept.

She said the artists inWelcome to Indian Countrywill each presenttheir unique Indigenous identities.

It's not the kind of mandate Indigenous artists always get.

Stereotypes imposed on artists

"Stereotypes lead into what 'Indigenous' is," Kramer said, based on her experience workingin contemporary dance.

"There is an expectation of what is 'the image' and what will validate certain work as being Indigenous."

Toppings wanted this year's edition to bolster the increasingly mainstream awareness that Canadian society is built on uncededIndigenous territory.

"It's fine to celebrate 150 years of Canada, but these nations existed beyond 150 years," he said.

Acknowledgingthat Canada was built on uncededterritoryis something thathas been done in places like Vancouver for decades.

But only now is it being recognized in other Canadian cities.

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150 years onuncededterritory

Toppings said the federal arts granting body,the Canada Council for the Arts, has taken the lead.

In October, the Canada Council-fundedNational Arts Centre prefaced the awarding of Canada's most prestigious theatre prize, The Siminovitch Prize, with the acknowledgement that the NAC is built onland belonging to the Algonquin Anishinabeg people.

While this kind of acknowledgement is becoming increasingly common around Canada, Kramer said Quebec is provingslower to adapt.

The first time she saw a similar acknowledgment in Montreal happened last year at the opening ofOFFTA, which runs alongside theFestival TransAmriques.

"Quebec is one of last cultural communities doing this," added Toppings.

The show is in its final stages of production with technical rehearsals scheduled to begin Monday.

"Whether artists will take a political stance or not remains to be seen," Toppings said.

But the title of the show at least suggests politics will not be avoided.

The word "Indian" is a touchy term to some, but Kramer says when Indigenous artists use it, they reclaim it.

"There's something very loaded about its history, of how it came to be," she said.

"It provokes something to me of our history. And reclaiming that this is Indian land, this is Indian territory."

Welcome to Indian Countryis part ofthisyear's edition of the MAI's annual multi-disciplinary event,ECLECTIK. It runs fromJan. 20 and 21.

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