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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause] again thank you so much for joining us

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it’s such a pleasure to be in conversation and i would love if we could start with the broadest strokes

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would you mind introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do yeah

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my name is serena lucas bandar i am a writer and artist of punjabi

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sikh and a welsh and irish descent um i live and work on the territories of the

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fungal and spanish peoples um i’ve been on these territories for

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about 10 years now and i grew up nearby on the territories of the mala hat and put some people’s um

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so i i’ve uh i’ve always lived close to victoria and so i’ve always been really saturated in

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this kind of very west coast but um

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i i i i think we do have like a thriving art scene here and um it’s it’s been interesting coming out and exploring it

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and meeting michelle through the art gallery of great victoria i i write but i also do

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some um kinds of inter-genre kind of experimental

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performance art i’m always looking to branch out and try

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new things i also deliver writing workshops a lot of my practice is really based

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around collaboration and community finding opportunities to really connect with people um that’s when i feel my

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most creative and my most um just feels very wholesome

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yeah and healing definitely um lately a lot of my work has been to do

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with ancestry and ancestors um as i said i have some family in the

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punjab and that’s where i’m trying to figure out um

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obviously there is a rich tradition of gender non-conformity and transness around the world and analogs of being

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transgender that exist outside our western frameworks of it and so i’m really

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excited to be delving into my ancestry and trying to find those examples of people who

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broke away from gender norms and gender roles in the past and bring that out in my work

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right now i’m editing an issue of room magazine which is a fantastic literary

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journal published in vancouver and the theme of that issue is ancestors and i’ll be coming out in the spring of

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2022. yeah i’ve got a lot on the go and i’m really excited to talk more about it all

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fantastic um i wonder uh um i am going to delve into a question

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in a minute about um you know your interpretation of being invited to participate in the feminist art field

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school but um as i was going through the readings that you

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shared with us and thinking about your practice i really started to think about

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interdisciplinarity and how um uh

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when i lived in toronto most of the artists that i i knew of who worked in

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an interdisciplinary way did so in a way that was sort of meant

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to intervene in kind of the mainstream art

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spaces and what i was thinking about as i was reading your work um was how

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interdisciplinarity is a kind of political practice

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for you and it’s not to the end of you know sort of um presentation in a mainstream

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place and i wonder if you could talk a little bit about interdisciplinarity and collaboration in your work before we

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move on to the what does feminism mean to you question i would love to answer that question and

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i introduced interdisciplinary is really squidward and also i just think there’s so many

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different words that line up with that kind of that ethos and that kind of way i approach my

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practice which is you know it’s very hybridized it’s very it’s the word intro genre it’s it’s

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really mixing and matching you know the best pieces of what i love about you know non-fiction what i love about

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poetry love what i love about art and you know being able to facilitate stuff i also have like a

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strong background in anti-violence work and i worked for several years of the anti-violence project at uvic

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delivering workshops and supporting survivors of sexualized violence and

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so much of my work feels like yeah again like an intervention into systems of harm and trying to

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introduce you know support and i guess is maybe a easy way of putting

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it um trying to you know tell the stories that i never really heard growing up and

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um tell them in ways that make sense to me rather than ways that will be the most

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marketable or the most digestible but then telling them in the ways that actually challenge you know

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narratives and challenge people to think about you know the ways that they go about in the world and

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yeah yeah i’m trying to think what else sparks that um

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i actually did um some gender studies classes in my undergrad um i was initially thinking about doing a uh

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a double major but i didn’t end up doing that but i i really appreciated just being able to like dip into different

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um schools of thought and different um approaches to the work um

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i there’s so much variety in the ways people

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approach you know feminism and the ways people approach art and it’s

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it’s yeah i just my brain doesn’t work in a way that like limits myself to you know

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one approach i um it just i just like to transgress all

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kinds of boundaries and it’s um just the way my brain works yeah

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yeah and perhaps perhaps picking up on that i would love to hear more about

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your investment in the local so when we started our conversation you had talked

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about living on the island for your whole life and the potential of leaving and i think that you know in some ways

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people have fantasies of the elsewhere as the place where certain things will happen and i think that there’s something

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really dynamic and rich about thinking critically and creatively and capaciously about the local

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mm-hmm yeah i i feel very rooted in victoria on these territories and i

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feel like i’ve done a lot of you know great work to support folks on these territories and i

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hope that you know that i mean i know that work will continue whether or not i’m here but it’s great to be able to

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like see seeds that i’ve planted you know bearing fruit you know um

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[Music] just to see how things are progressing um

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i think i was a very idealistic um when i came first came to victoria and i

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think i i’ve become more cynical about um i don’t know politics and um you know

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feminism um as time has gone by but i i still have a lot of hope i think about

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how things are going and um i see a lot of great developments at the same time um in you know supporting

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indigenous sovereignty and and supporting so many different aspects of our

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communities but when you really do need that support yeah and it feels like there’s more

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space for racialized artists for trans artists for all kinds of

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stuff like that great so um

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now that you’ve uh been transparent about your cynicism about

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feminism let’s come back to that question about

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you know what you thought when we invited you to be part of the feminist art field school and what feminism means to you

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what feminist art means to you what are its potentials and limitations

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[Music] it’s a big question um when i was first

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invited by you guys i uh i was thinking about gosh i

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i was thinking a lot about the different types of feminism that i was learning about when i was in gender studies

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classes in my undergrad and um the feminist kind of thinking that i i

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did learn from you know great westerners like satara and um uh the iocaccioni um

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you know i think some of the language has progressed since then but

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the underlying themes of you know empowerment and of equity certainly um

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they still ring true and i think um feminism in general just it’s it’s

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it’s hard to sum it up in you know one sentence because it’s there is so much diversity in feminist communities in you

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know feminist areas of thought um you know there are there are some folks

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who would say that you know trans exclusionary and sex work exclusionary ways of thinking are part of feminism

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and i don’t necessarily subscribe to that but at the same time i recognize that there is a huge diversity

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in feminism and we know that feminism has always you know you know there there are some city

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sides to feminism like there is white feminism which can really you know take away power from racialized communities

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there is you know again trans exclusionary and sex work exclusionary brands of feminism

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and so it’s tricky um and i i would say i definitely am a feminist but

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i can imagine that means a very different thing to me than it does to some other folks and

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um lately i’ve been feeling like i i don’t

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think i like i am very political so much as i live politically

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um my act of being myself being a proud trans woman of color is

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you know flies in the face of some folks who would say that’s not a valid identity that’s not a valid

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part of um feminism um and it’s you know it’s it’s frustrating

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that that’s you know a debate that still happens but um

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yeah i i just i i think i do draw some satisfaction from the sense

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that things are changing things are always going to change um feminism feminism is always going to

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change over time and um

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yeah it’s again it’s it’s just such a wide topic it’s really hard to break down into just one simple

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you know sentence of what it means to me but it means a lot of different things to me and i i would say i am cynical

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about it at times especially when i think we get caught up in you know the specific specificity of

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language and i think there is some importance there around you know respecting the way people you know define

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themselves and at the same time um i think there’s a lot of you know person-to-person connection that gets

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lost um when we break ourselves up into these different camps um

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and yeah i it’s it’s an interesting place to you know

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explore an interesting uh movement to be a part of and it’s it’s not always

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good but it’s it’s yeah i’m hopeful things are you know

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getting better in that um you know yeah i’m sure you can both speak to that

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as well you know yeah it’s uh yeah yeah you know i think when we were imagining this incubator and this

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opportunity to join in conversation with so many incredible artists we already

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knew that our terms of engagement were troubled we already could recognize from the beginning that the very proposal of

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a feminist art field school we couldn’t even move from there and so we thought well why don’t we cluster those words

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and then critically interrogate them from a variety of different sides and i think you know your response has

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animated much of what we think as well which is how can we borrow and choose from how can we be feral in our

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affinities and you know one of the things that is a through line in the collection of the field school

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and its many interlocutors is a deep investment and an engagement with artistic practice as one of the ways in

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which politics takes place and one of the ways in which lives and

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narratives are made and unmade and so perhaps this is another equally giant

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question but i think it’s a useful one on the tales of a of a question about feminism which is why is art

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broadly conceived one of the modes through which you choose to communicate

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yeah um it’s it’s funny like i i i just said

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that you know like i don’t feel like i live politically i know i don’t feel like i

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am political but that my life is political in some ways but i also feel like my life is

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art you know it’s um i mean pollux ticks can be art and it’s only i

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suppose but um i i’ve been creating art i’ve been writing as long as i can remember and

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it’s just been uh just the way that i’ve always expressed myself um

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i am one of those people where i have a lot of i have a really vast and

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um internal worlds that i don’t always communicate to people but when i

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do communicate it um you know through my writing or through just

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chatting with people um about what i’m thinking uh

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it really it really i really feel seen and i think it really creates a lot of validity to um

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different experiences that a lot of people share but i don’t think we always talk about um there was a really beautiful poem i

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wrote on facebook earlier which was something about um

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if you have a wound or if someone has a if your reader has a wound and maybe your words can be the

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words that fit that wound um if you’re if you’re worried that your words won’t quite match up with what

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um what people are looking for actually there might be somebody who has a wound that your words exactly fit too and

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um i think yeah um even if there’s so much divisiveness and

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um you know so much separation between uh different you know

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schools of god and different um communities a lot of us have the same struggles

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um across the board and thinking historically our ancestors had the same struggles with us in many different ways

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um they might not look the same but um knowing that our ancestors were just like us in many ways and you know we’re

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we’re queer and we’re trans in their own ways is like is so beautiful and it’s so

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important for me to be able to express that through art and to express that commonality

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of experience um that highlights our unique you know experiences but also

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recognizes that we can all connect on a very basic level to each other

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which i think is really beautiful

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i um something that you just said makes me

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think of um the link that you gave us um to the

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the co-authored multi-authored um article

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uh what else might be possible towards a de-colonial criticism

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and you talk about um the kind of uh

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lacks of um mainstream or typical art criticism and

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talk about replacing it with um a kind of art criticism that is based in

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storytelling uh which is uh

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such a beautiful idea and thinking about what you were just talking about the

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writing filling the wound it makes me me think about um

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you know how art art criticism can so often um

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like narrow the audience that understands the work even more

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and that if you were to replace

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art criticism with storytelling then it would

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offer so many more points of entry for

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different people different audiences a more various audience to understand

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um artwork which can be difficult to understand and i wonder if

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you can talk a little bit more about about your thinking around that um you

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know the article had so many authors that we just sort of got a hint of your thinking around this idea

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and i’d love to hear more yeah i i love writing that article and

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also contributing to the the facilitated conversation that sparked that article

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which was called feedback feed forward and was run by integrate arts society in victoria um

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so many threads of that that i want to follow up when i’m thinking about um how even though i like did an undergrad

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in creative writing at uvic and also worked at uvic for several years i still

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feel very much like an outsider in many ways to canadian literature to canadian art to

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academic spaces and i kind of i own that outsider experience because i feel like it can

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you know bring some new ways of thinking or perhaps old ways of thinking that need

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to be brought back again to um art you know i’m i’m not really

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the kind of person who’s always following the rules you know i’ll i’ll listen to you when you explain the rules but i

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i always have my own way of thinking about things and i i like to try to bring that up as much as i can and

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storytelling may not seem as the most intuitive way of reimagining criticism

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but all the best writing that i’ve read about art and about you know writing about

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writing and stuff like that has always been stuff that he’ll feel feels like it has like a very strong part to it even

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if it’s critical or you know trying to hold some pieces of an art to account um

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it’s it’s still connecting in a very communal and relational way um i’m trying to think of some

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examples but i mean that article is just a really good example of you know different people engaging and suggesting different

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models of criticism and so our models of criticism you know vary and differ but

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we’re all hitting at this this central theme which is that our art needs to be

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our ways of thinking about art need to be more relational and grounded in who is creating them and who is not

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afforded platforms to create and share their work um

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yeah um i think the other threads that were from that question can you can you read the question i think

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or yeah i i think i was just asking about um

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um what you think about um storytelling as criticism as a way to expand

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has access to contemporary art

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yeah um i mean stories are also a very fundamental way of communication um

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between people i think how much i enjoy just hearing stories from my friends and from my family and how much i learned from those

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stories um all of the best i think um in my mind uh

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media that i uh experience fits into a narrative it might not be like a traditional narrative they might not you

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know have a beginning middle and end but it does you know that’s the i guess that’s the way that i think you know as a writer i

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just i think in stories and so that’s the way i express myself and that’s the way how i organize my

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thoughts and um well that’s what makes sense to me um

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i think criticism as a whole i think could just benefit from reconsidering what

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how is it expressed and how is it accessible to different folks um that article that

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we wrote also talks about legibility and you know the idea of um maybe we don’t

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always have to translate every you know culturally specific concept into the mainstream

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we’re into no dominant ways of thought and um i don’t think those two different

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thoughts are opposed i think there needs to be more accessibility of

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um in media and in you know spaces where you create media publishing and all that stuff

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um to you know ideas that challenge dominant ways of thinking um and to you

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know media that and writing that challenges that art that challenges that but

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yeah i think there’s a ways to do that without you know um having it dissolve into just the you

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know the melting pot of the mainstream and lose you know they’re very culturally specific and

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um different concepts that are belong in those cultures and that

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um you know people i think i think about you know how much joy i have like

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researching different stuff on even on wikipedia and just delving into different um

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there’s there’s so there’s so much depth to our world and if we expect that everything is going to

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be translated into our world view we lose a lot of the nuance

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we lose it you lose it out on a opportunity to challenge ourselves to explore something we didn’t know existed

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before i think issues of translation are so fascinating in part two because i know

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as a teacher many times students will approach creative projects and already feel

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blocked or intimidated by the translation of an idea into a kind of

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public be it a kind of writer’s block or be it of fear of reception and

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i know that you’ve already articulated yourself as a maker and a teacher and someone who works closely in collaboration with

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community and i would be curious if you had any advice or tips to

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those in our field school who might be thinking about creative projects or thinking about translation broadly

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defined that might unlock some doors for creative opportunity or writing

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totally um that’s a that’s a that’s a piece i’d

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love to speak to um that makes me think of all of the writing that i do that i don’t share with other people it makes me think of

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all of the notes that i take on my phone of just straight observations that i you know i just i have you know pages and

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pages of notes on my phone that i don’t share with anyone and if i looked at them and wanted to

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explain them to somebody else um i could probably do it but some stuff

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i’m happy just keeping to myself and if i’m starting on a new creative project um it is very limiting to me if

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i am always thinking about how it’s going to be received how it’s going to be you know um appreciated and

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university was a really hard time in some ways you know going doing an undergrad and creative writing and

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having grades attached to my writing was you know it seemed very counter-intuitive in some ways like you

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don’t really get that in the real world um and so what was important for me was

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to really hone in on my craft and to just i hate to say it but just forget that

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there’s a grade and that’s going to be attached to anything and start there start with just creating something

25:56

yeah it’s it’s it’s a hard space to get into but i find you know mindfulness practices i find

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talking with people about your ideas um even if you’re not sure it’s gonna go anywhere really

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sparks stuff um for me anyways um and then you know once you’ve got

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something together that you really like you know then maybe you can think about the

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expectations of the class and if it doesn’t feel like it quite matches up with that you know you could

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you could make a copy of it and change it to something that matches up the thoughts and you could keep the original idea that maybe

26:32

is something else you know for yourself um i’m really into the idea of you know recycling and repurposing

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ideas like if we believe that you know not no idea is new then

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and i don’t actually believe that i think there’s plenty of new ideas that are created every day that are you know reimaginings at least of other ideas and

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concepts and um i think yeah i think there’s just

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there’s just so much potential and being able to you know do the work and get the grade but then

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also focus on you know what the parts that really bring you joy and some often those line up and this sounds like a

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great class like i you know i i loved being able to do creative projects in um my undergrad and

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um usually usually the ideas that i had usually pretty lined up with uh with what was being expected and

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it’s and even if it wasn’t quite what was expected in the class i usually

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found some other ways to repurpose the stuff that didn’t quite fit into my own work

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yeah i i really yeah creative projects are just it can be so fun and it’s really

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important to lean into that fun part and to you know appreciate it while you’ve got it yeah

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um since you’re you’re talking about your creative writing classes at

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uh uvic i’m going to um move us into talking about your um your

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piece called motherhood but i wondered you know

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given how long i’ve been involved in the art world and that i’ve always sort of had connections

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to art schools and art students in whatever

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vicinity that i’ve been working there’s sort of long being a

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kind of concern amongst um students who want to speak about issues

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of identity that there’s not been space for that in in

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academia and um or you know some students complain that

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you know if you’re if you’re black art student you’re expected to make black art and other students

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um have had the experience of um professors trying to just sort of like

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force any reference to identity um out of the work that they’re making so

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i’m wondering um if you could talk a little bit about motherhood this

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is many questions in one i’m interested in the format or the form that you’ve used

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for that piece of course i’m interested in its content but i’m also interested to know whether

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you started to write

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pieces that sort of address you know the realities of your life as a

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trans woman um when you were a student were you able to do that

29:45

yeah i was very deeply in the closet even to myself um when i was in my

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undergrad for most of it anyways and so it wasn’t really until my final year that i was really able to

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embrace that and to explore what else might be possible um

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i feel like that’s the title of that um collaborative essay we wrote um uh

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yeah um i really loved my time in the creative writing program and at the same time

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and i think this has changed since then i think a lot of what we were taught was you know to write

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according to the conventions of you know canadian literature and conventions of

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you know what is a short story what is it uh essay what is a poem and there

30:34

wasn’t a lot of room for mixing those genres and since i’ve graduated and um you know

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over time i’ve really come to embrace that i i love writing about real life experiences i love writing that kind of

30:47

that non-fiction element but i love doing it in a way that embraces narrative and also embraces a poetic

30:55

kind of sensibility um i think that comes across quite well in other hoods it feels like a prose

31:02

poem in some ways and it’s also an essay and um you know there’s so many different

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things in poetry that you can really pull from to like to

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emphasize stuff in in writing there’s you know tools of imagery and of metaphor

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and the musicality of words but um i feel like sometimes get lost in

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standard prose and i just love reading books but really where the writers have really you know

31:34

read their work aloud and thought about how it feels to read that work aloud and to

31:41

share that work all of the great writers that i can think of right now are just other trans

31:47

women who i also love like kai ching tom the victoria um uh

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yeah there’s so many so many great writers who um really embrace

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the ways you can writing so beautiful and so musical and so

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and so and still really um tell a great story and um expose

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parts of yourself but you don’t often get a chance to talk about

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motherhood is a very vulnerable essay i will say and i i’m happy that i’m able to share it

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in both the book that it’s going to be published in with this class because i see my vulnerability as

32:29

a shield made of love for myself it’s something that i i own who i am and i own you know all

32:35

the parts of myself um motherhood talks you know quite intimately about my body and about

32:41

my experiences with transition and i feel like that’s something that has not have really had a space

32:48

to be talked about on the terms of trans people i think i

32:53

think a lot about all the interviews that were happening around the time that laverne cox was on the cover of time

32:59

magazine and it was always you know uh very um

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interviewers kind of coming across as you know very just inappropriate in the ways they

33:11

were asking people about their bodies um asking trans people about invasively about their bodies and i

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think it’s important to respect the boundaries of trans people and not

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you know necessarily just invade their um their worlds in that kind of way but

33:30

at the same time there needs to be space for us to talk about our bodies on our own terms and i’m really grateful that this

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upcoming book can be a space for that and that my writing is in general is a space where i can just express myself

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and have that be validated as you know an important part of

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literature i guess yeah i love your invocation of of kai chang

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thom and the victreya in the conversation in part because you know as a trans person who makes work in public

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as well i pay a lot of attention to when people become isolated as singular or

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exceptional cases or the one piece of trans content in an otherwise

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entirely you know straight cis show or the one feminist text as michelle and i like to

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talk about on a syllabus that otherwise ignores the existence of women in feminist theory right and so i think

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multiplicity is such a key strategy and your suggestion also has me thinking

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about the ways in which we assign work in the field school and i think it would be really exciting to

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to point to and perhaps even co-program alongside your unit some of vivek’s work

34:47

as another form of engagement and i think that one of the things you said too that has me thinking is of course

34:53

transness as method and so what happens when we write something on a page and read it aloud and it has a kind of genre

35:02

hybridity that unsettles the terms of the engagement so what does something become when it is no

35:09

longer on the page and i think that those are really exciting and challenging provocations and i think

35:15

perhaps the opportunity to read your work alongside the work of others would also

35:20

offer up some exciting new pathways for for our field school participants totally uh

35:26

they both have so many incredible essays and articles online that i’m sure you could share with me in class and

35:33

there’s so much great writing that i read online these days that i just would love to hold up and

35:40

share with everyone yeah and so one of the things that you keep saying which i love is you know i went

35:47

on wikipedia and i found or i went online and i found and so the internet

35:52

seems to hold a place and you know i think a lot in the context of our work

35:58

here about the structure of institutions like galleries and museums and schools but of course the internet is its own

36:04

institutional force and it’s also an incredible opening for world making for

36:10

many trans and non-binary and gender non-conforming people and i’m curious what role does the

36:15

internet play do you consider the internet an institution so don’t you don’t definitely don’t need to agree with me but you know what role does the

36:22

internet play in your practice i don’t think i can i don’t think the internet can be an institution because

36:29

it’s like anybody can really host their own website and so it’s it’s so fragmented

36:35

there are certainly websites that are institutions like wikipedia definitely is an institution um even if it’s you

36:41

know kind of crowdsourced and pulled together from you know thousands of people pulling it together

36:46

um yeah uh [Music] that’s a really good thought though

36:52

um the internet is kind of where i came of age and you know a lot of folks of um

36:59

our generation literally came of age on the internet and discovered who they were on the internet and so it’s it’s become

37:06

you know a space where i create a lot and um where i you know see other people

37:11

creating and um again i think i come back to you know

37:17

the idea of like feeling like an outsider in you know traditional art spaces and

37:22

physical kind of spaces and the internet has always felt like a space where

37:28

you aren’t you know you can construct whatever identity makes sense for you and you can try on

37:34

different identities and that’s really important to be able to not just explore you know different

37:41

areas of the world but also explore different parts of yourself and see that reflected um

37:46

often only online is like it’s really huge and it can be really helpful for folks who are feeling isolated i mean

37:52

it’s been so helpful and i mean at the same time social media can also

37:58

be so overwhelming and it’s you know there’s so many different ways that you can connect online

38:04

but it’s important to you know have some boundaries around it but um

38:09

i’ve learned so much you know through online spaces and at the same time i think it comes back

38:16

to that person-to-person connection like um the things that are on the internet aren’t static and they’re always you

38:22

know they are all created by somebody and so um i have the best experiences online when

38:28

i’m connecting with someone’s words on what feels like a one-to-one relationship and we could talk for hours

38:35

i’m sure about pair of social relationships and all that you know the the different ways that those have you

38:41

know blossomed especially with the internet but um yeah i i feel like i’ve connected with

38:47

so many great communities through the internet and

38:53

yeah it’s that fundamental sense of connection that really is what brings it back to me is

38:58

just where can i find people who you know share interests or that who whose interests you know

39:05

broaden my worldview um

39:11

allow me to explore parts of myself that i never really knew existed yeah

39:19

well this is the um the point in the narrative arc where we usually come to a

39:26

question about um what role do institutions play in in

39:32

creating more just futures and you’ve started to hint at

39:38

you know how how the internet can play a role in uh creating community

39:44

and allowing connection and i think those are things that are at the basis of a more just future um i think

39:52

when we coined the question given our

39:57

day jobs we were thinking about academia and and museums so i don’t know if you

40:03

have any thoughts on on how those spaces

40:08

measure up um in their capacity for

40:14

allowing people to create connections and come together and develop relationships

40:20

and a more just future i do love the connections i’ve made

40:26

in my time at uvic and i um you know i i did have a really great time in my undergrad

40:32

um but i i i was trying i was thinking about this question i was thinking about

40:37

you know if i could reimagine you know an institution like the university of victoria

40:42

or just you know universities in general um in a way that’s more equitable um

40:50

i think obviously academic institutions have a role to play in creating more dust futures i think access to education

40:56

is so important and you know it really can improve your life in so

41:02

many different ways but if you come back down to it i feel like really it’s it’s money that really

41:09

defines how our interactions are with institutions you know whether it’s a

41:14

university or it’s you know the government um or uh different um

41:22

yeah public institutions um i think yeah really it

41:27

really comes down to money and it really comes down to those different kinds of barriers that people experience

41:34

in um trying to learn and to explore outside of their

41:39

worldview um or their experience um and i i mean it’s not a new thing to

41:47

propose that you know um you know education should be free but i think it’s it’s something that you

41:53

know needs to continue to be um championed um

42:00

and the role that i think institutions can play in more just futures is is yeah be

42:06

continuing to be a space of learning but um

42:12

i feel like i’m rambling at this point but it’s important to just yeah think about who has access to education and

42:19

how is that access provided um i had a great time in gender studies

42:25

classes in my undergrad and at the same time um i feel like there’s so much room when

42:32

to explore new opportunities and territory when you aren’t worried about

42:37

grades when you aren’t worried about um you know how much of course is costing you

42:43

um yeah i don’t know if there’s a solution in there that i can really propose yet

42:48

beyond you know just making education free for everyone which is

42:53

a big ask um but um

42:59

i think about all the great experiences i had you know connecting with other students connecting with professors

43:05

um the whole community that i the communities that i like you know got to

43:12

engage with on campus um that was a really important thing and

43:19

yeah um i don’t know i’m trying to think about stuff for museums as well um

43:25

there’s some really great discussions about the royal bc museum especially um and you know the different indigenous um

43:32

collections that they have and conversations around repatriation or just you know turning over

43:39

the tools of you know archiving and preserving work over to the people who

43:45

that art belongs to i think and that hurts that those materials those you know ancestral

43:52

materials being able to if someone wants to you know if if an

43:57

indigenous nation wants to you know preserve and um share you know their um

44:06

what their nation has created i think that’s a really uh beautiful step forward

44:12

um you know it’s again it’s that kind of autonomy piece and i think that again that comes back in

44:19

with universities like have been able to um engage with

44:25

universities on your own terms without the expectations of um

44:30

you know trying to get the best degree that you can get a job i

44:35

yeah i feel like i feel like i’m getting a little gradually out of my depth but i at the same time i hope this is

44:41

landing well um i i do appreciate this question and it’s

44:46

a big question and it’s um and it’s one we’re going to be talking

44:52

about for for a very long time absolutely you know and it reminds me of

44:58

where we started in our conversation which is to say what else might be possible and i think that these

45:03

questions by no means have ends and have many pathways and many answers and it’s an exciting opportunity to think i

45:10

love when you said well if education is free then maybe we can think about a few other questions right

45:16

these foundational building blocks of access that need our attention

45:21

and i would be curious to know where you are going next what work is most exciting to you

45:28

yeah so i have this ancestors issue of room magazine coming out in the spring of next year i’m also working on my

45:35

first book which i’m so excited about um it’s called the tale of the snake woman

45:40

i talk a little about it a little bit in the what else might be possible um essay um i got a canada council grant this

45:47

year to finish it which is super exciting i i’m feeling more and more less like an outsider in literature and more and more

45:55

like someone who is using you know the tools the institutions in order to further my own

46:02

ends and to you know connect with community and i’m really excited to finish that book and get it out into the

46:07

world um i’m excited to move to montreal and connect with more people there and

46:13

continue to um connect people online um

46:18

yeah i i really am excited to be able to share all of this with your class and uh

46:26

really excited about what might come next from that as well excellent

46:32

thank you so much for joining us it’s been such a wonderful chat yeah thank you so much

46:37

so great to see you again serena thank you

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