The Struggle for Identity in Urban Centres

Maintaining one’s language, culture, traditional knowledge, values and spirituality is not an easy task in many Aboriginal communities today, whether they are rural or urban. The questions of interest for this project is: “How do Aboriginal people, living in urban centres, maintain their language, culture, Aboriginal knowledge, art, values, spirituality, their relationship to the land, home communities and their elders or ceremonialists? How does contemporary art reflect traditional values and knowledge of Aboriginal people struggling in urban centres?

For those who arrive in urban centres, with all or some of these values in place, life is difficult. After several generations of urban living, these values are quite often in jeopardy. The nature of the urban movement is that there are always new people moving to the city arriving with varying degrees of their culture, language and knowledge base intact. Quite often, these people are very happy to share what they have with those who are interested in learning.

Some of the most successful programs in drug and alcohol recovery programs in urban centres for Aboriginal adults and youth have been those centered around the arts – traditional and contemporary art, singing, drumming, theatre, dance, language instruction, as well as programs which take place on the land, such as camping, hunting, trapping, hide tanning, snowshoe construction, and story telling.

For many urban Aboriginal people, the connection to their culture and identity is supported through Aboriginal theatre, music, film, video production, dance, social and religious gatherings.  In some cases cultural centres and art centres offer courses in dance, traditional dance clothing (regalia), carving, basket weaving, beadwork, language, drum making, and wilderness survival, to name but a few activities.

This project will present a selection of multi-discipline art forms which address urban Aboriginal interest and issues of culture, identity and social issues affecting their lives today.