Eruoma Awashish, Dayna Danger, Cedar Eve, Patricia Langevin, Andrée Levesque Sioui, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau et Cheyenne Rain LeGrande
Oya’wih
Michèle St-Amand, curator
Michèle St-Amand is a candidate for the Master of Research-Intervention in Art History at University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). She holds a Master Degree in Clinical Sexology, a Certificate in Visual Arts (UQAM), a Graduate Certificate in Art Therapy (University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue), and a Certificate in Museology and Art Exhibition (UQAM). Through her career, she practiced as a sexologist-psychotherapist for several years, primarily with women who were victims of sexual assault and in post-traumatic intervention. She is interested in the decolonization of Indigenous women's sexuality through artistic expression. Furthermore, she is committed to integrating Indigenous protocols into her research and curatorial work. Michèle St-Amand is a member of the Wendat Nation.
Eruoma Awashish is an Atikamekw Nehirowisiw visual artist with a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary art from the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in art research and creation with a focus on the decolonization of the sacred. She has been awarded the Prix en art actuel by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and has participated in artistic events such as the Révélations 2023 biennial at the Grand Palais in Paris and the Territoires sous observation exhibition at the Museo Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara, Mexico. She also participated in the 2018 and 2024 editions of the Biennale d'art contemporain autochtone. Eruoma Awashish grew up in her community of origin, Opitciwan, lived in Wemotaci, and now has her studio in Pekuakami (Lac-Saint-Jean) in the Ilnu community of Mashteuiatsh. Her artistic approach aims to create space for dialogue that promote a better understanding of First Nations’ cultures.
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Dayna Danger is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Métis-Saulteaux-Polish, visual artist, hide tanner, and beadworker. Danger was born in Saskatoon and raised on Treaty 1 territory. Their recent exhibitions include Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (2019), and Indexing Resistance at the plump in Toronto (2022). Danger was recently an artist fellow with The Indigenous International: Green Architecture Project in Kenya through the Soul of Nations Foundation in the U.S., (2021-22) in addition to participating in several residencies in Canada. Their photographic portrait series, Big'Uns, was featured on the cover of the Canadian Art Kinship issue in the summer of 2017. Danger's art was long listed for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. Danger is pursuing a doctorate at Concordia University, focusing on Two-Spirit roles and responsibilities at culture and hide-tanning camps.
Artist's website
Cedar Eve is a visual artist currently based in Montreal. She is Anishinabae (Ojibway), from Saugeen First Nation and Wikwemikong unceded territory, but born and raised in Toronto. She graduated from Concordia University in 2012 in Studio Arts, where her focus was primarily on painting. As a full-time bead artist, her company Cedar Eve Creations focuses on beaded jewellery and limited edition screen printed clothing. During the school year, she works with Cree youth in James Bay (Northern Québec) teaching art.
Artist's Instagram
Committed multidisciplinary artist and member of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation in Lac-Saint-Jean, Patricia Langevin established her reputation in 2025 with Tipelimitishun I Liberté, an installation combining blown glass and screen printing that won several awards and grants before being presented at IMPACT-13, an international academic Conference on printmaking. She presented a duo exhibition with her goddaughter Raphaëlle Langevin at the Ilnu Museum in Mashteuiatsh in 2023 and at the Musée des Abénakis in Odanak in 2024. She took part in the Festival Art Souterrain in 2024 and has participated in various Indigenous group exhibitions since 2021. In 2026, she will present her first solo exhibition, Tshitehinu, tshitipatshimunnu / Our Heart, Our History, at the Ilnu Museum in Mashteuiatsh. As a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), Patricia Langevin creates embodied works that are part of a process of cultural and identity reappropriation.
Artist's Instagram
Born in Quebec City, Andrée Levesque Sioui is a singer-songwriter, poet, and storyteller. She is the lead singer on three albums, including Yahndawa’ (2011), for which she won the Best Album Production award at the Native American Music Awards (2013). Member of the Wendat Nation, she has been teaching the Wendat language in Wendake since 2010. She has published alongside other artists through various collectives, notably Confluence, Comme une rivière en dérouine, Immersion dans l’univers végétal des milieux humides (La Traversée), and Chambres fortes (Hamac). In 2021, she published her first collection of poetry with Éditions Hannenorak, a finalist for Une ville, un livre and the Indigenous Voices Awards (2022). She also presents her visual artwork in the context of solo and trio exhibitions, notably with the collective Yahndawa’: Portages entre Québec et Wendake. In the fall of 2024, she was part of the cast of Marie-Josée Bastien's play Yahndawa': ce que nous sommes, presented at the Théâtre du Trident.
Artist's webpage
Born in Jamésie, in northwestern Quebec, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau is a multidisciplinary Eeyou artist. Since the early 1980s, she has exhibited her work in Quebec, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. In 2006, she received the Regional Award of Excellence from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Télé-Québec mention of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Poetry Prize. In 2020, she received the Artist of the Year Award in Abitibi-Témiscamingue from the CALQ and presented a retrospective of her forty-year career at the Musée d’art de Rouyn-Noranda. She has curated several exhibitions on the theme of dialogue between artists from different nations. In 2023, she has been made a Knight in the Order of Academic Palms of the French Republic and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Moncton.
Artist's website
Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ is a Nehiyaw artist, from Bigstone Cree Nation. They currently live in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan also known as Edmonton, Alberta. Their work is an expression of love, intergenerational resilience and joy. Through the use of their body and language, they evoke the past, present, and future, exploring the hybrid space between Nehiyaw tradition and pop culture. Invoking their ancestors to accompany them, they evolve between installation, photography, fashion, video, sound, public art, and performance art.
Artist's Instagram
And so, what if we imagined Indigenous women expressing their sexuality free of taboos or colonial biases? The artists Eruoma Awashish (Atikamekw), Cedar Eve (Anishinaabe), Dayna Danger (Métis-Saulteaux-Polish), Patricia Langevin (Ilnu), Andrée Levesque Sioui (Wendat), Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau (Eeyou), and Cheyenne Rain LeGrande (Cree) were invited to reflect on this idea. With works created for the occasion or never before exhibited, the seven artists embrace themes such as desire, relations, fertility, kink culture, cycles, ceremonies, identity, territory, and oral tradition.
Colonization had a huge impact on the sexuality of Indigenous Peoples. It’s essential to keep denouncing colonial violence and talking about trauma. Oya'wih, “that tastes good” in Wendat, is a collaborative group exhibition that presents a parallel reality in which there was no colonization on Turtle Island (otherwise known as North America). The idea behind the exhibition arose as a response to observations of the ravages wrought by colonization on Indigenous women’s bodies and sexualities.
Uchronia – playing with temporality by changing one aspect of history to create a different reality – is proposed to allow the imagination to travel unfettered by colonial, patriarchal, and heteronormative constraints and to embark on a path to healing, affirmation, and decolonization of sexuality.
In this process, the prefix “de” implies liberation from colonial strictures. Indeed, this exhibition is “for” the sexuality of Indigenous women and we emphasize the prefix “re”: (re)appropriation, (re)eroticization, (re)connection. The idea is to identify paths toward a desired sexuality rather than to struggle against an imposed sexuality.
Indigenous sexuality is too rarely portrayed in all its beauty and fluidity, for everyone. Art is a powerful vector for doing this. And so, the exhibition allows Indigenous eroticism and sexuality to dance with a range of materialities and materials – luminous transparency, organic elements, bright colours, beading and embroidery, and more.
Oya'wih brings together multidisciplinary works by artists from different Nations and of different generations who identify as women, queer women, or Two-Spirit. With their generous participation, they let us contemplate the embodiment of representations of Indigenous women’s sexuality from different perspectives. Giving free rein to their creativity and media, they explored the multiple dimensions of sexuality, knowing they would make magic.
Here, the artists reclaim possession of the narrative in a space of expression, sisterhood, respect, and pleasure. This exhibition is a creative celebration of Indigenous women’s holistic sexuality – a sexuality rooted in Indigenous traditions and values... Oya'wih.
— Michèle St-Amand
Translated by Käthe Roth
Michèle St-Amand is a candidate for the Master of Research-Intervention in Art History at University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). She holds a Master Degree in Clinical Sexology, a Certificate in Visual Arts (UQAM), a Graduate Certificate in Art Therapy (University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue), and a Certificate in Museology and Art Exhibition (UQAM). Through her career, she practiced as a sexologist-psychotherapist for several years, primarily with women who were victims of sexual assault and in post-traumatic intervention. She is interested in the decolonization of Indigenous women's sexuality through artistic expression. Furthermore, she is committed to integrating Indigenous protocols into her research and curatorial work. Michèle St-Amand is a member of the Wendat Nation.
Eruoma Awashish is an Atikamekw Nehirowisiw visual artist with a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary art from the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in art research and creation with a focus on the decolonization of the sacred. She has been awarded the Prix en art actuel by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and has participated in artistic events such as the Révélations 2023 biennial at the Grand Palais in Paris and the Territoires sous observation exhibition at the Museo Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara, Mexico. She also participated in the 2018 and 2024 editions of the Biennale d'art contemporain autochtone. Eruoma Awashish grew up in her community of origin, Opitciwan, lived in Wemotaci, and now has her studio in Pekuakami (Lac-Saint-Jean) in the Ilnu community of Mashteuiatsh. Her artistic approach aims to create space for dialogue that promote a better understanding of First Nations’ cultures.
Artist's Instagram
Dayna Danger is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Métis-Saulteaux-Polish, visual artist, hide tanner, and beadworker. Danger was born in Saskatoon and raised on Treaty 1 territory. Their recent exhibitions include Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (2019), and Indexing Resistance at the plump in Toronto (2022). Danger was recently an artist fellow with The Indigenous International: Green Architecture Project in Kenya through the Soul of Nations Foundation in the U.S., (2021-22) in addition to participating in several residencies in Canada. Their photographic portrait series, Big'Uns, was featured on the cover of the Canadian Art Kinship issue in the summer of 2017. Danger's art was long listed for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. Danger is pursuing a doctorate at Concordia University, focusing on Two-Spirit roles and responsibilities at culture and hide-tanning camps.
Artist's website
Cedar Eve is a visual artist currently based in Montreal. She is Anishinabae (Ojibway), from Saugeen First Nation and Wikwemikong unceded territory, but born and raised in Toronto. She graduated from Concordia University in 2012 in Studio Arts, where her focus was primarily on painting. As a full-time bead artist, her company Cedar Eve Creations focuses on beaded jewellery and limited edition screen printed clothing. During the school year, she works with Cree youth in James Bay (Northern Québec) teaching art.
Artist's Instagram
Committed multidisciplinary artist and member of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation in Lac-Saint-Jean, Patricia Langevin established her reputation in 2025 with Tipelimitishun I Liberté, an installation combining blown glass and screen printing that won several awards and grants before being presented at IMPACT-13, an international academic Conference on printmaking. She presented a duo exhibition with her goddaughter Raphaëlle Langevin at the Ilnu Museum in Mashteuiatsh in 2023 and at the Musée des Abénakis in Odanak in 2024. She took part in the Festival Art Souterrain in 2024 and has participated in various Indigenous group exhibitions since 2021. In 2026, she will present her first solo exhibition, Tshitehinu, tshitipatshimunnu / Our Heart, Our History, at the Ilnu Museum in Mashteuiatsh. As a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), Patricia Langevin creates embodied works that are part of a process of cultural and identity reappropriation.
Artist's Instagram
Born in Quebec City, Andrée Levesque Sioui is a singer-songwriter, poet, and storyteller. She is the lead singer on three albums, including Yahndawa’ (2011), for which she won the Best Album Production award at the Native American Music Awards (2013). Member of the Wendat Nation, she has been teaching the Wendat language in Wendake since 2010. She has published alongside other artists through various collectives, notably Confluence, Comme une rivière en dérouine, Immersion dans l’univers végétal des milieux humides (La Traversée), and Chambres fortes (Hamac). In 2021, she published her first collection of poetry with Éditions Hannenorak, a finalist for Une ville, un livre and the Indigenous Voices Awards (2022). She also presents her visual artwork in the context of solo and trio exhibitions, notably with the collective Yahndawa’: Portages entre Québec et Wendake. In the fall of 2024, she was part of the cast of Marie-Josée Bastien's play Yahndawa': ce que nous sommes, presented at the Théâtre du Trident.
Artist's webpage
Born in Jamésie, in northwestern Quebec, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau is a multidisciplinary Eeyou artist. Since the early 1980s, she has exhibited her work in Quebec, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. In 2006, she received the Regional Award of Excellence from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Télé-Québec mention of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Poetry Prize. In 2020, she received the Artist of the Year Award in Abitibi-Témiscamingue from the CALQ and presented a retrospective of her forty-year career at the Musée d’art de Rouyn-Noranda. She has curated several exhibitions on the theme of dialogue between artists from different nations. In 2023, she has been made a Knight in the Order of Academic Palms of the French Republic and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Moncton.
Artist's website
Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ is a Nehiyaw artist, from Bigstone Cree Nation. They currently live in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan also known as Edmonton, Alberta. Their work is an expression of love, intergenerational resilience and joy. Through the use of their body and language, they evoke the past, present, and future, exploring the hybrid space between Nehiyaw tradition and pop culture. Invoking their ancestors to accompany them, they evolve between installation, photography, fashion, video, sound, public art, and performance art.
Artist's Instagram