Join Jaimie Isaac (Just Waters Artist In Residence), Dr. Aimée Craft (Decolonizing Water, University of Ottawa), KC Adams (Artist) and Taylor Galvin (Mother Earth Protector, Scientist, Community Organizer) for a conversation about water and the role of art and community organization in a precarious time. Recognizing our relationship to water encourages a responsibility to protect what is sacred. As water carriers, the women carry a responsibility for water stewardship. Walking with community in support, how can we make change and live in reciprocity with the land and water? 

Many Indigenous peoples globally recognize that water is sacred, and countries have passed groundbreaking laws granting legal personhood status to their water systems, honoring the Indigenous peoples’ perspective of waters as relatives and ancestors. This discussion will focus on interdisciplinary perspectives on community advocacy for water, living in relation to water and seeing the messages in the water through art. 

6:00 pm Doors open + food

6:30 pm Panel

FREE

No registration required

Note: Use the entrance at the corner of Memorial Blvd and St. Mary Ave- the new part of WAG-Qaumajuq. The event takes place in Ilavut – Entrance Hall and Ilipvik – Learning Steps.

If you have accessibility requirements, including translation, please email sarah.deckert@umanitoba.ca at least one week before the event.

This event is the third and final installment in the CHRR’s 2025 Critical Conversations series. This year, the series of three public events is held in partnership with WAG-Qaumajuq and focuses on water and justice. Just Waters: Thinking with Hydro-Social Relations for a More Just and Sustainable World, the Centre for Human Rights Research, and the University of Manitoba’s United Nations Academic Impact Hub for Sustainable Development Goal 6 Last Drop speaker series, are collaborating to host these events. Funding is provided by the University of Manitoba’s IGNITE program, with in-kind contributions from WAG-Qaumajuq.

About the Speakers

Jaimie Isaac

Jaimie Isaac (she/her/hers) is a curator and interdisciplinary artist, Anishinaabe member of Sagkeeng First Nation and is of British heritage. She was the Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria from 2021-2023, and advisor 2023-2024.

As the Curator of Contemporary and Indigenous Arts at the Winnipeg Art Gallery 2015-2021, she was awarded the Canadian Museums Association outstanding achievement award in exhibitions category with the Boarder X exhibition. Isaac has a degree in Art History and a Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia focused on decolonizing gallery/museum practices.

Through academic, curatorial, consulting/advisory, collaborative and artistic projects, Jaimie engages in areas of reconciliation, resistance, decolonization in art and in sport, Indigenous feminism, environmental justice, language and cultural resurgence. Isaac has lectured, curated internationally with research trips and residencies in Norway, Finland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Chicago, and New York. Bodies of art commissioned and exhibited take form in film, public art, installation and mixed media. With published work, Isaac has contributed to scholarly collections of writing within textbooks and journals.

KC Adams

KC Adams (Anishinaabe/Ininnew/British) is a registered Fisher River Cree Nation member living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with a B.F.A. from Concordia University and an M.A. in Cultural Studies, Curatorial Stream from the University of Winnipeg. She is a relational maker, a creator whose work connects to Indigenous knowledge systems and is also an educator, activist, community member and mentor. KC has had several solo and group exhibitions and residencies and has been in three biennales, including the PHOTOQUAI: Biennale des images du monde in Paris, France. Twenty pieces from the Cyborg Hybrid series are in the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, and four trees from Birch Bark Ltd are in the Canadian Consulate of Australia, NSW collection. Adams was awarded the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Mark Award, Canada’s Senate 150 medal, the Ohpinamake Award in Indigenous Art and the Quill & Quire’s 2019 Books of the Year.

Dr. Aimée Craft

Aimée Craft is an award-winning teacher and researcher, recognized internationally as a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water. She holds a University Research Chair Nibi miinawaa aki inaakonigewin: Indigenous governance in relationship with land and water.

An Associate Professor at the Faculty of Common law, University of Ottawa and an Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) lawyer from Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, she is the former Director of Research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding Director of Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She practiced at the Public Interest Law Centre for over a decade and in 2016 she was voted one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in
Canada. In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious Canadian Bar Association President’s Award.

Prof. Craft prioritizes Indigenous-lead and interdisciplinary research, including through visual arts and film, co-leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water Governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water). She plays an active role in international collaborations relating to transformative memory in colonial contexts and relating to the reclamation of Indigenous birthing practices as expressions of territorial sovereignty.

Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty, her award-winning book, focuses on understanding and interpreting treaties from an Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (legal) perspective. Treaty Words, her critically acclaimed children’s book, explains treaty philosophy and relationships.

She is past chair of the Aboriginal Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association and a current member of the Speaker’s Bureau of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba.

Taylor Galvin

Taylor Galvin, an Anishinaabe-Kwe scientist from Baaskaandibewiiziibiing (Brokenhead Ojibway Nation), is a graduate student at the University of Manitoba. Her research centers on protecting Lake Sturgeon in Manitoba through the use of Indigenous science. She has made significant contributions across various fields, notably as a knowledge keeper in the Lake Winnipeg Personhood case in partnership with the Southern Chief’s Organization. On the international stage, she has worked with Maya youth in Belize to advance planetary wellness and food sovereignty initiatives. Additionally, she has provided counsel to the Canadian Ambassador in the Netherlands on the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into sustainability projects. As a guest lecturer, she teaches First Nations ecology, Indigenous medicinal plants, and land-based healing practices. Taylor is currently the Host & Creator of the TeaPee Podcast, Director of the Brokenhead Wetland Ecological Reserve and holds positions on several boards that advocate for Indigenous perspectives.

What if the river was a person? If it held personhood status, what rights would that provide the river, if any? Nibi is an ongoing work that poses the concept of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg gaining personhood through supporting the work of others that have been advocating on behalf of these waterways. Embedded in the project is a collective worldview that water is sacred. 

Join Jaimie Isaac, Just Waters Artist-in-Residence in a workshop that promotes collective care through building resonant relationships and connections with water. Invited guest Daniel Gladu Kanu of the Lake Winnipeg Indigenous Collective will share a large-scale watershed map, offering an experience in geography, history and culture. Participants will also engage in a collective activity of mixed media art-making and advocacy for water protection. (No art skills required!)

Register here!

Join Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos (University of Toronto) and Rick Harp (Media Indigena) for a conversation about water and colonial injustice in a time of climate crisis.  From waterless reserves, to flooded homelands and weaponized water, water flows through Indigenous peoples’ experience of colonialism in what is now Canada and beyond. How can we navigate the politics of water and colonialism in a world being remade by climate change, especially considering the mental health implications for communities whose connections to water are disrupted? This discussion will center on the intersection of environmental justice and mental health, and the urgent need for healing and reclamation.

6:00 pm Doors open + food

6:30 pm Conversation

FREE

No registration required

If you have accessibility requirements, including translation, please email sarah.deckert@umanitoba.ca at least one week before the event.

This event is the second installment in the CHRR’s annual Critical Conversations series. This year, the series of three public events is held in partnership with WAG-Qaumajuq and will focus on water and justice. Just Waters: Thinking with Hydro-Social Relations for a More Just and Sustainable World, the Centre for Human Rights Research, and the University of Manitoba’s United Nations Academic Impact Hub for Sustainable Development Goal 6 Last Drop speaker series, are collaborating to host these events. Funding is provided by the University of Manitoba’s IGNITE program, with in-kind contributions from WAG-Qaumajuq.

About the Speakers

Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos

Jeffrey Ansloos, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Indigenous Health and Social Policy and is the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Studies of Health and Environmental Justice. His ongoing SSHRC Insight research project investigates the effects of extractivism, neoliberalism, and climate change on suicidal distress among First Nations and Inuit populations. As the founding director of the Critical Health and Social Action Lab, Ansloos oversees a Canada Foundation for Innovation-funded research center that supports community-based action research aimed at promoting health, social, and environmental justice. He is the theme lead for the Indigenous suicide prevention and complex crisis response stream within the Ontario Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research through CIHR. He is the author of The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Resisting Violence and Decolonizing Healing and Thunder and the Noise Storms, with forthcoming titles including Indigenous X: Networks of Relations and Resistance During and After Twitter and Against Annihilation: Indigenous Struggles for Inhabitable Worlds and Livable Lives. Ansloos is a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Ansloos is Cree and English and a citizen of the Fisher River Cree Nation (Ochekwi-Sipi; Treaty 5).

Rick Harp

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Rick Harp is part of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in what’s currently known as northern Saskatchewan. First bit hard in the 90s by the radio bug at campus/community station CKCU-FM in Ottawa, Harp’s 30-odd-years in media includes national and regional stints at CBC Radio, NCI-FM, and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), along with 350+ episodes as host/producer of the MEDIA INDIGENA podcast.