SK Arts and Canadians celebrate June as National Indigenous History Month and National Indigenous People’s Day on June 21, 2023. As residents of Treaties two, four, five, six and ten, we celebrate the richness of indigenous culture and its profound impact on Saskatchewan. There is no better representation of this impact than within Canada and Saskatchewan’s arts and culture.

Ron Ewenin Wapemoose is a Saulteaux-Cree artist who had a rough start to life. He was raised in Alberta by his grandmother. When he was eight years old, she passed away, and he moved to Saskatchewan where he lived in a residential school until he was 16. Haunted by his troubled upbringing, it wasn’t long before Ron was in trouble with the law. For years, he struggled with addiction and continued to run into trouble. As an addict, he was on the methadone program for ten years before being successfully weaned.

SK Arts celebrates International Women’s Day 2023 by introducing the strong, passionate women on staff. As a whole, SK Arts team members are also typically members of the arts community themselves in one way or another. With 12 of the 20 members of staff being women, they represent the majority of the small agency. This fact makes Women’s Day the perfect opportunity to celebrate women within the arts and SK Arts.

Despite having a background in Law, Michael Afenfia has had a passion for writing since childhood. An immigrant, he published his first novel, When the Moon Caught Fire, a fictional account of slavery, in 2010. When he emigrated from Nigeria in 2019, he wondered (and worried) whether he would have to give up his career.

LIVE (Live Interactive Video Education) Arts Saskatchewan is a distance learning program which allows a variety of professional artists to connect simultaneously with teachers and students in multiple schools across Saskatchewan for a live experience in arts education.

As defined by Oxford Languages, poetry is “literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm….” As the expressive art form that spoke to the 20-year-old poet Peace Akintade over a decade ago – her Nigerian roots perceive language and therefore, poetry as a part of her culture rather than a profession.

In October 2022, SK Arts’ Permanent Collection received a boost, acquiring a donation of 14 pieces from Frank Sudol, an internationally renowned woodturner. A third of the 46-piece donation, the pieces were split between SK Arts, The Mann Art Gallery in Prince Albert and the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery.

Artist Lesia Maruschak isn’t afraid to delve into the darker aspects of the Ukrainian-Canadian experience.

It’s a dark chapter in Canada’s history: at the beginning of the Great War, the Canadian government registered more than 80,000 Ukrainian and other immigrants as “enemy aliens,” which led to the suspension of their civil liberties; more than 8500 of them were sent to internment and work camps, much like the country did with Japanese-Canadians in the Second World War.

The Feather is a satirical online news program, produced from an Indigenous point of view.

Satire has been around since Neanderthals made humourous cave paintings of the animals they hunted. In Native American culture, clown societies satirized the cultural aspects of their respective tribes. “Fast forward a few centuries and some stolen land later, and here we are with The Feather,” says Danny Knight, a stand-up comedian from the Muskoday First Nation, who now lives in Saskatoon.

SK Arts recently purchased 31 pieces of Indigenous craft work for our Permanent Collection.

In fall 2021, the SK Arts Permanent Collection put out a call to purchase Indigenous craft work, with the goal of complementing objects purchased through the 1970s. We purchased 31 objects – everything from clothing to jewellery to quilts.