People

Yuxwelupton Qwal’ qaxala (Bradley Dick)

Bradley is married to Jennifer Chuckry and has three beautiful children Shayla (and granddaughter Kaydence aka Granny), Dakota, and Cienna. All are of Cree ancestry. He also has an Australian Shepherd, Cy the family guy. Bradley is a contemporary artist who enjoys working collaboratively with his brothers Clarence Dick Jr. and Fabian Quocksister, and his dad Butch Dick, carving ceremonial poles that adorn City Hall in Victoria and the Songhees Wellness Centre. Bradley’s career of  commissioned art spans over 20 years. His artwork can be seen as far away as New Zealand, England, Norway, and Sweden. He has sold numerous drums and carving locally, focusing on designs based on his family teachings and culture. He also creates original paintings, small and large carvings, and contemporary designs on shoes and hats. His collaborative paintings with his wife Jennifer reflect her Cree ancestry as well as Bradley’s West Coast influences. 

Hayalthkin’geme (Carey Newman)

Perhaps his most influential work, The Witness Blanket, made of items collected from residential schools, government buildings and churches across Canada, deals with the subject of Truth and Reconciliation. It is now part of the collection at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Carey Newman, whose traditional name is Hayalthkin’geme, is a multi-disciplinary artist, carver, filmmaker, author and public speaker. Through his father, he is Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw from the Kukwaḵ̓a̱m, Gix̱sa̱m, and Wawałaba’yi clans of northern Vancouver Island, and Coast Salish from Xwchíò:m (Cheam) of the Stó:lō S’olh Temexw (traditional territories) along the upper Fraser Valley. On his mother’s side of the family, his ancestors are English, Irish, and Scottish Settlers. In his artistic practice he strives to highlight Indigenous, social, and environmental issues as he examines the impacts of colonialism and capitalism, harnessing the power of material truth to unearth memory and trigger the necessary emotion to drive positive change. He is also interested in engaging with community and incorporating innovative methods derived from traditional teachings and Indigenous worldviews into his process. 

Dylan Robinson

Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator and writer. From 2015-2022 he was the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University. Dr. Robinson’s curatorial work includes the international touring exhibition Soundings (2019-2025) co-curated with Candice Hopkins. His current research project xoxelhmetset te syewa:l, Caring for Our Ancestors, involves working with Indigenous artists to reconnect kinship with Indigenous life incarcerated in museums.

His book, Hungry Listening (University Minnesota Press, 2020), examines Indigenous and settler colonial practices of listening, and was awarded best first book for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Canadian Association for Theatre Research, and the Labriola Centre American Indian National Book Award. Other publications include the edited volume Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (Wesleyan University Press, 2019); and Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016). As co-chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Canadian Music Centre, he is currently leading a process for the reparation and redress of music that appropriates Indigenous song, and misrepresents Indigenous culture.

France Trépanier

France Trépanier is a visual artist, curator and researcher. Her practice is often informed by strategies of collaboration and community engagement. Her artistic and curatorial work has been presented in many venues in Canada, the US and Europe. Her artworks are included in various public and private collections, including the Museum of Civilization in Quebec, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and The Indigenous Art Centre at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC).   France was part of the first International Indigenous Curators Exchange in Australia, New Zealand and the 2017 Venice Biennale. She was the co-recipient of the 2012 Inaugural Audain Aboriginal Curatorial Fellowship by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She co-authored with Chris Creighton-Kelly Understanding Aboriginal Art in Canada Today: a Knowledge and Literature Review for the Canada Council for the Arts. Her essays and articles have been published in numerous journals and magazines.   

France is co-director of the Primary Colours/Couleurs primaires initiative. She worked as an arts consultant with a wide range of institutions and organisations such as the National Arts Centre, National Film Board, Cultural Human Resources Council, Banff Centre for the Arts, First Peoples Cultural Council, Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, OCAD University, Yukon Arts Centre, and BC Museums Association.  She worked at the Canada Council for the Arts before becoming a Senior Arts Policy Advisor for the Department of Canadian Heritage. She held a diplomatic post as First Secretary, Cultural Affairs at the Canadian Embassy in Paris. She directed the Centre for New Media at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. France was also the co-founder and Director of the artist-run center Axe Néo-7 in Gatineau, Quebec. France is of Kanien’kehà:ka and French ancestry.

Heather Igloliorte

Dr. Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk-Newfoundlander and Nunatsiavut beneficiary, is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices at the University of Victoria, BC, where she is a Professor in the Visual Arts Department (2023-). Heather formerly held a Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, QC, where she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and co-director of the Indigenous Futures Research Centre with Prof. Jason Edward Lewis. Since 2018 Heather has directed the nation-wide Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project (2018-2025), a SSHRC-funded partnership grant which supports Inuit postsecondary students to explore professional career paths in all aspects of the arts, including collections management, curatorial practice, arts administration and other areas of the visual and performing arts, in order to address the longstanding absence of Inuit in agential positions within Canadian art history and museum practice.

Olivia Shortt

(They/Them): Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) Olivia Shortt is a storyteller and performing artist working across Turtle Island and internationally. They are a vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, video artist, drag artist, curator, administrator, and producer.  Shortt was featured in the 2020 Winter edition of Musicworks Magazine and was described as a “glittering, rising star in the exploratory music firmament.” They have appeared on CBC Kids ‘Gary the Unicorn and their voice has been used off-screen for Stephen King’s ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Season 3 of ‘Chucky’; they made their Lincoln Center debut in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble; they made their film debut, onscreen playing saxophone, in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film Guest of Honour; and recorded an album with their duo Stereoscope, two kilometres underground in the SnoLAB (an underground laboratory specializing in Neutrinos and dark matter physics in Northern Ontario, Canada).  Shortt performed and premiered Raven Chacon’s (Diné) ‘For Olivia Shortt’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC) as part of Chacon’s series of solo works ‘For Zitkála-Šá’ during the 2022 Whitney Biennial and has performed the work at The Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC).

Rebecca Hass

Rebecca Hass (Nitaawegiishigok/singing skywoman) was the inaugural winner of the 2022 Nada Ristich Changemaker Ruby Award from Opera Canada, and represented Canada at the 2024 World Opera Forum. She is recognized for her passionate advocacy of reclamation of ancestral voice as a means to tell stories. As a Metis woman she lives her culture as a song carrier and creator, through drum song, takeovers of traditional classical repertoire and storytelling.  A co-director of the urban Indigenous drum group, ANSWER, she is exploring songs as ceremony and medicine, and actively supporting members in cultural reclamation as the group brings songs as medicine to audiences. Rebecca is currently creating a multi-media theatrical piece “Manaadjia” – which means “to take care of our people in order to conserve them for a long time” Her vision and practice on the land is evolving as a window to the ancestors and a reawakening of our connection to place.  In her classical career as a mezzo-soprano, she has appeared with just about every opera company and orchestra in Canada; A vocal teacher and interpretive coach, certified life coach, mentor to artists across Canada; accomplished broadcaster, documentary producer, podcast creator and host, she is currently the Director of Engagement Programs and Partnerships at Pacific Opera Victoria. www.creativeliving.ca

“My Métis family names are Delaronde and Croteau. I am also related to the Lizzote family through marriage. I am a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, with secured hunting rights on my family’s traditional territory. These rights are given only to Métis who meet the criteria as laid out in the Powley decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. Through my late father, Fraser Hass, and his mother, Louise Marie Croteau, I learned to hunt and fish, clean my own game, to take only what I need and to share. I learned which plants were for medicine, and how to walk on the land to care for my animal and plant relatives. I was raised with teachings to honor Mother Earth, and to always walk in good relationship with her.”

Giorgio Magnanensi

Giorgio Magnanensi

Born and raised in Italy, Giorgio Magnanensi currently lives with his family in Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.  His eagerness to explore the worlds of sound brought him to work in many and diverse artistic practices including composition, conducting, improvisation, multimedia projects and interdisciplinary, interactive and multichannel audiovisual installations, circuit bending, video art and sonic and spatial explorations. He is artistic director of Vancouver New Music, and lecturer at the School of Music of the Vancouver Community College. In 2006 he founded Laboratorio, to actively engage in creative work within and for the communities of the Sunshine Coast.

Since 2015, Magnanensi has been making West Coast Radians, resonators from wood slabs discarded by sawmills near his home on the Sunshine Coast. Peeling and sanding the wood by hand slowly revealed the unique beauty in each piece, uncovering its grain, knots, and patterns. Magnanensi found that the presence within the wood, combined with the quality of its resonance, created an enhanced resonant space wherever they were installed, and a deeper sense of engagement for listeners.

“From the early 80’s to date I have been working as a composer, conductor, educator, artistic director, and performer in Europe, Japan and Canada. My views have developed gradually to my current belief that in today’s world of music, cultural studies and research, the most vital ideas and resources travel through many different channels. This has led me to work with a wide variety of musicians, artists, performers and researchers, local, national and international organizations and to test through technology, interactivity, free creative improvisation and conduction the possibilities of a varied approach to sound composition, performance and pedagogy. Through my work I want to emphasize the value of difference, communication and active participation in the creative process as a path towards a deeper availability to the dialogue and the encounter. The process is a generative one that leads towards the foundation of a meaningful social function of the musician composer in contemporary society while fostering higher level of knowledge transference. This process shows that art is a potentiality in a continuous becoming and that it takes form through the individual identity of each person existing as a manifestation of our multiplicity, we, existing as personæ – from the Latin word per sonum: “that through which sound can resonate”, according to our ability to regain the qualities of curiosity, interest and commitment, and experience them in communication, mutual exchange and caring.”

Michael Benneyworth

Spending a large part of his childhood playing with reel-to-reel tape and listening to shortwave radio, it was inevitable that sound creation and manipulation would be part of Michael Benneyworth’s multidisciplinary artistic practice. His sound art works are concerned with the sounds themselves: ways of creating sounds, how sounds inform space and assembled sound collages rather than more traditional song forms. Michael works with electronics and computers and also builds acoustic instruments ranging from cigar box guitars to sound generating installations. Past works include the construction of acoustic devices ranging from small instruments to large installations. Michael’s current projects are focused on the recording and performance of electronic music and he has performed solo and with numerous experimental music groups. He has recently joined the board of the Garden City Electronic Music Society, was a founding member of Victoria Phonographers Union and is a member of the Unity Drummers and Singers. Michael met Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick at Unity and they have sung and performed as part of the drum group since 2005. For Listening-With, They will be collaborating on a work incorporating voice, song, drumming and electronics.

Peter Hatch

Composer and music curator Peter Hatch has composed works in a large number of genres, from orchestral and chamber music to instrumental theatre, electroacoustics and installations. Hatch’s compositions are both heady and playful, profound and humorous. Peter has been very active as the artistic director of new music ensembles and festivals. He founded NUMUS Concerts and the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, served as Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and as Arts and Culture Consultant with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Peter is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Music, Wilfrid Laurier University, where he was Professor from 1985 to 2017.

“As a composer and music curator I build time-based structures in sound. I construct frames as well as things to fill them: I am interested in creating a context for listeners to hear things they haven’t experienced before. My work is motivated by the experience of attending to the world ears-first. Listening, as my primary sense, leads to an openness and curiosity that characterizes aural space, not just to what is in front of me but also to my surrounding environment. Collaboration is also at the heart of my practice – most of my work reaches a public through performers, and I have had the great experience of working with some of our country’s finest – both as performers of my compositions and in my practice of artistic curation. These collaborative experiences extend to the various publics who care to listen.  My key goal is the search for “resonance”: how the sounds and actions I initiate interact with the environment in which they are received – what is more important than other the sounds/actions or environment is where this interaction is fruitful.”

Tina Pearson

Tina M Pearson is a composer, media artist, performer and facilitator. She has collaborated with artists from dance, visual arts, music and new media in projects that play with identity, presence and place, and the relationships between creator, environment, performer and audience. Her projects invite stretched modes of time, perception, attention, and intention, and often occur in community-based and anonymous settings, outdoors, and within online 3D platforms. Her work increasingly resides in links between ecosystems, ancestral memory, and technologies, uncovering connections that have been minimized, forgotten, or unimagined.

Pearson makes sounds with altered flute, voice, glass, accordion, electronics, and virtual instruments. Her work has been commissioned for concerts, installations, choreography, and video for presentation in centres through North America and Europe. Pearson was editor of Canada’s Musicworks magazine, and taught Sound Studies at OCAD University in Toronto. She is a member of the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and Experimental Music Unit, and a certified Deep Listening® practitioner through Pauline Oliveros. Pearson is of Nordic and Slavic descent, raised in the territories of the Couchiching and Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nations. She is grateful to live and work within the unsurrendered territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples on the Salish Sea.

Mitch Renaud

Mitch Renaud is a sound artist, composer, and curator based in Victoria, BC, on the unceded homelands of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples.  Moving between performing with electronics and composition, he is interested in the myriad aspects of relation: whether it’s through feedback systems, co-composition, improvisation, or place-based work. Mitch performs with electronics solo as well as in ongoing collaborations with artists such as Dave Riedstra, Emilie LeBel, and Katelyn Clark. Mitch holds a Master’s degree in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought from the University of Victoria. He is a co-director of of-the-now with Chedo Barone & Jeff Morton.