This week on Don River Radio, we speak with Wyandot multi-disciplinary artist, utríhǫt, and faith-keeper Catherine Taomesre Tàmmaro – Evergreen Brickworks's Elder-in-Residence – about her work bridging Indigenous and settler-colonial knoweldge-ways, the role of water in her own lifelong creative journey, and her exhibition Fire Over Water currently on view at the Spotted Turtle Clan longhouse at Crawford Lake. We begin the episode with Tàmmaro's reading of the last part of her chapter for the recently released Routledge book Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities, edited By Jayne Engle, Julian Agyeman, and Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook (Routledge, 2022), which "argues that societal transformation requires that spirituality and sacred values are essential to reimagining patterns of how we live, organize and govern ourselves, determine and distribute wealth, inhabit and design cities, and construct relationships with others and with nature."

Guest Bio

Taomesre ~ People of the Little Turtle, Wyandot of Anderdon Nation; Wendat Confederacy.

Catherine Tammaro is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practise spans decades.

Catherine is a seated Spotted Turtle Clan Faith Keeper and is active throughout the City of Toronto and beyond, in many organizations as Elder-in-Residence, Mentor, Teacher and Cultural Advisor. She is an alumna of the Ontario College of Art and has had a diverse career, multiple exhibits and installations, published written works and presentations and continues her creative practise.

Catherine actively supports the work and development of other artists on an ongoing basis. She served on the Board of the TAC, TAC’s Income Precarity Working Group and was the Chair of the Toronto Arts Council’s Indigenous Advisory Committee in 2020/21 and is the new Indigenous Arts Program Manager at Toronto Arts Council and continues teaching, learning and exploring her creativity and that of others.