DVS Professor Maria Hupfield speaks to The Medium about Indigenous Thought and Culture

Yusuf Larizza-Ali of The Medium recently spoke to DVS professor Maria Hupfield about Indigenous thought and culture. In the story, Hupfield speakers about the distinction between Western and indigenous approaches to understanding and to culture. As an example, Hupfield talks about the way that the Mashkiki Gitigaan (“medicine garden” in Anishnaabemowin) contrasts with the institution of the University. She also emphasizes the distinction between Western conception of art. Transdisciplinary Indigenous art, she explains there “requires practitioners and people working in the art profession to understand that the rules we think we apply to art are different”. “Historically”, she tells The Medium “for Anishinaabe people art is a visual mnemonic device and that it is integrated into culture, often worn on the body, holds knowledge about land and water, and is a living part of the human experience”. 

You can read the whole story at: https://themedium.ca/knowing-land-living-water/