Gabriola Island’s upcoming arts festival will explore strength, resilience and creativity over 11 days.
As presented by the Gabriola Arts Council, the island’s Isle of the Arts Festival starts March 28 and runs until April 7, with many artists, advocates and knowledge-keepers sharing art skills, food skills and music skills.
Festival coordinator Naomi Melnyk said the celebration includes seven events and 30 unique workshops that cover a different repertoire of skills across Gabriola, with an inclusion of food-based programs new this year.
Joëlle Rabu and Nico Rhodes with perform in concert as the festival opener at the Phoenix Auditorium at the Haven on Thursday, March 28, at 7 p.m.
Reading and Reconciliation: One Book One Community with Angela Sterritt and host Katherine Palmer Gordon takes place on Saturday, March 30, to discuss Sterritt’s novel Unbroken. Melynk said the event will be host a book club-like environment, with lots of discussion on the various topics, themes and social impacts of the book, and plenty of engagement with the author.
The following week, Jared Qwustenuxun Williams from Duncan will lead an Indigenous food workshop on April 3.
Pi’qwin Salmon, the name of the workshop, speaks to a specific butterflied salmon dish that is slowly roasted over a fire, Williams said. His workshop will focus on Pi’qwin salmon as well as Xthum potatoes – both using cooking techniques that predate colonization on southern Vancouver Island.
Stories will be shared and gathered while cooking. Williams said where he stands and with whom he stands with will dictate where the stories lead, but usually with themes around food, local history and the hul’q’umi’num language.
“The way the Indigenous people could create such elaborate and yet land-based food systems always leaves me in awe,” he said in an e-mail. “Pre-contact, we fed everyone with food from the land and had enough food to trade with, while leaving an abundance for nature.”
As a graduate of Vancouver Island University’s culinary program, and as a cook in many kitchens since, Williams’s motive for the workshop is simple: to pass on knowledge.
“It’s so sad to see our elders passing away, and with each one of them that goes, I see so much knowledge being lost. Day after day, we lose libraries of knowledge … Even to become a red seal, I have to learn French cooking and be tested on my European mother sauces and mirepoix … It’s like to the rest of the world, our way of life just doesn’t exist,” he said.
The cook said he’s had a stark realization that he only has a short time on Earth to ensure that Indigenous food systems are recognized for the amazing creations that they are and see them implemented in modern cuisine.
The Isle of the Arts Festival will also include a Cedar Healing Circle with shamanic drums, rattles and chants on March 31, the Spring Night Market and a community dance social on April 6, and the Arty Party on April 7.
More information on the festival can be found at www.artsgabriola.ca.
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