Re-reading Tahltan

Stay tuned for updates on the project launch in 2023

Within this virtual space artist Peter Morin will read and make audio recordings of historical Tahltan information, written about Tahltan people by white anthropologists. Working together, Peter Morin and Sandra Marion, Tahltan Culture and Heritage Director, will create a virtual space for the Tahltan Nation through their ongoing dialogue with Tahltan Elders and community. The website is a space created with Indigenous knowledge for Indigenous people, all contracted arts workers will be from Indigenous communities across the country. It will be a space to talk about and dive into Tahltan Value systems, and to apply those value systems to the design, development, and engagement.

"This Tahltan Voice guides everyone. This Tahltan speaking voice will also help us to hear, and find, our Historic Tahltan voices hidden underneath those English words in those documents. This document is also for younger generations, so that they can hear how incredible our Tahltan Ancestor Artists are.

This reading/Tahltan voice project also brings this information, written about Tahltan people, to our Elders. So that they can know what is being written about us historically. We are really good at listening. This is a skill that the Residential Schools did not manage to steal from us."

Peter Morin

The books Morin will read out loud, back to his people are:

-The Tahltan Indians by G.T. Emmons, published in 1911
-Tahltan Tales By James A. Teit, published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1919
-Journals of A. J. Stone: Expeditions to the Arctice and Subarctic America for Mountain Sheep, Goat, Caribou, Grizzley, Moose and Muskoxen 1896 – 1903. This book is compiled and published in 2012.
-Field Notes on the Tahltan and Kaska Indians, unpublished text by James A. Teit 1912 to 1915

These readings and this virtual space are a gift from Morin to his Elders.

This project is funded through the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Now program.

Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist, curator, and writer. In his artistic practice and curatorial work, Morin’s practice-based research investigates the impact zones that occur when indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism collide. This work is shaped by Tahltan Nation epistemological production and often takes on the form of performance interventions. In addition to his object making and performance-based practice, Morin has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery. In 2014, Peter was long-listed for the Sobey Art Prize. Morin holds a tenured appointment at Brandon University in the Visual and Aboriginal Arts Department.