River Run 2016

We were happy to coordinate the visual strategy and art production for River Run 2016 in support of Grassy Narrows First Nation. Working in concert with Earth Justice Action and in close communication with Judy Da Silva from the Grassy Women’s Drum Group, we hosted brainstorming sessions, supply runs and many art builds to create a river of support that flowed to Queen’s Park.

As Leanne Simpson writes, the people of Grassy “have been coping with and resisting the violence of ongoing dispossession in their homeland for the last 100 years or more.”

This includes their resilience after 20,000 pounds of mercury was dumped into their river system by the Dryden paper mill in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which continues to affect the people of Grassy today by threatening their way of life as Anishnaabe people. In the face of moves to clearcut their lands, Grassy has “organized and maintained the longest-running logging blockade in Canadian history,” writes Simpson.