Messages On Doors: Nuu-chah-nulth

Messages On Doors

Produced by The Fox Queen in Association with Pacific Coast Stage Co

A live blending of storytelling, personal experience, letters of loss and understanding, and performance art.

Join us in person this September 29, 2022 for the public feast and sharing of the Core Artists’ and Community Participants’ artistic responses to the messages on doors workshop.

Messages on Doors is an online community engagement workshop and live art presentation where members of the Vancouver Island public generate and send personal messages for distant, unreachable, or lost loved ones in an online theatre workshop through a directed creative process.

Want Details About Becoming a Community Participant? CLICK HERE

In the spirit of reconciliation, Indigenous and non-Indigenous community participants work together to create messages shared as part of a digitally streamed and live celebration performance on the traditional and ancestral lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples

The Big Ideas 2022

We are responsible to take action against the Historical and Present day dark messages of hate towards Indigenous peoples.
What does the world need? What does the community need? What do you need?

Values: Love. Truth. Listening. Survival. Joy.

Artistic Lead — Tsatassaya White

Tsatassaya White, B.A. is a curator, event planner and community mobilizer. She is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation (Coast Salish) and also of Earthquake House of the Hamilton family of Hupacasath (Nuu-chah-nulth Nations). She carries cultural knowledge, roots her work in traditional protocols and has a vast network of community connections. Recently, Tsatassaya curated “Qwuyulush utl’ Swyalana” a day of Indigenous dance at InFrinGinG Dance Festival (July 2019) at Maffeo Sutton Park, produced and directed “huulth-huultha 2020” a dance film in response to the pandemic, and curated the inaugural Sum̓sháthut (Sun) Festival, an on-line Indigenous cultural festival, and co-produced with Nanaimo’s Crimson Coast Dance Society.

Artistic Lead — The Fox Queen

Progressive Theatre Collective, The Fox Queen (FQ) was formed during the early days of Covid 19, due to a strong desire to connect, inquire, dismantle, (re)align artistic practices, and forge new decolonized ways of theatre making and creation. The Fox Queen is creative collaborators Tamara McCarthy and Dave Mott. These two white artists of settler descent have over 40 years of combined theatre creation, direction, performance, physical training, devising, leadership, independent producing, mentorship, presentation and teaching in the arts sector. The Fox Queen ethos rests solidly inside the founding shared values of Humour, Love, Communication, Listening, Respect, Healing, Song, and Collaboration. Tamara and Dave are focused on Community, Responsibility, Survival, Anti-Racist Practice and the Present Moment. Our values lead and define us. FQ exists in the present moment, self reflecting and focusing on the heartbeats around us; we are flexible, continually responding to the evolving needs of the people on our teams and the communities with whom we engage.

Core Artists 2022

Featured

My name is Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde. I'm a Kanienke’haka woman from Kahnawake. For the past 17 years I've been a grateful, active and contributing guest on Lekwungen territory, Victoria, BC.

Raven John, artist, involuntary comedian and two-spirit activist, is of Coast Salish and Stolo Nation decent. This Two-spirit Trickster is a BFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, with a major in visual art and minor in social practice and community engagement, as well as a graduate of the North West Coast Jewelry Arts program at the Native Education College.

Jessica is a writer, actor, mother and creator. She was born in Tofino on Esowista peninsula, traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples. As a settler with four generations of roots in the Vancouver Island logging industry Jessica has particular interest in unpacking her own colonial history through artistic practice.

Tlehpik Hjalmer Wenstob was raised on Tzartus island in Barkley Sound, in Huu-ay-aht First Nation’s territory, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was there that his understanding and desire of pursing both his traditional Nuu-chah-nulth and contemporary art practices began. Hjalmer Wenstob is an interdisciplinary artist who specializes in sculpture and carving. He is Nuu-chah-nulth from the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations on his father's side, and Norwegian and English on his mother’s side.

The Community Participants

Laurie Blakely - Jessica Boy - Jasmine Lambert - Emily Maillot - Brent Ronning

Event Details

Public Celebration and Performance - September 29, 2022

Hupačasath Hall - Hupačasath First Nation

5500 Ahahswinis Drive - Port Alberni BC V9Y 8J9

Complimentary food and soft drinks will be served starting at 7:00pm until resources run out.

Reserve a ticket to join us for the celebration and feast.

Book a Free Ticket

This is a free event. Donations gladly accepted.

Do you have barriers to access Messages on Doors?

Please contact us to discuss with The Fox Queen if our team are able to meet them.

Online Workshop - August 7, 2022 4-8pm

ZOOM details are available to Community Participants via email. Contact Us for more info

Support us with a Donation

Hupačasath Hall - Hupačasath First Nation 5500 Ahahswinis Drive, Port Alberni BC V9Y 8J9

Messages on Doors Image was created

by Eliot White-Hill Kwulasultun.

Artist’s Statement:

Its a simple Salish design in a heart.

The crescent and trigon come together with the shape of the heart to

form a the lower half of a face, kind of like the smiling comedy mask.