About LodgePole Arts Alliance
In 2019, two of the founding members of LodgePole Arts Alliance, JP Longboat and Terri-Lynn Brennan, began an Indigenous-led project with ArtsBuild Ontario investigating the feasibility of creating Indigenous cultural spaces across Ontario. Taking direction from an Advisory Circle of Indigenous voices from 10 locations across the province, this four-year project produced the document Paddling Upstream: Looking out on the Landscape, with a Plan to Travel. 182 veteran to new Indigenous artists and cultural workers spoke to their experiences within colonial spaces and associated Treaty Partner colleagues, enforcing a long overdue need for publicly accessible, welcoming, safe, and sovereign spaces of creativity and collaboration. It was these Indigenous voices that planted the seeds for what grew to become the LodgePole Arts Alliance.
Our History
In summer 2021, five Indigenous leaders from across Canada committed two years of their time to nurture the seeds in creation of a vision for the LodgePole Arts Alliance. The original vision that arose was the need to platform Indigenous Peoples to realize Indigenous resiliency, respect, and reclamation through art making, creative collaborations, and cultural renewal. But to steer the organization in this direction, LodgePole needed to embody a governing process and communication transparency that reflected the methods of the ancestors who survived in harmony with the Land and between Nations for millennia prior to colonization. The emergence of a Grand Council in the summer of 2021 operated on consensus, trust and a commitment to the vision. The Grand Council began to work on developing a logo that encompassed all that we wanted to be, programming small-scale projects and building partnerships with the newly opened Hotel Wolfe Island becoming our physical home-base.
In October 2021, we became registered as a Canadian not-for-profit corporation, and in the summer of 2022 we established a satellite office and partnership with Kingston Association of Museums, Art Galleries and Historic Sites launching a website presence through their home page. We held our first annual general meeting on November 23rd, 2022 and obtained charitable status in the summer of 2023.
Since that time we have expanded our programming in presenting performing and visual artists on Wolfe Island and in Kingston, while strengthening partnerships with other arts organizations such as the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, the Kingston Writers Fest, and the Skeleton Park Arts Festival, to sponsor Indigenous artists work and presentations to the regional community.
In 2023, we also began a concerted effort towards finding suitable land; our efforts were focused on Wolfe Island, but we were, and continue to be, open to land that is accessible to water, with both a forested and agricultural landscape, preferably in the Eastern Woodland corridor.
In October 2024, we hosted the inaugural National Indigenous Presenters Gathering (NIPG) on Wolfe Island and in the City of Kingston. Entitled The Art of Visiting, we supported travel, accommodation and meals for Indigenous Presenters and Arts Creatives from Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and across Ontario to take part in the event. This event is now an annual capstone of our programming and now hosts Indigenous Peoples from coast to coast to coast of northern Turtle Island.
In the spring of 2025, we also added producer to our credentials as an Arts Service Organization, with the national touring production of Sounding Thunder, the Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, a musical journey of the life of the renowned Ojibwe WWI sniper, decorated officer of the Canadian military and Indigenous political activist.
Vision and Guiding Principles
Our Vision is an Indigenous-owned, operated and programmed land-based arts studio complex; a place for visiting, creating, teaching, performing and feasting.
LodgePole’s approach is guided by four principles:
skén:nen
(Mohawk), peace, paix
To establish a safe, healthy, welcoming, and technologically modern space within the Frontenac County Biosphere for Indigenous artists to discover, develop, and create in connection with land, culture, history and place.
~
miigwe’aadiziwin
(Anishinaabemowin), generosity, générosité
To be a mobilizing, active, holistic space founded on land-based knowledge, practices, and models while offering the resources for cultural reclamation and renewal.
~
onkwayó’ténhsera
(Mohawk), responsibility, responsabilité
To contribute to the provincial Indigenous arts and culture network while developing audience, patrons, and presenter relationships with regional, national, and international Indigenous creators.
~
minwaadendamowin
(Anishinaabemowin), respect, respecter
To support professional and community arts practices and affirm, embrace, and promote Indigenous identity, culture, and creative expression, inclusive of all artistic disciplines.
~
The Story Behind Our Logo
The logo was a collaborative effort of the Grand Council and Mohawk designer Joel Martin. Starting from the base of the logo, and working your way up:
We honour our original teachings and our original agreements with the natural world. We recognize the agreements made between the Nations recorded and symbolized in the Two Row Wampum teachings. These beads come from the land and the waters, and as such, we recognize the waters as a source for all life.
With the shoreline, we acknowledge the sacred medicines and the plant world that sustains and heals us. Above the shoreline is the white pine, the highest tree in the canopy of these Eastern Woodland forests; we can follow the white roots from any direction to this tree of peace and find shelter and protection beneath its branches.
The hands reach up to the sky as we acknowledge our way of life in tune with life’s natural cycles; the moon and sun cycles representing our ceremonial ways, which are the foundations of who we are.
