CityScapes Photo Essay

Many Indigenous peoples have moved to urban areas for employment or educational opportunities. While many of the Indigenous urban youth consider the urban centre their home, it is important to keep close ties to their Indigenous communities to help maintain their traditions and their sense of self, family, community and language.

For this video, a group of young women took photographs that illustrate their connection between living in an urban centre and their Indigenous community and culture.  Then, as a group, they created this photo essay.

Urban / Rural Indigenous perspectives of the landscape while co-opted by their surroundings reflect Indigenous meaning.   Within CityScapes, buildings, hardened by the lights, are laced with images of past family members and Indigenous memory.  In Kainai LandScapes, rural scapes shift with rivers, waterfalls, sunrises and sunsets punctuated by wildlife. These two backgrounds are equally and indelibly intertwined to form parts of the newly emerging Indigenous expression of Canada.