SARAH KLYM

Countercartographies

Academic, Research

9.19-01.20

This work traces the Tse’K’wa Cave in northern Turtle Island. The cave is home to some of the earliest evidence of human tools and ritual activity in North America, including two ravens buried ceremonially over a thousand years apart. The site marks where ice fields retreated to allow passage for the first inhabitants of Turtle Island more than 11,000 years ago.

Mapmaking and architectural drawing are colonial instruments. This work seeks to turn these tools upon themselves to make visible the thousands of years of indigenous connection to place that is systematically eroded.

Tse’K’wa in context of Deglaciation of North America, 18,000 BP - 1,000 BP

Tse’K’wa Cave from residential street

ᑕᓀᖚ (Dane-Zaa) creation story, as told by the last Dane-zaa Dreamer, Charlie Yahey, in 1967. From Where Happiness Dwells: A History of the Dane-Zaa First Nations, 2013 (UBC Press), p.14

Speculative mapping of the territory of the nomadic ᑕᓀᖚ (Dane Zaa/Dunne-za, "Those who live among the beaver”) peoples.