Speaker:  Dr. Celeste Pedri-Spade, Associate Professor, School of Northern and Community Studies, Laurentian University

Research Talk Title:  The Teaching is in the Making: On Materializing Photographs of Anishinabe Ancestors

ABSTRACT
This research explores the role of Anishinabe photographs as distinct material things in Anishinabe memory production. Through the materialization and transformation of six (6) photographs of her ancestors, the artist/researcher draws upon performative and embodied aspects of Anishinabe ways of knowing, emphasizing the agency of the materials worked with in the process of meaning-making. The researcher first locates Anishinabe photographs as distinct Indigenous ‘things’ that can be worked with as opposed to simply read. She then transcends ontological and methodological limitations often associated with photographs in order to trace or “stitch” through the different relationships among actuants made visible, sensible and knowable. This is made possible through a material and phenomenological oriented approach that is informed her identity and cultural teachings. Research findings stress the importance of conceptualizing Anishinabe memory as a visceral, relational, intuitive, creative, and sensorial experience to strengthening relationships to the ancestral past.