Programming

Sub-event of

Mémoire vive

31 May — 22 September 2002

Initiated by DARE-DARE in collaboration with the Centre d'histoire de Montréal, Mémoire Vive provided a framework for reflection that brought together artists and stakeholders in the heritage field.

Terres en vues, a society for the dissemination of indigenous culture founded in 1990, has been in charge of First Peoples' Festival for twelve years now. This multidisciplinary festival, where tradition and modernity meet with audacity, offers a unique experience rooted in the reality and imagination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Invited by the Mémoire vive, Terres en vues has chosen to highlight and situate the identity affirmation of the First Nations by asking the question of the durability of their cultures and the contemporary issues they must face.

Through Nadia Myre's attentive artistic approach, which uses the traditional technique of beading to obliterate the text of the Indian Act, a revelation is actualized and sheds a radical light on the cleavage between the legalist intention and reality. Another aspect of the Terres en vues proposal is based on the themes of transmission and metamorphosis. Conceived by André Dudemaine and Michel Côté, a performance of the ritual order takes the form of a symbolic scarification in which a given subject, dressed in ceremonial dress, undergoes a reversal capable of blurring the certainties of identity in which we shelter our memories.

Press release

Noilamgyp, permutations identitaires, June 12 at 2:30 pm, performance on the square in front of the Centre d'histoire de Montréal.

With painters Raymond Dupuis, Maliseet, Glenna Matoush, Ojibway and Christine Sioui-Wawanoloath, Abenaki as well as André Dudemaine, Innu, at the palaver.

Michèle Audette, president of Femmes autochtones du Québec, dressed in a ceremonial dress, undergoes a metamorphosis induced by the signs and traces of the painters enchanted by the sounds of drums and songs of the Attikamekw group Wemotashee.

Renaming the territory while others identify terrain or zone. Finding the true components of identity underneath the metamorphoses is where Noilamgyp leads, a performance of the ritual order orchestrated by Land InSights, a diffusion society for Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal women were the first to suffer from the odiousness of a law based on the denial of a people's intelligence. Their long fight is part of the history of humanity. Beyond the spectacular aspect of the Noilamgyp, Terres en vues pays tribute to all these living memories that were and are the women of the First Nations.

For Nadia Myre, Indian Act remains a work of vindication and recognition. The personal journey, woven into the careful elaboration of an open performance and the repetition of traditional craft gestures in a contemporary context, gives Indian Act, in addition to the irony that emerges, the urgency of an indictment. The eradication of the very text of the Indian Act, takes the form, here, of an affirmation of identity. The beading in red and white of the text of the Indian Act becomes a public gesture, shared during workshops where the participants are led to accompany the artist in his quest.

Indian Act, June 20 to 22 and June 27 to 30, 11 am to 3 pm, at the Centre d'histoire de Montréal, free admission.

Nadia Myre invites you to join her in beading the Indian Act, following the gestures of traditional Amerindian crafts.