December 16 2022
Hello everyone! I am back after a half break, my family and community are still recovering and healing from our losses. It is unfortunately too common an experience of indigenous folks to experience so much loss. To go to more funerals than weddings, to be in constant mourning from a young age. I am grateful to have a community and mundane job that understands.
When we talk about reconciliation and inclusion, these factors are ones that we need to consider. It was not until I was in university, in my mid/late 20’s that I realized many of my peers had never experienced the death of a friend or close family member.
As indigenous people we are not only under threat of death from institutional racism. So many of us are living with intergenerational poverty, health problems, and isolation from potable water, healthcare, education etc.The effects of generations of colonization in so many forms does not just come to a full stop once one leaves the reserve, or we somehow rise up from the poverty line.
This is one of the reasons I have made an effort to shift my practice to focus more on joy, to celebrate indigenous beauty, creativity and humour. And why I will be including some moments of Indigenous Joy as bonus pictures in my posts for the rest of my digital residency.
The second image is of me and two of my favourite people in the world, my little sister Steph queenalphabetties and @deadliestdebbie . Buntzen lake is one of my favourite places, I feel most at home in the water, and we have had so much fun taking our snacks and floaties with us out to those islands.
December 18 2022
Digital Cauldron Collective presents VR theatre workshops and their path of transformation and transcendence from physical barriers in gender, time and space through a multi format presentation of Orlando, on stage, in person, on screen and in the Virtual worlds of AltspaceVR through the Oculus Quest. Brought together by our initial project we continue to develop our VR/XR practice and presented workshops and demonstrations through the PXR symposium that initially connected us. Currently composed of Rinchen Dolma, Merlin Simard and Raven John, come find us at
www.ravenjohn.com/digitalcauldroncollective
December 19 2022
Butterfly Gathering was a film project I did costume for in service of The Butterfly Project alongside Olivia Davies, Tarene Thomas, Whea Productions, Sharon Brass and the work created by the women in the Butterfly Project. Shot in and in service of the communities of the downtown eastside the dance film featured a long stretch of iridescent fabric with hand prints of the folks who were a part of the Butterfly Projects community programming.
December 22 2022
cw: death of close family members, and community, grief
We cannot continue to ignore and overwrite these wrongs. It may be disturbing and uncomfortable to learn, but how else are we going to change? If we are blind to the corrupt foundations and current systems we live in, we are disrespecting the survivors and victims of it, and make it much easier for more people to be made victims of it.
In 2015 Cloudscape Comics set in motion Comics In Transit, an initiative to place local comicers works throughout the city that showed the living history of its people. I chose to make the following comic to demonstrate some of the realities of Canadian History that get glossed over in black and white aesthetics that distance colonial atrocities that have very real and current effects on indigenous people. I tied together some of these stories of survivors and victims with pop culture iconic moments.
Did you know the last residential school wasn’t closed until 1996, the year that the Spice Girls got big? Or that while the US was in a race to build a rocket to the moon, government workers alongside priests and nuns were employing their janitors to build makeshift electric chairs to use on residential school children as punishment or simply for entertainment? And this dehumanization of native children continues. In Alberta, native children make up 9% of children in care, but account for 78% of children who died under the care of the government. All of those children were automatically enrolled for organ donation without the consent of their families, and unable to consent themselves. Not only are their lives less valued under systemic racism, but their deaths are in direct benefit to likely settler donor recipients.
Our demise to the benefit to settler comfort and profit has always been the agenda for Canada.
We cannot continue to ignore and overwrite these wrongs. It may be disturbing and uncomfortable to learn, but how else are we going to change? If we are blind to the corrupt foundations and current systems we live in, we are disrespecting the survivors and victims of it, and make it much easier for more people to be made victims of it.
March 3 2023
I’m so grateful to Heidi and Hammock for hosting me and helping me learn to navigate and share my works more. Coming up after this I will be continuing my work as an intern with Open Access maps, my fellowship with PXR on some emerging VRchat performances and TWO shows in May and June with the National Arts Center, Rumble Theater, Up In The Air Theatre and Revolver fest.
Thank you to @bcartscouncil and @canada.council for funding us again for the 2023 programming year! We are excited to introduce next years residents to you! Stay tuned!
Artist Quick Links
Two Spirit Trickster
Raven John, artist, involuntary comedian and two-spirit activist, is of Coast Salish and Stolo Nation descent. This Two-spirit Trickster is a BFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, with a major in visual art and minor in social practice and community engagement, as well as a graduate of the North West Coast Jewelry Arts program at the Native Education College. Raven is a visual artist, cultural consultant, mediator, storyteller, photographer and sculptor. A jack-of-all-trades (and master of a few), their practice covers a wide array of mediums from provocation and humor, puppet making, ceramics, dressmaking, interactive electronics and Indigenous technologies.
https://twospirittrickster.wixsite.com/ravenjohn/portfolio
