sagawakisis, our ancestors are always with us

Text by Chelsea Yuill.

In Jacqueline Morrisseau-Addison’s public art installation on the façade of the Anvil Centre, the sun rises above a silhouette of prairie grass with the artist’s hand-embroidered floral beadwork adorning either side of the landscape photograph. Centred in the image is the beaded word spelling sagawakisis, which refers to the cycle of the rising sun in the Saulteaux dialect of Anishinaabemowin. Their public artwork, sagawakisis, our ancestors are always with us honours Indigenous medicine, spirit guides, lineage, and creation stories. It is an image that affirms the challenging journeys Indigenous people face as they retrace connections to their family histories, recognizing the powerful role of cultural belongings which guide their paths.

As a graduate student in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, Morrisseau-Addison has an interdisciplinary and collaborative art, curatorial, and writing practice that works toward envisioning “a future in which all beings thrive.” In tandem with their studies and while creating this public artwork, Morrisseau-Addison visited the sacred belongings of Saulteaux, Anishinaabeg, and neighbouring nations that are in the collections of the Museum of Anthropology and the City of New Westminster Museum and Archives. From an Indigenous world view, these belongings are not aesthetic objects but are living entities that have their own specific creation stories and exist in relation to community. A question this artwork invites us to reflect upon is: How can institutions work toward making these reconnections? As Morrisseau-Addison pieces together fragments of her own family’s story, sagawakisis, our ancestors are always with us, speaks to the journey in searching for these stories of cultural inheritance.

Commissioned by the City of New Westminster, this temporary public art installation is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival.