Patrick Cheechoo and Rebeka Ryvola

Water is Life

Narrative from Patrick Cheechoo:

The First Nations Woman at the core of the piece is a Water Warrior who is dedicated to water protection and traditional knowledge. We must listen, share and respect teachings and guidance offered from leaders such as Water Warrior Autumn Peltier. Ms. Peltier is Anishinabek Nation’s Water Commissioner who strongly affirmed to world leaders at the United Nations - “Nothing can live without water, if we don’t act now there will come a time when we will be fighting for those last barrels of water, once that’s gone we can’t eat or drink money or oil. Then what will you do?” Furthermore, a copper vessel is depicted at the bottom of the painting and is representative of First Nations Women leading ceremony, healing and water security.

 The circular wisps symbolize unity and a collective purpose – protecting water is everyone’s duty, and we must move forward together so that future generations have clean drinking water. The need for global unity for Water protection is further highlighted by the four flowers – a symbol for teachings from the Medicine Wheel. Finally, artwork from both artists, Rebeka and Patrick, are seamlessly braided and interwoven, and this highlights the necessity of moving Indigenous and Human Rights, Responsibilities and Relationships forward for the futures of Water and the Environment.

It was a sincere pleasure to collaborate with Rebeka Ryvola on Water is Life, and the team from Matawa First Nations Management’s Four River Environment Group. Meegwetch for allowing my participation with the Global Waters Futures project and the virtual art show.

Narrative from Rebeka Ryvola:

A few of the themes that I explored or which emerged through my layer:

•  Women supporting Indigenous women's leadership: Indigenous women are spreading knowledge of alternative ways of being with/in our natural surroundings that don't aim to insert themselves into current patriarchal systems and structures, and other women are supporting them in this by further amplifying, celebrating, and participating in indigenous efforts. Throughout the creation of this layer I was specifically inspired by Sarah, Terry, and Laura, and the work of Matawa Four Rivers, and Matawa Water Futures. This is shown in my piece with the women in Pat's outer "Watermark": they blend, weave, and braid around Autumn Peltier instead of standing out and dominating. You can see that the new elements do not take over Pat's vision, and from a distance they are obscured and faded away. This is also shown with my non indigenous perspective taking the shape and being placed in a composition mimicking an indigenous circle dance. This represents a desire to participate but in a non dominant and receptive way, in a student capacity.

• Indigenous concepts of animism embraced by non Indigenous actors: One way that non Indigenous scientists and individuals can putIndigenous teachings into practice is by understanding and practicing the philosophy of non human creatures, natural elements, and objects being "persons" (I hope I have this right - I learned this in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer). Ecosystems/watersheds/the environment are composed of individuals and entities with personhood, e.g. Robin Wall talking about a bay, a lake, a mushroom, a bird, a tree etc all being "persons" - that to deny this fact is to disrespect, disregard, and dominate - and that deeply understanding this philosophy is one potential way that western environmental science, and specifically water monitoring, can look and feel very different and lead to significantly different processes outcomes for our current generations and for future generations. This is represented in my contribution with the connections between my human characters and the non human ones showing efforts at an individual to individual connection, e.g. the woman reaching out to Pat's dragonfly, the bird touching the woman, etc.

• Storytelling and imagination: Growing up I either wanted to be reading stories or in nature looking for characters and creatures to present themselves to me, to engage me in their story. When I saw a circle dance for the first time, shortly after our family emigrated to Canada, I wanted so much to participate in the dance, to join the dancers dressed in elaborately decorated outfits with animal headdresses. I didn't join - my parents told me that blond children couldn't join - but the experience of watching the movement-based story stayed with me, and perhaps is what put me on the path towards seeing that indigenous practices of telling and dancing stories about our surroundings speak to some inherent human desire for those kind of explanations, for that kind of deep respect and connection to nature. Braiding Sweetgrass's stories that helped me understand this as well. I am curious about how scientists might expand if they seriously incorporate this. This can be seen in the poses of each character I added into the story woven around the outside of the painting.

• Leaps of faith: New kinds of connections & collaborations can feel unnerving, and there were more than a couple times while painting that I felt that "this is too high stakes, what if I make an uncorrectable error etc". There might have been some swearing. But in order to change the course of our global society, we need to be willing to navigate tricky territory and remember that sometimes when we make mistakes we receive the greatest learning. I'm thankful to Pat for encouraging me to just have fun and flow with it. He is a wonderful collaborator. This can be seen in any errors, shakiness, and clumsiness that catches your eye.

Patrick Cheechoo and Rebeka Ryvola

29 Watersheds

Narrative from Rebeka Ryvola:

This second piece, started by me this time, came to life as an attempt to overlay elements of indigenous gift-giving cultures, storytelling practices, folklore, connection between human and non human creatures and elements, and science/art intersection into the satellite view of the watershed constellation of the Matawa Homelands.

When I initially started meditating on the watershed puzzle pieces of these 29 watersheds between Jame Bay and Lake Superior I thought of the similarities between this land/waterscape and the textile and thread story arts of quilting and tapestry making, which across most world cultures have been women led and have been key elements in our understanding of each other across space and time. I first encountered narrative textile when I was little and received a woven traditional Czech garment woven with stories of country life and ritual, and next after we had already relocated to Canada and I went to a first nations celebration for the first time.

The canvas is a discarded piece of a table top found on a curb when I lived in Washington DC, chosen now for its moment in the spotlight because of its large format collaboration potential and because of its symbolism of societal efforts to move towards more circular livelihoods centered around limited consumption.

I applied several layers of watered down acrylic paint and allowed water and gravity to do a lot of the work of creating organic watery dances across the wood. Then I spent several days reading the map and each of the Matawa homeland watersheds, seeing what creatures, shapes, lifeforms, and narratives made their way out as I painted their boundaries over and over. The result of that meditation on water data, macro and micro, is what you see in my contributions. I am so looking forward to Pat’s additions into the watershed storymap.

Narrative from Patrick Cheechoo:

Rebeka’s initial messaging and beautiful imagery, which included rivers from my home inspired me to add creatures big and small that I have seen or harvested during my time out on the land from childhood to adulthood. While painting, I kept water in mind and how it impacts all living entities and contributes to life, cleanliness and everything’s future. Imagery I included reflect my memories of harvesting including the fish, dragonfly, blueberries, beaver, moose and goose. I love birds and thought about birds that I see in or around lakes, rivers and marshes: Grouse, Robin, Red-winged Blackbird and Loon. I have a Bear and Female image to depict teachings on conservation and protecting Mother Earth that I received from family and elders. We must all be cognisant of what we do to the earth while out on the land - we all have a duty to not pollute, clean and practice conservation when harvesting from Mother Earth.

The Virtual Water Gallery art collaboration has created a wonderful opportunity to provide a creative visual expression of our research goals and processes. The artistic collaboration of Mushkego (Cree) artist Patrick Cheechoo and Rebeka Ryvola, in partnership with the Matawa Water Futures research team, brought together both Western and Indigenous artists to co-create an art project. Together, Patrick and Rebeka have provided a beautiful visual confirmation of the potential of braiding together of western and Indigenous views and strengths central to a two-eyed seeing approach to water science.​ Each artist created a piece that represented their perspectives coming into the project and from discussions with the research team and matawa Four Rivers representatives.​ The other artist then braided their own perspective into the piece, representing the challenges and unexpected magic inherent in collaborative work.

From the art side, Rebeka was drawn to explore water challenges, indigenous and immigrant myth and lore, and themes of boundaries, impermanence, movement, stewardship, and belonging at the individual, community, and water resource levels.