Up In Smoke: Native Trees of Northern Turtle Island (2016 - in progress)

‘Native Trees of Canada’ (1969), Glue

This is a collage and accordion book work that creatively dis- and re-assembles ‘Native Trees of Canada’ published by the Forestry Service and Department of the Environment (1969).
I started this work after the Fort McMurray wildfire, which led me to as copy of Wild Kands Advocate: The Alberta Wilderness Association Journal (April 2016). The edition was “Wildfire.” I started research about sustainable forest practices and controlled burns and wanted to show my research in a way.

This artwork is a critique of the book’s written content. This particular book has inspired other artworks but I want to critique the language of the book itself as devaluing indigenous cultural practices, sovereignty, and biodiversity while insisting on the “importance” of the trees as solely their commercial and monetary value. The text is at odds with the beautifully formatted photographs of the trees within the book.
This is an ongoing collage work but there is so much to be said. Mono-culture crops of financially valuable trees create fire hazards, flame retardant poisons local waterways and kills food sources, historically commercializing forests and trees across Northern Turtle Island contributes to our current reality of overwhelming climate crisis.
This book about trees blatantly fails in acknowledging their cultural and spiritual importance in a deeply racist fashion.