Two KPU instructors collaborate on art project to amplify Indigenous voices and history

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Two Kwantlen Polytechnic University instructors are working together to produce the Indigenous Arts Project, an initiative that dives into the exploration of how Indigenous burlesque plays a part in First Nations’ knowledges and experiences. 

Policy Studies and English instructor Jennifer Hardwick and Indigenous Studies and Policy Studies instructor Vicki Haynes began working on the project in 2018 and have been in stage two of their project since September. 

The project will be a book that touches on building relationships between Indigenous communities, awareness of historical and ongoing colonization, and the importance of promoting Indigenous Peoples rights to their own bodies, sexualities, and gender identities, according to a previous job posting for the project. The book will have both print and digital elements. 

Hardwick says stage two of the project includes foundational fact finding, which includes research about different infrastructure models about doing things ethically while also completing interviews and community engagement with different people and organizations. 

“It’s a whole variety of pieces, so we’re writing a book that will have both academic and broader community audiences. But there’s also going to be performances, workshops, talkbacks, teaching sessions, [and] learning resources,” Hardwick says. 

“Jen and I have to do our research through these many forms of embodiment and supporting intercultural knowledge sharing through those physical and digital gatherings, interviews, roundtables, all of these ways of providing folks opportunities to share their histories, so we can amplify those histories into a multi-dimensional publication,” Haynes says. 

From 2018 to 2020, Hardwick and Haynes held multiple initiatives, events, and roundtables to co-write and produce various materials for the project in which they were asked to do more. Their work was noticed by the University of Alberta Press and they started getting more requests from KPU to expand their project in different ways to interact with other events on campus. 

The project is in collaboration with Virago Nation, an all-Indigenous burlesque collection of women, femme, and two-spirit artists who aim to reclaim Indigenous sexuality from the negative impacts from colonization. 

There is a team of research assistants, ranging from KPU students in the ARTS 4800 Practicum course to contract-based work to help with the project. The project also works in collaboration with different people and initiatives at KPU such as Asma Sayed, Fiona Whittington Walsh, and KPU’s documentary film festival, KDocsFF. 

“We work with Walsh’s ‘Including All Citizens Program’, which has research assistants. We will be working with Sayed’s research assistants a little bit. There’s a lot of student involvement here and a lot of room for more,” Hardwick says. 

She says students help from traditional research and go to ethical archives to help organize events for the project. 

One of the recent events they had was the Garden of Tease show at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver on Oct. 7. 

Although the Indigenous Arts Project is set to be completed in 2025, they hope KPU Indigenous students and faculty will feel a sense of kinship and belonging in an academic setting when it is released to the public. 

“I hope that the broader community is energized by the creative approach to decolonization, and I hope they feel inspired to move forward on their own reconciliation path,” Haynes says. 

“It’s always beautiful to see where people of any community take those messages of positivity, collaboration, and moving forward in relationship with one another, with our own bodies, and with the land that we’re on in a good way.” 

To learn more about the Indigenous Arts Project, contact jennifer.hardwick@kpu.ca or Vicki.Haynes@kpu.ca.