MICHAEL BELMORE and A.J. CASSON: Nkweshkdaadiimgak Miinwaa Bakeziibiisan

This publication accompanied Michael Belmore And A.J. Casson: Nkweshkdaadiimgak Miinwaa Bakeziibiisan / Confluences And Tributaries, an exhibition that coalesced the work of two artists from different cultural and generational backgrounds, to bring together the story of the Ontario landscape and the histories which go beyond its beauty.

Michael Belmore asserts an Indigenous, Anishinaabe worldview, re-affirming Native ways of knowing into the stories we tell and images we show of the mountains, lakes and rivers that make up the land now geographically defined as Canada. The places depicted in A.J. Casson's oeuvre are places, which, historically, bore spiritual and cultural importance to the various Anishinaabe peoples of the region. Many of these sites are marked with the experiences, legends and knowledge of generations of Anishinaabeg through the pictographs (rock art) which still inhabit these landscapes.