Anemki Wajiw mountain keepers capture the mountain through art

By Rick Garrick

FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — The Anemki Wajiw mountain keepers wrapped up their six-week summer caretaker roles with the completion of a Capture the Mountain art project involving analogue camera photography on Aug. 10.

“The work was good, fun [with] a lot of activities like picking roots and making birch bark baskets,” says Caleb Bannon, a mountain keeper at Fort William. “The art project we’re doing now is pretty fun.”

Bannon says his favourite photo for the art project, which involved the manipulation of instant photos that they took over the summer, was a group shot of the mountain keepers harvesting spruce roots.

“It was pretty cool to be able to take photos and now we get to manipulate our photos that we took over the summer,” Bannon says.

Spencer Boucher, a mountain keeper at Fort William, says the art project was a “lot of fun.”

“I thought it was pretty cool,” Boucher says. “It was a learning experience.”

Boucher also enjoyed working on Anemki Wajiw over the summer.

“It’s a really cool job, sometimes it’s windy but that’s OK,” Boucher says. “We’re keeping it maintained, keeping it looking nice for visitors.”

Gail Bannon, culture and mountain coordinator at Fort William, says land-based artist Betty Carpick and Lindsay Galway, Canada Research Chair in Social-Ecological Health and associate professor at Lakehead University, introduced the art project to the mountain keepers at the beginning of the summer.

“Over the last six weeks, we’ve been taking pictures with the Polaroid camera, just taking time to kind of focus on what we have here,” Gail says. “It went really well — there were times when they said to me, ‘Go get the Polaroid, let’s go take a picture of this.’”

Gail says the use of the instant camera was different from taking photos with a cellphone.

“With the Polaroid you have to really stop and take a minute to think about what you’re taking a picture of,” Gail says.

Gail says the mountain keepers usually do the maintenance work in the mornings and participate in cultural teachings in the afternoons.

“We get teachings from Elders — water teachings, teachings about the mountain,” Gail says. “I bring them into the bush and I teach them how to harvest materials, we talk about the medicines of the mountain, and do some fun stuff. Working with Lindsay and Betty for the last two years, we’ve done two pretty cool projects.”

Carpick says she explained the process for the art project to the mountain keepers and gave them some tips on using the instant cameras at the beginning of the summer. They were encouraged to think about photography as a way of telling stories of Anemki Wajiw while embracing imperfection and the possibilities of transformation.

“Today, we just looked at some of the photos and then they started manipulating them with beads and glue and paint and natural materials and then sticking them on a topographic map of Anemki Wajiw,” Carpick says. “We’re thinking about transformation, so how caring for the mountain is part of a generational privilege and responsibility and how when you take care of the mountain, the mountain takes care of you and others in the community.”

Galway says the mountain keepers captured a diverse and beautiful variety of photos, including harvesting birch, spruce trees, berries and the pow wow grounds.

“These photos capture memories and capture moments on the mountain, but I think also this notion of transformation is really important and something that has been woven in throughout the project,” Galway says. “It’s funded through a program called Climate Change and Health Adaptation, but the dimension we’re working in is really sort of land and health and taking care of the land.”