Aanikoobijigan // Waawaakeshi

ANIKOOBIJIGAN // WAAWAAKESHI is the fourth component in a multi-year project by artist Dylan Miner. The project began when Miner located documents indicating that Narcisse Miner – the artist’s gichi-anikobijigan (great-great-grandfather) – was charged with poaching a deer on traditional lands.

In Fall 2016, Miner exhibited a body of work about this event at ArtSpace in Ontario. He later attempted to harvest a deer on the same land, near chii-biziigong (the Shebeshekong River,) and subsequently exhibited an additional body of artwork. As an extension of these projects, this book – AANIKOOBIJIGAN // WAWAAKESHI – evokes the ancestors, the animals, the sacredness of place; it includes 13 lunar months and 13 Indigenous constellations.

These 26 starmaps are each drawn with 110 stars to honor the 110 years since Narcisse Miner was charged by the settler-colonial nation-state for asserting his Indigenous harvesting rights.

AANIKOOBIJIGAN // WAWAAKESHIWI also includes poems and drawings by Miner, as well as photographs of the artist’s aanikoobijiganag (ancestors) and a poem gifted by Angela Semple. The book is a humble offering to the ancestors, the animals, and to the land.