Estuary Field School was a multi-part gathering guided by shared questions of our ecological, infrastructural and cultural entanglements with water. Learning from the mixing of ts’ukwum (fresh water) and kw’útl’-kwu (salt water) in the estuary where Chapman Creek meets the Salish Sea, the field school brought together artists, ecologists, civil servants and community practitioners. Two days of interdisciplinary dialogue, cultural experiences, walks and gatherings will deepen our relationships within this watershed and provide the context for the making of cultural reflections.
2024 Sechelt Arts Festival, Sunshine Coast Arts Centre
Field School Participants
Jessica Silvey, Coast Salish Weaver and Fibre Artist | I am a self taught weaver of Coast Salish and Portugese descent, of the Silvey Family of Egmont, BC. Many of my childhood hours were spent with my paternal Grandmother in the forest. It is my favourite place to be, surrounded by cedar trees and silence. I have learned traditional techniques from research as well as trial and error. I harvest and prepare my own materials. When I am ready to weave, the most time consuming work has been completed. Weaving is my passion and therapy for my soul.
Trent Maynard is a word artist, media artist, filmmaker and citizen scientist of mixed settler Canadian ancestries, including Germanic, Celtic & English. They live between shíshálh and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh lands. Their artist practice builds relationships with at-risk ecosystems and multispecies kin, using motion-sensor cameras, poetry, filmmaking and storytelling collaborations. Their upcoming film Nature Girl (2024), made with Talaysay Tours founder xets’emits’a, Candace Campo, spent five years documenting the creatures living in a wetland in the shíshálh swiya. In previous lives, he completed an MSc in Geography at the London School of Economics, looking at environmental racism in BC forestry policy, and worked in media at Channel 4 (UK) and the CBC.
Suzanne Senger, Executive Director, Sunshine Coast Conservation Association | For the last 20 years, Suzanne has worked with local, regional and provincial non-profits, First Nations and government to understand, develop and advise strategic solutions for complex environmental issues. She joined the SCCA as a volunteer in 2007 and has supported the organization in various ways, since. Suzanne was recruited as our Executive Director in 2020. Suzanne is a co-founder and Secretary of the Howe Sound Biosphere Region Initiative Society, (2016-2020); founder and former President of the Gibsons Alliance of Business and Community Society (2008-2020); and Director of the Friends of Gospel Rock Society (2008-2020). Committed to “being the change” and inspired by a deep love of the natural world, Suzanne is keen to share her skills, experience and passion working with the SCCA to protect biodiversity on the Sunshine Coast.
Laura Piersol is grateful to be a settler learning from the shíshálh Nation and their swiya as well as the Skwxwú7mesh Stélmexw, Temíxw and Stáḵw. She is a brain injury survivor currently focused on growing flowers and healing. Previous to this she worked in the Faculty of Education at SFU teaching graduate studies in place conscious and nature-based education. She has been involved in starting and researching the Maple Ridge Environmental School and the NEST program on the Sunshine Coast, BC, two public schools K-7 focused on ecological learning. She is passionate about education for cultural change and ecological justice/care.
Kamala Todd is a Métis-Cree mother, Indigenous planner, filmmaker, curator, and educator born and raised in the beautiful lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Skwxwú7mesh-speaking people, aka Vancouver. She has a Master’s degree in urban Geography from UBC and works at the intersection of film and urban planning, towards decolonizing the city. Kamala was the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous Arts and Culture Planner and she is Associate Professor of Professional Practice at SFU Urban Studies. She was part of the team who created the Vancouver UNDRIP Strategy and works as an advisor with municipalities on Indigenous relations. Kamala’s media production company is Indigenous City Media and her film credits include Welcome to Our Homelands, Indigenous Plant Diva, Cedar and Bamboo, and RELAW: Living Indigenous Laws. She is the author of the Vancouver Park Board’s seminal report, Truth-Telling: Indigenous perspectives on working with municipal governments. In May 2024, Kamala was selected for the Indigenous Arts: Story Sharing residency at Banff Centre. She is a research collaborator on the SAGA project, an international project looking at more-than-English languages of sustainability.
Sierra Rempel, Strategic Planning Coordinator and the Sunshine Coast Regional District. I was born and raised in the territory of the Sto:lo Nation, in Abbotsford BC. I moved to the shíshálh swiya in 2021. I have studied and worked in a range of fields including: environmental science, ecological restoration, urban planning and photography. My current role is with the Sunshine Coast Regional District, working on longer term, strategic planning and policy surrounding the provision of drinking water on the Coast. Our team works with all aspects of the multifaceted drinking water system – from the environmental permits up at Chapman Lake, to communication campaigns and working with residents to increase water literacy. Managing water sustainably is a complex problem, and every water user plays a role. Through my work, I aim to shift people’s relationships with fresh water through connecting them with where it comes from and how much they actually use and advocating for a watershed approach to water management on the Coast.
Simon Levin is currently co-director of Coppermoss Retreat and Residency (est. 2016), situated on the traditional swiya of the shíshalh nation in the village of Tuwanek, BC. Seeking to trouble his immigrant-settler relationship to the land; Coppermoss invites artists up to live and work at the edge of wilderness, fostering new approaches to decolonizing through land-based pedagogy and projects of bio remediation. Simon has spent more than thirty years investigating and intervening in various colonial systems through his socially engaged art practice. Through photography, video, installation and sculpture, Simon has co-created site-based networks that explore the aesthetics of engagement using a variety of designed forms and tools that address our many publics. From large-scale projects in urban environments such as a photo agency for inner city youth, indigenous, medicinal and food-security gardens downtown; or a variety of psycho-geographic and psycho-sonic mappings of space, Simon works with diverse communities and audiences towards realising these spatial and pedagogical projects. He has been a part-time lecturer within Graduate Studies, Critical and Cultural Studies and Dynamic Media at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, as well as in the Department of Art History and Visual Art at UBC. He has published and exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. Of note is a curriculum on Contemporary Public Art, and co-contributed a chapter to Routledge’s Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry.
Laura Kozak is a design researcher, teacher, and community organizer. Her work focuses on relational, place-based ethics, and asks how designers contribute to relationships with communities, land, water and ecological beings through decolonizing and anti-oppression practices. An Assistant Professor in Emily Carr University’s Faculty of Culture and Community, Laura has a particular love for helping students wayfind through their own education, as guided by their interests, values and worldviews. In 2021 she was honoured to receive the Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence and recognized by Sierra Club BC for Exceptional Leadership in Climate Action. Her recent research is focused on climate justice, which integrates ethics of social justice and decolonization into climate action and sustainability work.
Clare Wilkening | I am an emerging ceramic artist with a focus on ecologies, human and non-human, and the major and subtle linkages therein. In my work I utilize ceramic forms to evoke, narrate, and to respond to specific places and ecological issues. I’m born and raised as a settler on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. To me, that means that I have a responsibility to support, with my voice, my care, and my labour, the sovereignty and self-determination of these Nations. I see the Land back movement as the way forward for the future generations of all those human and non-human who live in these territories. The impulses and ideas for my work begin with a broad love for the natural world. Mainly my interests are focused around ecologies, human and non-human, and the major and subtle linkages therein. I relish the experiences I have had within the felt world of ecology, and I try to bring forth that spirit of creative intuition, play and levity in my working processes. Much of my artwork parallels and expands upon my BSc in Environmental Science and the information and knowledge I gained during that time. By choosing to engage with ecology as an artist instead of as a scientist, I am able to research the many topics that hold my attention and to generate work that is evocative and responsive. Recently this video was made by the Jellyfish Project, a local environmental education organization, about me Southern Resident orca project.
Keely Halward is a painter and musician living as a settler in xwesam/stelkaya (Roberts Creek) in the shíshálh and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations who has a habit of building community, addressing societal inequities, and enjoying time with bodies of water, mountains, her garden and family. Keely is also a curator at the Sunshine Coast Arts Council, bringing forward the diverse voices of local and regional artists and engaging the public meaningfully in the arts.
Lindsay Cole (she/her) is an applied and action researcher, civil servant, and parent grateful to be living in xwesam, shíshálh swiya (also known as Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast). She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow where she is researching and teaching about transformative innovation toward social and ecological justice on a variety of initiatives. Her current applied and action research focuses on how cities can bring practices of social innovation, systemic and strategic design, visionary fiction, and others into their work on climate, equity, and decolonization challenges. Lindsay is currently an Adjunct Professor in both the Department of Educational Studies and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, where she is a member of the SSHRC funded Transforming Cities from Within research team. Prior to this, Lindsay worked with the City of Vancouver for 13 years on a variety of initiatives including the Solutions Lab, the Greenest City Action Plan, Healthy City Strategy, and Rewilding and Local Food work.