Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see y…
Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimaga…
By Soloman Chiniquay and jaz whitford
In Stoney there is no word for goodbye, only “Ake Huchimagachach” which means I’ll see you again in this life or the next. A gesture towards boundless preservation, Soloman Chiniquay, and jaz whitford create cultural memoirs, enlivening the mundane of the colonial condition with colorful markings re-rooting Indigenous accounts of place and land. Digital images manipulated with superimposed acrylic, oil, and ink, the collaboration re-positions common conceptions of land as static, or commodification to something alive, vocal and that has agency. With a dynamic range of point-and-shoot images, Chiniquay’s quiet observations frame sites of familiarity, intimacy, grief, longing, and possibility. A mirror to dispossession, Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I’ll see you again father) posits Indigenous life, labour, and connection as vital to the embodiment of sovereignty and selfdetermination of land. Central to the series, is a method of exchange. Their approach fuses photography, painting, and conceptualism, culminating in an offering – placing the value of art in the act of collaboratively envisioning practices of stewardship and care.
