Visiting Neighbors, Learning from the Land
Visiting Neighbors, Learning from the Land is a participatory research project of the Indigenous Ukrainian Relationship Initiative. The core of the project was a two-day event on the land that took place in the summer of 2023 for a group of 25 participants. The visiting happened at two historic sites located in east central Alberta – the area east of Edmonton with historically large Indigenous and Ukrainian populations – Métis Crossing and the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. Both places are very appropriate for this project. They depict Indigenous (Métis) or settler (Ukrainian Canadian) cultures as lived on this very land. Métis Crossing is located on the original river lots in the midst of Ukrainian settlement and is surrounded by onion dome churches of the Eastern Christian rite and traditionally Ukrainian towns and hamlets. Most of the people who still live in the area are Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village (UCHV), in its turn, is located on the Indigenous land just south of the early Ukrainian settlement area and is inevitably impacted by Indigenous peoples and their histories, whether it is acknowledged and conveyed in the official message of the museum or not. The goal of the project is to reveal and bring to light some of the shared stories and histories, Indigenous and Ukrainian, as well as to create new shared experiences.
We would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the project from the Situated Knowledges: Indigenous Peoples and Place (SKIPP) Signature Area, University of Alberta.
Storying Indigenous – Ukrainian – Canadian Relationships
A roundtable discussion Storying Indigenous – Ukrainian – Canadian Relationships was jointly organized by the Indigenous Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative and Punctuate! Theatre. It took place on May 7, 2023, following the performance of the First Métis Man of Odesa at Citadel Theatre. The round table participants included: Myrna Kostash, Naomi McIlwraith, Matthiew Mckenzie and Mariya Khomutova. Lianna Makuch facilitated the discussion.
Watch the recording of the event.
askîy / земля / the land
kayâs: у далекому минулому: Long Ago On Our Lands
Date: September 15, 2021
Speakers (click here to read speakers’ biographies):
- Dr. Elder Francis Wiskeyjack, KW Indigenous Centre, MacEwan
- Chief Greg Desjarlais, Frog Lake First Nation
- Dr. John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta
- Matt Hiltermann, Métis Nation of Alberta – Region 3
Moderator: Chelsea Vowel
To understand where we are today, and where we will be in the future, we must understand the past. Before Ukrainian settlers immigrated to the prairies, what Indigenous land-based practices and relationships existed here? What were Ukrainian land-based practices and relationships in the Ukrainian homelands?
Watch the recording of the event.
otâkosîhk mîna anohc: вчора і сьогодні: Yesterday and Today On These Lands
Date: October 20, 2021
Speakers:
- Myrna Kostash
- Chelsea Vowel
Moderator: Lindy Ledohowski (biography)
Chelsea Vowel will speak about what social and legislative forces impacted Indigenous peoples and Ukrainian settlers within a prairie-specific context, and how these forces influenced land-based practices and relationships. How does this colonial history continue to influence relationships to land today?
Myrna Kostash will speak about what she learned from re-examining her grandparents’ lives in the course of writing her forthcoming book, Ghosts in a Photograph: A Memoir. Her forebears were part of the first wave of immigration from Galicia in the early 1900s and had varying experiences as settlers in Alberta. More than a century later, Kostash brings her own perspective as a writer and granddaughter.
Watch the recording of the event.
nîkânihk: майбутнє: Our Futures On These Lands
Date: November 17, 2021
Speakers: Barry Bilinsky, Leah Hrycun, Leon Hunter, Tara Sliwkanich
Moderator: Chelsea Vowel
What kinds of land-based practices and relationships should be re-established from kayâs/у далекому минулому/long ago; what kinds of innovative responses to colonial pressures from otâkosîhk mîna anohc/вчора і сьогодні/yesterday and today, will continue to be useful into the future? What kinds of interventions can Indigenous peoples and Ukrainian settlers make today that will sow seeds for the kind of future we want our descendants to live in?
Watch the recording of the event.
Art Collaborations as Creative Care
Date: April 20, 2021
Speakers: David Garneau and Sandra Semchuk
Moderator: Chelsea Vowel
David Garneau (Métis) is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. Photographer and scholar, Sandra Semchuk is a second-generation Ukrainian Canadian who has focused her photographic and video work on relationships between herself, her family, and her community. She collaborated extensively with her late husband James Nicholas, a leader in the Nisichawayasikh Cree Nation and artist.
David Garneau spoke about the Tawatina Bridge art project. He and his team, in consultation with Métis and First Nations Elders and Knowledge Keepers, produced 400 paintings for the new bridge in Edmonton. Sandra Semchuk spoke about the collaborative project, “understoryoverstory,” done in dialogue with her late husband, Rock Cree orator, poet and artist, James Nicholas, and her late father, Martin Semchuk, about a road built into northern Saskatchewan.
Watch the recording of the event.
The stories of these lands: Recovering Indigenous-Ukrainian narratives in East Central Alberta
Date: January 28, 2021
Speaker: Leah Hrycun
Abstract: “Leah, there were no Natives here,” my Baba says to me with increasing annoyance each time I ask if she knows any stories about Ukrainian settlers and Indigenous people. Indeed, as many historians of Ukrainian Canadian settlement demonstrate, by the time Ukrainian immigrants arrived here, Indigenous people had been erased from the lands they settled. But why do I continue to hear Cree and Métis stories about Ukrainians? About kimosôms (grandfathers) speaking Ukrainian and kôhkums (grandmothers) having Ukrainian poppyseed cake recipes? I had to ask myself: what had happened to the stories of my ancestors to allow them to erase the presence of Indigenous people? To answer these questions, I am recovering narratives of Indigenous-Ukrainian relations in east central Alberta. My goal is to demonstrate that recovering these histories and deconstructing how and why Ukrainian settlers came into Canadian multiculturalism, redresses Indigenous erasure in Ukrainian settler histories, and ultimately advances reconciliation.