Voices of the Earth: Dialogues and Healing
December 11 - 9am - 5:30pm
December 12 - 9am - 5:30pm
Free, registration required
Event in French, English and Spanish
We invite you to a gathering where territories, memory, and healing come together, a space dedicated to dialogue, art, and resistance across diverse forms of knowledge and geographies.
Voices of the Earth: Dialogues and Healing invites us to reflect on the histories of territories shaped by extractivism and violence, yet also alive with creativity, solidarity, care, and hope. Guided by a sensitive approach, these study days prioritize listening, dialogue, and situated storytelling, encouraging participants to feel-think (sentipensar) their connections to the territory across different geographies. The program draws on practices led by Indigenous Peoples, diasporas, and allies, envisioning decolonial and relational ways of living together.
PROGRAM
December 11
9:00 am – Reception and registration
9:15 am – Welcome remarks by Salvador David Hernandez
9:30 am – Opening ritual
10:00 am to 12:00 pm – Dialogue: Healing and Territory
Participants: Kathleen Andrée and Lorena Cabnal
Moderation: Nawel Hamidi
Alongside Maya and Innu women, two ancestral healers weave a dialogue between Abya Yala and Nitassinan. Through their voices, they bring together memories and territories to reflect on the healing of bodies and the earth, on resistance, and on reconnection with all living beings, offering a bridge between cosmologies and healing traditions.
2:00 to 3:00 pm – Workshop: Innu Traditional Medicine
Led by Martial Fontaine
3:30 to 5:30 pm – Artistic interventions (no registration required)
Weaving memory and the living: a performative textile gesture between decolonial ecofeminism and territory
minette carole djamen nganso
Poetry reading: Nipimanitu: The Spirit of Water
Pierrot Ross-Tremblay; With readings by Leila Faraj and Marcela Borquez
Musical performance
Michael Paul
December 12
9:00 am – Reception and registration
9:15 am – Welcome remarks by Annabelle Épée
9:45 am to 12:00 pm – Workshop: Collective Score: Composing Diasporic Rivers
Led by: Carolina Cuevas Parra with Marcela Borquez
This workshop proposes a collective and embodied method for attuning to the sonic dimensions of rivers. Through the co-creation of a shared score, participants explore river landscapes while sharing their experiences of care, resistance, and daily life connected to their waterways.
2:00 to 3:45 pm – Roundtable: Living on Earth Differently: Situated Voices and Relationships to Land
Participants: Razan AlSalah, Emilie Bélanger, Véronique Basile Hébert
Moderation: Annabelle Épée
This discussion brings together women artists whose decolonial and intersectional practices explore our relationships to territories, bodies, and the forms of knowledge that shape them. Together, they will share situated perspectives that unsettle colonial logics and nurture imaginaries of resistance and transformation.
4:00 to 5:00 pm – Closing reflection: Resonances and Trajectories
Collective and participative facilitation
Collective synthesis of the study days and future orientations facilitated by members of LabARD and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Intellectual Traditions and Self-Determination.
5:00 pm – Closing ritual
PARTNERS
This project is a collaboration between SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Laboratory of Art and Research in Decoloniality (LabARD), the Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Traditions and Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples, and the School of Leadership, Ecology, and Equity at St. Paul University, with the support of Alternatives, the FRQSC, and the CALQ.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Marcela Borquez, Romeo Gongora, Nawel Hamidi, Salvador David Hernandez, Pierrot Ross-Tremblay
COORDINATION
Marcela Borquez, Leila Faraj
ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT
Nerea Aizpuru, Malvina Barra, Kenza Ben Thami, Antoine Bertron, Aziz Boughedir, minette carole djamen nganso, Annabelle Epee, Klaudia Gasecka, Eluza Gomes, Amaralina Ramalho-Alvarez
This event is part of the program Everything Still Resonates
Co-created by SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art with Colectiva Polea, the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Intellectual Traditions and Self-Determination, and the Laboratory for Decolonial Art and Research (LabARD), this program brings together Indigenous, diasporic, and settler voices proposing alternatives to socio-ecological crises and sharing tools for healing, transformation, and resistance. From November 27 to December 12, workshops, gatherings, and performances invite participants to imagine new ways of making together.
Discover the complete program