The Story of Indigenous Spirit Printmaking and the Living Rock Spirit: Yǝ́dı́ı Kwǝ

This (re)search is aimed at finding out how Dene Yǝ́dı́ı; a concept translated in English as “living beings” could be considered within my artistic practice of printmaking. Dene Yǝ́dı́ı acknowledges objects as alive with spirits of their own. As an urban Sahtu Dene artist I shadow the stories and teachings of Sahtúgot’ı̨nę spirituality that have been carried forward through the lived experiences of Denendah Elders and leaders such as George Blondin, Tatti Fibbie, and Johnny Neyelle, who tell these stories for new generations of Dene to take hold of. I explore my relationships to non-human Yǝ́dı́ı that are interwoven within my spiritual/artistic practice of stone-printing (Lithography) and the ways of Indigenous Spirit Printmaking, and how they expand ideas of reciprocity, ceremony, and realities of urban Indigeneity. Through this process I use methods of creative narrative writing and storying to tell these ideas of relationality, rather than coercing to western and institutional research thesis frameworks that still need decolonizing. For my thesis, I tell the story of my deep connection and relationship to Kwǝ [rock], our journey towards the creation of prints that express my lived experiences through adoption, connections to Indigenous Dene spirit, connections to land, and honouring embodied realities for urban Sahtu Dene in the Edırı Nę́nę́ [now world]