Mary Longman

Passage: Who We Are and Where We Come From 

Mary Longman, AskiPiyewsiwiSkwew

Central Saskatchewan is the traditional territories of the Cree, Dene, Saulteaux, Metis and Sioux.

The rivers of Fort Qu’Appelle and Saskatchewan have been significant passages for travel, trade and cultural exchange for Indigenous people.

Today, the cultural exchange, immersion and blended families continues. In central Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon area is home to approximately 300,000 Indigenous and Metis people.

Indigenous and Metis people make up 16% of the population in Saskatchewan and is the second largest ethnic group, with Germans being the majority.

The work, ‘Passages: Who We Are, Where We Come From,’ honors several thousands of years of history of Indigenous traditional lands and cultural exchange, long before the dark legacy of the relatively recent forced colonial treaties and oppression.

To honor the history of Indigenous land, I call on the collective to decolonize semantics, delete colonial terms such as treaties, return to the words of traditional territories, to remind others and ourselves, of who we are and where we come from.

Mary Longman (Aski-Piyesiwiskwew) is an Artist and Art Historian who has been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally for nearly three decades. She works in many different mediums including mixed-media sculpture, installation, drawing, digital media and book illustration. Her works give visual representation to Indigenous perspective, challenging colonial power structures through personal narratives that contradict official settler histories. She was born in Fort Qu’Appelle and is a Saulteaux band member of Gordon First Nation.