Environmental consciousness: between worlds and times; contemplating global crisis

Summary

The way we experience the passing of time shapes our relationship to and understanding of our immediate world. My awareness of time comes from an overlapping of two distinct approaches – one that is of a linear path and one that is cyclical. This intersection of world views has been part of my upbringing, a result of being born into a family both Western (British/Dutch) and Indigenous (Plains Cree).

Contemplating time and the countless cycles of life that have recurred around the ancient landscapes of Canada left me in a state of wonderment, but also stirred within me a fearful apprehension of our permanent and collective impact upon our beautiful world. To confront this fear, I sought wisdom in the places of ancestral life, listening to the truths of relatives, knowledge keepers and peoples who have traversed this land before me. At the social, cultural and environmental contact zones of my Indigenous and European ancestors I set out to study and collect their knowledge and to animate and re-tell it in a personally transformative process through photography.

Many places I visited hold particular meaning for my direct ancestors as they are sites of significant moments in their lives; I was drawn to the sites of ancient stories across Saskatchewan, Alberta and to the shores of early settlement in Ontario and Newfoundland. My aim was to reconnect with those who came before me as a way of introducing myself to the land on which they lived.

I came to see these landscapes as immense time capsules of buried knowledge. The resulting images are a blend and collapse of time into the present. The stories of long ago and the foreboding whispers of the future intertwine my body with the land, in the hope that we all maintain a long-term ecological equilibrium with the world around us.