From left to right: Sarah Prosper, a Mi’kmaq dancer and artistic director from Eskasoni, First Light resource program co-ordinator Kathy Walsh, Eastern Owl member Rebecca Sharr, First Light executive director Stacey Howse, Eastern Owl drummer Jenelle Duval and Mi’kmaq visual artist Meagan Musseau. (Mark Cumby/CBC)
After strutting down a red carpet and snapping pictures with friends, Mi’kmaq visual artist Meagan Musseau watched a digital art display she curated come to life in front of a room full of people.
But for Musseau, the evening was about more than the art display. It was a chance to come together as a community and celebrate Indigenous voices and culture.
“It made me feel really proud to just feel that elevation and to feel that presence, and to feel so many ancestors in the room,” said Musseau. “It felt good.”
The Spirit Song Festival — which began as a small event in St. John’s in 2013 — is back in the city for its 10th edition. This year’s festival is a weeklong celebration, with events happening throughout downtown St. John’s until Saturday.
The festival opened Sunday with a digital art exhibition featuring the work of five Indigenous artists from across the province. The exhibition, called Heart of the Root, consisted of five documentary-style videos showcasing each artist working in their own creative space in their hometowns.
Spirit Song Festival kicks off 10th anniversary
The festival’s opening event featured a red carpet and a digital art exhibition showcasing the work of five Indigenous artists from across the province.
“A lot of times as artists, we’re having to travel to the urban centre,” said Musseau. “So I wanted to flip that and travel to the artists.”
The videos played simultaneously on five separate projectors, allowing guests to walk to each screen to learn more about the art being created.
“It makes me so happy because it looks like a big storybook,” said Musseau. “And the storybook … it’s rooted by love and it’s grounded by love.”
Guests had the chance to strut down the red carpet and get their picture taken at the Spirit Song Festival’s opening event. (Jessica Singer/CBC)
Art as a way to build community
In one of the videos, Inuk artist Monika Rumbolt taught audiences about caribou tufting, which she says is now considered an endangered practice. But she says the exhibit allowed her to pass on this traditional knowledge to others, including Indigenous youth.
“This festival is so much more than exhibitions,” said Rumbolt, who’s from southern Labrador. “It is the creation of community.”
The digital art exhibition, called Heart of the Root, featured five documentary-style videos showcasing different artists working in their own creative spaces in their hometowns. (Jessica Singer/CBC)
Rumbolt says the exhibit was also a great way to teach people about Labradorian art and artists. She said immersing oneself in art is a way to understand and appreciate what communities and people are experiencing.
“Art is not just art, it is a platform for advocacy,” said Rumbolt. “And it’s just a beautiful way to start reconciliation.”
When Megan Samms saw her art displayed on a projector screen, she says she didn’t feel any nerves because she was surrounded by such a warm community.
Monika Rumbolt, an Inuk artist from southern Labrador, teaches audiences about caribou tufting in a video featured at the Spirit Song Festival opening event. (Mark Cumby/CBC)
“This is such a cosy family-driven festival, and with all the five films being shown at once, these are my kin and neighbours showing at the same time,” said Samms, who is a natural dyer and handweaver based in Codroy Valley.
“So there was comfort there and familiarity, relationality. So I didn’t feel nervous. I felt proud of everybody and I thought they did beautiful work.”
Weeklong festivities
Other events taking place throughout the week include live music performances and panel discussions, a dance party and ulu-making workshops hosted by Mina Campbell.
Campbell taught audiences how to make an ulu during Sunday’s exhibition as one of the featured artists. She began making ulus — knives traditionally used by Inuit women for cutting and skinning animals — around three years ago when the pandemic began.
Mina Campbell, an Inuk artist from Labrador, will teach people how to make an ulu during ulu making workshops throughout the week. Campbell says an ulu is a knife traditionally used by Inuit women for cutting and skinning animals. (Jessica Singer/CBC)
Campbell said it was a thrill to see her work displayed on the screen.
“It was pretty exciting and scary, but exciting and fun.”
Musseau has participated in the Spirit Song Festival for the last four to five years, and says she’s happy to see how the event has grown over time.
“In terms of an Indigenous arts festival, coming out of the Atlantic region, this is what’s up,” said Musseau. “It feels so good to have participated and also witnessed that growth and to see so much presence and so much attendance.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
