We speak from water
We stand for water
We are water
Water is medicine
And so are our stories
Remember this
She’s hurting
Moving with the wind
Rising and falling
But also blooming
No body is there
Some body is here
Washing away the pain
Water drips
She is healing

Art[4]Change: Indigenous Women Speak is a collaborative animated video by artists, Monique Aura Bedard (Onyota’a:ka, Oneida Nation of the Thames), Tia Cavanagh, (Anishinaabekwe, Mukwa Dodem, Sagamok Nation) and Alex Jacobs-Blum (Lower Cayuga Nation, Six Nations of the Grand River). By combining their practices they seek to engage in a collective healing journey through truth-telling, reclamation and art intervention. A garment fashioned after a communion dress Tia Cavanagh’s Nokimos wore is re-interpreted through different visual aesthetics, reclaiming the past by making connections to the residential school legacy. Water is used from an Indigenous perspective of medicine to illustrate a caring for their histories, stories, memories, ancestors, families, futurities, land and themselves.

The video was projected onto a parking garage located at 32 York Blvd in downtown Hamilton during Hamilton SuperCrawl on the evenings of Friday September 13th, Saturday September 14thand Sunday September 15th 2019.