Saturday, February 10th, 2018

2-4 pm

at Xpace Cultural Centre at 2-303 Lansdowne Ave

Images by: Images by: Chandra Maracle (left) and lwrds Duniam and Aemilius Milo (right).

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Join us for an afternoon of knowledge and food sharing with artists lwrds duniam & Aemilius Milo, and food activist and scholar Chandra Maracle. In conversation with their works featured in the exhibition For Us, By Us, the presenters will speak to decolonial futures and intentional eating.

A hearty soup cooked with broad leaf plantain will be served.

This event is free, and all are welcome. For directions and Accessibility please follow the link.

Chandra Maracle: Feeding the Good Mind: This is Your Brain on Haudenosaunee Foods.
A discussion of the psychology of eating and using food as tool and strategy for personal transformation and social change by feeding cultural values, not just human bodies, with Chandra Maracle

lwrds duniam & Aemilius Milo: Storytelling and food sharing for collective healing.
Llantén, also known as White Man’s Footstep or Broadleaf Plantain, is a perennial plant indigenous to Eurasia growing widely throughout Turtle Island and Abya Yala. Llantén can be found sprouting all over Tkaronto, rising through the pavement cracks, defiantly thriving. Colonially designated a ‘weed’, llantén is highly regarded over its remarkable medicinal qualities (antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, hydrating, soothing, and more).

Sharing a connection to place that extends beyond this lifetime, Milo and lwrds will bring their creative practices together (joining research, design, food-making, performance, sculputre/installation, and community organizing) to create a space that honours 525+ years of decolonial resistance, for the healing of ancestral bloodlines.

This event accompanies the exhibition For Us, By Us, produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.

Bios:

Chandra F. Maracle is the mother of four daughters. At any given moment she is thinking about, talking about, preparing, serving or eating food. She was born and raised on the West side of Buffalo and later studied at Cortland College, University of Buffalo and University of Salamanca, Spain. She has worked as Youth Leader at Native American Community Services in Buffalo, Graduate Assistant in Native American Studies at UB and Cultural Resource Specialist at the Native American Magnet School #19. She was a Diversity Educator with the National Conference for Community and Justice, co-founder of the Indigenous Women’s Initiatives and has certifications as a practitioner of Massage, Reiki and Yoga. Chandra is co-founder and Nutrition Coordinator of Skaronhyase’ko:wa Tyohterakentko:wa tsi Yontaweya’tahkwa/the Everlasting Tree School and president of the Kanyen’keha Revitalization Society. She is currently a Collaborator on The Legacies Project: An Intergenerational/Intercultural Exchange of People Transforming the Food System through York University in Toronto. She was a collaborator on the Healthy Roots committee and developed the Haudenosaunee Food Guide for the Community Challenge. Chandra is founder of Kakhwa’on:we/Real People Eat Real Food, exploring links between food, people, language and land. She recently completed a second year in the Onkwawen:na Kentyohkwa adult Mohawk language immersion program. She lives on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory where she is often found on her Stand Up Paddleboard.

lwrds duniam is an artist, community organizer, and student currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Integrated Media program at OCAD University. A native of Chinchaysuyo, Abya Yala, they have been calling Turtle Island home since 2002. Their work as an artist explores themes of coloniality and the decolonial option, with a particular focus on the introspective scrutiny of their experiences as an Afro-Indigenous, non-binary, queer person of colour. Their work aims to create sites for re-existence and empowerment, exposing and seeking to dismantle the interlocking systems of oppression that strive to disempower marginalized, racialized, and sexualized bodies.

Aemilius Milo is an accomplished artist, community organizer and entrepreneur whose life’s work redefines gender on multiple intersections of race, mental health and trans/non-binary life experience. Having stepped away from the stage for the last couple of years, after a decade involved in Queer/Trans performance and theatre spaces, Milo begins their next chapter as performance artist innovatively bringing their passion for food making and love of performance together. They envision creating work that speaks to diaspora identity, Peruvian Indigeneity, and uncovering ancestral knowledge.