Wood Land School: Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December is conceived as a single year-long exhibition that will unfold through a series of gestures—clusters of activity that bring works into and out of the gallery space—such that the exhibition is in a constant state of becoming. Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December recognizes the power of line to mark history and invoke memory, proposing lines without beginning or end as a way to imagine Indigenous futurity.

This project is the continuation of a conversation and it is the forging of new relationships. From an initial position of Indigenous self-determination and collectivity, we situate ourselves as impacted upon by forces both nurturing and destructive; we work to be aware of our own participation in dispossession; and we consider our capacity to articulate new ways of being in relation.

Contemporary civic institutions and social structures are built upon systems that have silenced, ignored and destructively classified Indigenous people, ideas and objects. In response to this history, Wood Land School calls upon institutions to give labour, space, time and funds to support Indigenous ideas, objects, discursivity and performance. Foregrounding Indigenous history and presence on this land now known as Canada, in a place now known as Montréal, Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December creates a space of critical reflection and re-imagination. Here, the tenets of treaty—mutual accountability, reciprocity, relation across difference and stewardship of resources—are enacted.

Wood Land School is an experimental space where Indigenous thought and theory are centralized, embodied, mobilized and take shape. Wood Land School does not seek to summarize Indigenous identity, but rather to honour specific, embodied expressions of inheritance and becoming.

The scope of the contexts we operate within include the historical, which is akin to theory, and the contemporary, which is akin to practice. Wood Land School is a space for listening, where we tend to the urgency of current conditions as they unfold with an eye to how (and how else) these circumstances can shape our everyday lives. It operates with an awareness that settler colonialism is ever present, enacted in and on Turtle Island in various forms. Wood Land School is the theorization and practice of centering Indigeneity. Our primary relationships are Indigenous to Indigenous, which includes land and non-humans. We also extend our conversations with and to other communities, working in and through a treaty relationship, to re-frame conversations to centre Indigenous agency. The impact of this project will be determined by many viewers over time.

We wonder, how do the relationships between theory, practice and pedagogy manifest across the complexity and diversity of Indigenous identities, and in relation to settler colonial positionings? What does it mean for a settler-colonial institution to unknow its power? What does it mean to memorialize and dream in relation? How to collectively tend to the becoming of the future?

—Duane Linklater, Tanya Lukin Linklater and cheyanne turions, with Walter Scott