Water Protectors

This exhibition brings together artists whose works explore the importance of water from Indigenous perspectives. Artists in the exhibition are Christian Chapman, Ruth Cuthand, Melissa General, Tanya Harnett, Roy Kakegamic, Glenna Matoush and Roy Thomas.

Through their works, these artists explore how water is a sacred, living entity in need of care and protection. They communicate individual and collective relationships to water, highlighting how water flows deep into Indigenous memory, knowledge, and identity.

Through their use of storytelling and critical reflection, they are able to honour their cultural connections to water while drawing attention to systemic inequities of unsafe drinking water within Indigenous communities.

In bringing these works together, this exhibition calls attention to the need to care for the earth’s most sacred resource. This exhibition pays special tribute to those who take up that important work and honours all Water Protectors across Turtle Island.

Danielle Printup

Dani Printup (she/her) is a Hodinohso:ni (Onondaga) / Anishinaabe (Algonquin) arts worker and curator from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, QC, with maternal roots in Ohsweken, ON. She has a Bachelor of Honors in Art History from the University of Guelph (2012). She has interned at the National Gallery of Canada and completed the RBC Indigenous Training Program in Museum Practices at the Canadian Museum of History. She has worked at Galerie SAW Gallery, the Indigenous Art Centre and the City of Ottawa’s Public Art Program. She is the Indigenous Cultural Engagement Coordinator at Carleton University Art Gallery. Her most recent curatorial projects include curating a solo exhibition of Christian Chapman’s work titled “Run to the Hills!” and a co-curated exhibition with Carmen Robertson of Norval Morrisseau’s work titled “Medicine Currents”, which will both be presented during the fall of 2023 at the Carleton University Art Gallery. She is a member of the Wolf Babe Collective, which is a group of curators and artists who create work that draws from their lived experiences as racialized First Nations non-binary people and women.