Learning With the Illecillewaet - Building Kinship with a Watershed

This research praxis thesis explores what it means to be in kinship with a watershed. By employing an Indigenous worldview, I center the Illecillewaet Glacier and its downstream watershed as both subject and teacher. The project asks: What stories does the Illecillewaet have to share with us and how do these stories encourage environmental stewardship in a time of anthropogenic climate crisis? Using Indigenous research methodologies grounded in relationality, the project investigates the value and agency held by this water system. It engages theoretical and creative influences that articulate Indigenous worldviews, including the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Jennifer Grenz. My artistic process is built on visitation, deep listening and time spent relating and responding to the watershed across its annual cycles. The resulting thesis exhibition shares stories of the Illecillewaet through lens-based and sculptural mediums, which include a photo series and corresponding video titled Through Waters Eyes, blown glass Cloud Bowls and a mixed media wall installation from the Beaded Landscapes series. The exhibition invites viewers to get to know the Illecillewaet as I have, as a meaningful relative. In doing so, the project illuminates the interconnected relationship of all living beings and proposes that building kinship with a watershed — learning to see it, hear it, and feel responsibility towards it — is itself an act of environmental stewardship.