CARFAC NATIONAL presents the 2025 Indigenous Protocols for the Visual Arts Workshop Series:
Join us for our 2025 Indigenous Protocols Workshop Series, offering tailored sessions for diverse participants in the visual arts sector. These workshops, presented via Zoom, are designed to deepen understanding and foster respectful engagement with Indigenous protocols in the arts
Over the course of the workshops, we will have discussions around Intellectual Property, cultural appropriation, safeguarding cultural knowledge, and Indigenous artist’s rights and responsibilities when using traditional and contemporary imagery. There will also be information on how artists can protect their artwork using available tools and legal resources.
Protection and Considerations for Indigenous Artists Workshop
with Summer-Harmony Twenish
The workshop will cover:
Understanding the rights and responsibilities Indigenous artists have when incorporating traditional and contemporary imagery into their work
Considerations around safeguarding Traditional Knowledge
Learning the basics of Canada’s Intellectual Property Rights system and the ways Indigenous artists can use it to protect their work
Conversations around cultural appropriation
Summer-Harmony Twenish (she/they) is a queer Algonquin Anishinabe Artist from Kitigan Zibi, QC. Though Summer works primarily as a digital illustrator, their interests span mediums, ranging everywhere from digital animation to painting to beadwork and other textile work. Summer’s praxis is rooted in love for their homeland, family stories, and fierce anti-colonial feminist thought. Their work holds space for conversations about mental health, body positivity, queerness, and the importance of challenging settler-colonial expectations in so-called “Canada.” When not hunkered in front of a computer screen with a drawing tablet, Summer enjoys leading arts-based workshops with youth, going for long walks with her dog Beans, and daydreaming about a future filled with hope, community, and an end to white cis-heteropatriarchy (on Algonquin homelands and globally)