Celebrations of Nations goes virtual for Year 4
Niagara’s annual Indigenous arts festival set for September
The Celebration of Nations will celebrate in a new way this year.
Niagara’s annual Indigenous arts festival returns Sept. 11 to 13 with an online weekend of programs, performances and seminars.
For its first three years, the festival has been held at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. But with the space still unavailable because of the pandemic, artistic director Michele-Elise Burnett chooses to see the upside of going virtual.
“We see this as a new opportunity to reach a larger audience and possibly even globally,” she said. “Which means our stories, current events, teachings, culture, traditions and heritage will be heard on a larger platform. This is an exciting thought.”
It may even be a permanent part of future Celebration of Nations.
“We currently see this as a new medium to include in tandem with the live gathering going forward.”
Co-presented by FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre and Kakekalanicks Indigenous Arts, the event’s first year in 2017 featured headliner Buffy Sainte Marie.
Programming expanded in Year 2, and last year’s festival — with the theme Empathic Traditions: Honouring Mother Earth — featured more than 40 events and performances.
This year’s theme for the event sticks close to home: Mighty Niagara and the Great Lakes Watershed. Events will be announced on the Celebration of Nations website throughout the summer.
Burnett will discuss the festival further during this Sunday’s #NiagaraPerforms livestream show, featuring Canadian Mohawk Two Spirit singer/songwriter Shawnee.
While communal aspects of the festival will be missed this year, the annual sacred fire will still burn in the backyard of the performing arts centre, officiated by Indigenous elders and maintained by faithful firekeepers.
Artistic producer Tim Johnson said the theme of last year’s celebration seems to be hanging over this year’s festival.
“Last year when we focused our programming on empathic traditions and the need for humans to act responsibly toward other human beings, we never envisioned the current circumstances,” he said. “It nevertheless underscores the knowledge and wisdom inherent in core Indigenous cultures that we ignore at our own peril.”