Fine Arts

As I think about fine arts and what that means to me and where it has a place in my life, I have come to realize that due the rich First Nation culture, I do not have to reach very far to connect myself to someone I know who is an accomplished carver, painter , singer, story teller, or skilled at beading or sewing.

              

                                                   

The list can go on, but as I reflect on my very own fine arts accomplishments I can count one area that I have really worked to develop--Language and as an extension singing and drumming.  

Language, to me, is the essence of my culture.  After starting my own family, I began to realize how much of my culture I was missing out on by knowing very little of my Wet'suwet'en language.  S'beb (my dad) has been involved in Aboriginal politics and had his own line of first nation inspired clothing, so I always felt that I was involved in my culture, as much as I needed to anyways. But, when I started my own life away from the home that housed my culture. The question that became very clear to me was, what was it that made me Wet'suwet'en?  My skin colour? the few words that I knew in my language?  

I grew up in Telkwa in an area that was well known for our family.  The reason I point this out,  is that I never wanted to live on a reservation. It seemed beneath me. My head was full of stereotypes, some that I still struggle with today. But today, My husband and me chose to live on the reservation of Moricetown.  I could have let the "Moricetown Indian Reserve No. 1" title deter me from a place that is directly tied to my ancestors and my language, but me and my family would have missed out on the wisdom of the elders that are still waiting to teach what they had to keep safe.

I did not want my kids to grow up torn between what they thought they were suppose to be as determined by society and what is pumping through their veins.  Through my journey to recover the richness and revive the organic sense of my culture, becoming fluent in my language has been my tool to uncovering the buried treasures being kept safe.   

Artist Toghestiy (Warner Naziel)

So in a nut shell this is my fine arts.  The unearthing of my language and my culture.  Like this door to the Moricetown elementary school, the door is opening and becoming more and more accessible. For me to be able to see in my kids and their love for drumming, signing, and dancing and for me to be able to talk to my kids in our language and them understand me is the essence of my being, my hontiyh.

Carter and Emma-Reese drumming