You may have noticed, I have a new gallery up on the site:

If not, you can see it here.

This is the first part of a photo series long in gestation.  There will hopefully be more shoots to come.

For the past few years, I’ve had the desire to document the beautiful legacy of Powwow culture that is encapsulated in Cree regalia and dance, in a meaningful way that brings attention and respect to its timelessness. In this first iteration of the series, that attention comes via juxtaposition: In spite of all the recent centuries of relentless development, here in the city on unceded land, is modern Powwow culture: resilient, adaptive, and enduring, a spirit that has refused to be contained by reservations or history books. As a Canadian, with two of my great-grandmothers being of Cree and Metis heritage, I am continually shocked and saddened that this preeminent culture was threatened with erasure. To me, these images are a kind of celebration of the failure of the attempted cultural genocide of Canada’s First Peoples. This culture has indeed survived, and is here to stay.

I was fortunate to meet powwow dancer Kieran who has spent the last six years on the Powwow trail- Good folks like him are doing the essential work of ensuring this part of Canada’s true culture endures. We spent an evening trekking around downtown Vancouver, using long shutter speeds to convey the passage of time and presence.   In the city, the transitory activity of traffic echoes through the present moment around the fixture that is the presence of this contemporary Powwow dancer.   In subsequent shoots I plan on doing in the country, the echoes, captured through the movement over time of slow shutter speeds, are those of dancers past, the connection that the memories of indigenous ancestors can hold over the land, a technique I explored somewhat in the first image in the gallery.

In the light of skyscrapers and traffic, here stands the timelessness of powwow culture: past, present, and future.