When you step inside Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg, the first thing you notice are the smiles of the children captured in photographs on the walls. When you look even closer, you see the beautiful details of bead and quill work that accentuate each smile.
These photographs and the ancestral artwork that they contain represent Seven Generations, which is also the title of the exhibit on display at Gallery 1C03. The exhibit is the creation of Ininew-Anishinaabe-British relational maker KC Adams, and also features artifacts from a wide variety of Indigenous communities across Manitoba on loan from the Manitoba Museum.
“Each child shows that not only are we still here, but we’re also thriving,” says Adams as she highlights the central theme of the exhibit: relations past, present, and future, all coming together in the photographs.
For Adams, the concept of Seven Generations was first shared with her by a friend from Thunderchild First Nation in Saskatchewan. “She had learned this knowledge that instead of thinking seven generations just ahead, instead we think we’re always having one foot in three generations back and we’re always thinking three generations forward. We are the seventh generation.”
The exploration of the generations of the children photographed came from an earlier collection done by Adams called We Are Still Here. It also shows a deeper representation of Indigenous resilience. Adams took the pictures of the children after the discovery of unmarked graves at a former residential school site on the Tk'emlups te Secwépemc First Nation near Kamloops, B.C. back in 2021.
“I wanted to take the narrative back,” says Adams of that creative moment, which saw her take pictures of Indigenous children who were chosen because they were the same age as those who would have attended residential school. “I had learned about the unmarked graves actually in Brandon first,” she says, referring to unmarked grave sites that are being examined in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. “By the time [Kamloops] happened, I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to create a piece that talks about our resilience, our strength and how that knowledge and how that knowledge and blood memory is in each and every one of us.”
The bead and quill work that is superimposed on the photos of the children takes on a whole new meaning as ancestors inextricably linked to the future, constantly in relationship with the past. This intergenerational relationship is where Adams derives her title as a relational maker as opposed to merely an artist.
“Relational making is when an Indigenous person makes something or performs or engages in a way, a creative way that infuses their spiritual, cultural, familial, land-based information,” she explains. “So, to call myself an artist, all of that information, the spiritual understandings and our teachings of relationality, how everything in the universe is connected isn’t taken into account.”
Adams also says that everyone, regardless of their artistic or creative abilities, has the ability to be a relational maker. “It’s not just Indigenous people that can tap into this sort of intuitiveness, this intuitive self,” Adams says. “We all come from somewhere, and at one point in time, we all created. That knowledge is embedded in our bodies. Whether we choose to listen to them or not is what makes you somebody who chooses to continue making.”
“I tell everybody you have that making ability inside of you, otherwise, your ancestors wouldn’t have been able to survive. They passed that knowledge on to you how to make things. You just have to tap into it.”
Seven Generations is on display at Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg until February 14. Gallery hours are from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. from Monday through Friday. In addition, a panel discussion on relational making featuring KC Adams is taking place on January 13 at 2:30 p.m. in the U of W’s Convocation Hall. You can learn more about both the gallery and the panel discussion at the University of Winnipeg’s website.
