This June, Tall Feathers Workshops
3.5-HR & 2-DAY WORKSHOPS AT KOAC
Join local artist James Ziegler and Elder Harley Crowshoe for a signature 2-day workshop (June 22 & 23), as well as a special 3.5-hr workshop (July 6), honouring Indigenous heritage through ceremony, learning, art, healing, and connections.
Feathers are a scared symbol for many Indigenous peoples. Each feather carries a story, of wisdom, strength, flexibility, healing and resilience. Together, working in small groups, you will design and build 11-foot hand-crafted TALL FEATHERS at the 2-day workshop to be proudly displayed onsite at KOAC for the month of June (and collected in early July) or 7-foot TALL FEATHERS at the 3-hr workshop that can be taken home right after the event.
We are so excited to host these two workshops as part of our ongoing dedication to reconciliation and to bringing our community engaging experiences of contemporary ART in NATURE!
2-DAY TALL FEATHERS –
RSVP TO INFO@KOARTSCENTRE.ORG
- Saturday June 22 from 9:00AM to 3:30PM
- Sunday June 23 from 10:00AM to 3:30PM
3.5-HR TALL FEATHERS –
RSVP TO INFO@KOARTSCENTRE.ORG
- Saturday July 6 from 12:30PM to 4:00PM
How the Tall Feathers workshops came to be
As told by James Ziegler, artist and lead facilitator, recently gifted a Blackfoot name, Mohkinstsis Pookaa. It all started with a dream, and it has become part of his journey to offer Tall Feathers in community-engaging events.
“Tall Feathers was a vision that came to me during a dream in the Fall of 2021. It was about people coming together, each holding feathers twice their height, from various backgrounds, in a community celebration. Now, I’m usually all about making geometric metal sculptures, not feathers. I even argued with the dream, telling it my forte. But the dream was insistent, and somehow, I instantly knew how to make them.”
After researching, I discovered the sacred significance of feathers for many indigenous cultures in Canada. As a white settler from several generations past, I felt it wasn’t right to present the feathers alone, especially at this time in our history. That’s when I reached out to Elder Harley Crowshoe of the Blackfoot Piikani Nation in southern Alberta. After a smudging and long talk and consulting with other elders, we decided to use the feathers to bring people together, sharing the sacred wisdom of the elders through the arts. It’s a gift from the dream, meant to be shared.
For me, it’s about experiencing wisdom through the eyes of Indigenous elders and the power of sharing stories in the presence of community.
At KOAC three stainless-steel feathers created in 2021 stand as permanent reminders of the stories and wisdom shared. We offer them in gratitude to those supporting Tall Feathers programs and development. Our dream is to see thousands of feathers raised in communities across the country. The art of Tall Feathers is the gathering of people creating together. The standing Tall Feathers are the artifact of that community engagement.”
Response and feedback from Tall Feathers participants:
Thanks so much for a most rewarding, inspirational, and energetic day filled with spirituality ritual and laughter/ joy/ exhilaration, “yeah that’s it exhilaration!!!”
An important takeaway from Elder Harley Crowshoe’s sharing of Indigenous wisdom and knowledge, was the concept that every living being on the earth is related and therefore important. Humans are the “caretakers” of the earth and should take this role seriously by protecting the ecosystem.
This workshop was particularly helpful as a reminder to [us], that we need to prioritize, and perhaps actually schedule into our calendars, creative experiences more often than we do!
Everything about the workshop was great. Teaching, ceremony, celebration & inspirational view of the mountains. Thank you for the experience.
We enjoyed having the opportunity to “play” and to be creative throughout the entire process of the Tall Feathers Workshop. As adults, we easily lose sight of the importance of creative play, and we often don’t give ourselves “permission” to embrace artistic opportunities as they arise, so the few hours (we) spent at the workshop were special.
The end ceremony was so significant in coming together and sharing our stories. I included Katie and Harry and mine, which seemed so apropos since it was held on their land, which in turn is indigenous land. Originally. That’s so cool; full circle.
We always try our best to tread lightly when enjoying outdoor pursuits — whether it be in the mountains, in forested areas, on lakes or other bodies of water. Elder Harley Crowshoe’s philosophy of nature / his spiritual beliefs closely align with our desire to be good stewards of Alberta’s (the earth’s) water, land, and air.
