By Ryan Rice and Ana Serrano
Early last year, Ontario Premier Doug Ford appeared at a first ministers’ meeting wearing a navy baseball cap bearing four words, Canada is not for sale. The hat became a national symbol because it gave Canadians a plain-language answer to something that had previously seemed almost unthinkable.
Eighteen months later, the sentiment no longer feels cheeky. Recently, Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from a trade agreement with the United States after concluding that the terms would compromise Canada’s sovereignty and independence.
In a remarkably short period, “Canada is not for sale” has gone from a declaration to a principle being tested in real time. What had long been assumed now has to be defended more consciously. And that defence is not only about what happens at the negotiating table. It is also about what happens inside the country when the pressure hits home.
That is part of what makes Skennen'kó:wa ken? (Do You Carry Great Peace?) so meaningful now.
OCAD University is presenting an exhibition, with this greeting as its title, in the Canada Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea this month. It brings together three Kanien’kehá:ka artists and OCAD U alumni, Shelley Niro, Melissa General and Hannah Claus.
Skennen’kó:wa ken is a Kanien’kehá:ka daily greeting rooted in the Kaianere’kó:wa, the Great Law of Peace, the living constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It can be understood as an everyday question that asks: Are you carrying great peace within you? Are you in balance? Are you acting with a good mind?
Peace, in this tradition, is not something achieved once and then possessed. It has to be renewed in the way one lives, decides and carries responsibility. In the framing of the exhibition, philosophical tenets of the Great Law gently reflect how power is exercised through peace, how personal and collective decisions are made and how those decisions reach beyond the immediate moment to community, land and generations still to come.
Haudenosaunee sovereignty and Canadian sovereignty are not the same thing, and their histories have often been in conflict. The enduring pillars of the Great Law do not need Canada’s present crisis to make it relevant. But setting these traditions beside one another does bring something into focus. Sovereignty is not exhausted by the ability to decide. It also lives in how power is used, especially over time and under pressure.
That pressure will not be felt evenly. Some sectors will take a harder hit than others. Some regions will feel more exposed. Governments will face choices about who gets help first, what industries matter most, and how much pain people are expected to absorb in the name of a larger national interest. Those differences can quickly become political fault lines.
This is where the idea of carrying great peace becomes more demanding. It does not ask us to pretend conflict is not there. It asks whether, in the middle of it, we can remain clear-minded with one another, attentive to who is carrying the burden, and capable of making decisions with a horizon longer than the crisis right in front of us.
The work of Niro, General and Claus approaches these questions gracefully through land, memory, identity, language and reclamation. Their practices are also reflective of the central role of women in Haudenosaunee political, cultural and spiritual life and the responsibilities women carry in relation to community, land and continuity.
Presenting the exhibition at the Gwangju Biennale gives the work a particular resonance. Since its founding in 1995, the Biennale has become one of Asia’s leading international contemporary art exhibitions, rooted in a city whose modern identity is inseparable from the May 1980 Democratic Uprising and its struggle for democracy and self-determination.
The timing matters for Indigenous People within the current context of Truth and Reconciliation, rematriation and the Land Back Movement. Indigenous arts and culture has long asserted that sovereignty is also cultural: the right to tell your own stories, define your own identity and determine how your knowledge and relationship to land are carried forward.
The timing also matters for OCAD University, which marks its 150th anniversary this year. Founded in 1876, the university emerged when Canada’s cultural institutions were still being shaped largely through European ideas of art, knowledge and nationhood. A century and a half later, it is presenting an Indigenous-led exhibition grounded in a political tradition far older than either the university or the Canadian state.
Perhaps that is why Skennen'kó:wa ken? (Do You Carry Great Peace?) resonates differently now than when it was first imagined. Canada is being asked to defend its sovereignty in very practical terms. The harder test will be how we practise it, and whether we can do that with the clarity, responsibility and attention to others that the Great Law associates with acting with a good mind.
Ryan Rice is the curator of Skennen'kó:wa ken? (Do You Carry Great Peace?) and executive director and curator, Indigenous Art, at Onsite Gallery. Ana Serrano is president and vice-chancellor of OCAD University and co-founder of the DemocracyXChange Summit.
