Coming Together

Coming Together: collaborative arts celebration embracing reconciliation, traditional arts revival, & Indigenous artists presentation, June 9-15, 2025

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s final report and 94 Calls to Action, and with the deepest respect for recently deceased the Honourable Murray Sinclair, who led the Commission, we feel it behooves Stone & Sky to revisit Call to Action #83:
We call upon the Canada Council for the Arts to establish, as a funding priority, a strategy for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects and produce works that contribute to the reconciliation process.
Coming Together will take place June 9th–15th, 2025, the week prior to Indigenous Peoples Day on, Pelee Island, Lake Erie, Ontario, and include artists residencies, live performances, workshops, an artists’ market, and the dissemination of research undertaken. Christine Friday, Gord Grisenthwaite, Nathan Adler, Beany John & JP Longboat (all professional Indigenous artists) have committed to partaking of residencies, facilitating workshops, and performing at Coming Together.
The long term goal of Stone & Sky is to replicate this model in future years with multiple collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists.
To encourage engagement and ensure accessibility, all Coming Together events are free.

Christine Friday is deeply rooted to her family’s ancestral hereditary lands, Friday’s Point which includes surrounding lands and lakes that make up her family’s tribal hunting grounds, located within the unceded lands of the Wabi Mkwa family. She lives on Bear Island, in her community of Temagami First Nation. Christine is Anishinaabe Kwe, she is a proficient resilient Indigenous storyteller. She began her dance career with In the Land of Spirits in 1992 and has maintained a professional dance career for over 30 years, as a choreographer and director, developing solo work, commissioned work, youth creations and full-scale productions.

JP Longboat, Artistic Director of Circadia Indigena
JP Longboat is Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk), Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River, he grew up along the River Ouse, Haldimand Deed territory, Ontario. JP has a BFA degree in Visual Arts from the University of Michigan and Ontario College of Art and has worked as a visual artist, graphic designer, actor, storyteller dancer and choreographer. He has performed, danced and collaborated with many professional performing companies across Canada. JP has also served as Program Officer in Dance at the Canada Council for the Arts and has been on the faculty of Aboriginal Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He brings depth of skill, practice and knowledge to this endeavour as well as a vision rooted in understanding and honouring the diversity of Indigenous culture.
He is the founder and Artistic Director of Circadia Indigena – Indigenous Arts Collective based in Algonquin territory, along the Kichi sibi at Akikodjiwan Falls.

Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler is author of Ghost Lake, which won the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award in Published English Fiction, and of Wrist, an Indigenous monster story written from the monster’s perspective (both from Kegedonce Press). He is co-editor of Bawaajigan – Stories of Power, a dream-themed anthology of Indigenous writers (Exile Editions). He is an artist and filmmaker who works in a variety of mediums including audio and video, and drawing and painting. Nathan is first-place winner of an Aboriginal Writing Challenge, and recipient of a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for literature, he has an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC), BFA in Integrated Media (OCAD), and BA in English Literature and Native Studies (Trent). His writing is published in various magazines, blogs, and anthologies. He is two-spirit, Jewish, Anishinaabe, and member of Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation. Originally from Ontario, he currently resides in Vancouver.

Gord Grisenthwaite – Gord is nłeɂkepmx, a member of the Lytton First Nation, and has earned an MA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Windsor (2020). He isn’t the oldest emerging writer in the world, but he’s up there. “To be clear,” Gord stresses, “I had planned to start writing decades ago. In fact, I started to write in my early 20s but I had a ton of stuff to deal with, none of it good.” His work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Our Stories Literary Journal, Prism International, ndncountry, Offset 17, Exile Quarterly, and Bawaajigan: Stories of Power. His work has earned a number of prizes, including the 2013 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award. Palimpsest Press dropped his first novel Home Waltz, on 28 October, 2020 You can get your copy from the usual big box/online stores, the publisher, Palimpsest Press, or your local independent bookseller (His faves include Biblioasis Books, Windsor, ON, River Bookshop, Amherstburg, ON, and Mosaic Books, Kelowna, BC.)

Beany John is a Two Spirit shapeshifter, storyteller, and dancer. She is Taino and Cree from Kehewin, Alberta. She is a
Grass Dancer, Hoop Dancer, and traditional artisan. Beany grew up learning traditional storytelling, dance, and arts
from a young age as a part of Kehewin Native Dance Theatre. Travelling and performing, she learned from meeting traditional knowledge keepers from many different nations across the world and was initiated into the Grass Dance Society in
Kehewin in 2001at the age of 10.
Since 2004, Beany has been one of the principal workshop facilitators and performers for Kehewin Native Dance Theatre. She/They has been teaching Hoop Dance to Native youth, community members non-Native allies since 2015. She shares the Traditional art of Hoop Dancing blended with Contemporary, as
well as traditional Pow Wow music.
Beany is inspired by wanting to make people feel good about who they are as
Indigenous people and has brought wonder, appreciation and excitement to the thousands of audiences she has performed for.

Coming Together Workshops

Monday, June 9th to Thursday, June 12th – Gord Grisenthwaite
11:45am to 3:15pm – East Park Campground Beach Pavilion
Creative writing geared to emergent Indigenous artists, all welcome. (rain venue at the Legion)

*Wednesday’s workshop will be held from 1:00pm to 3:15pm at The Legion following the luncheon*

Interfusional Storytelling
This workshop will demonstrate how to blend written and oral storytelling methods to develop an Interfusional story.
Channeling Anger
At times we’ve all been “[M]ad as hell, and [we’re] not going to take it any more.” In this workshop we will re-channel anger’s potential destructiveness to creative fuel.
Magical Realism and Fabulist Fiction
This workshop will explain the differences between Magical Realism and fabulist fiction, and study aspects of Magical Realism as practiced by Gabriel García Márquez and Thomas King.
Writing Trauma
In this workshop we will consider how scenes of trauma depicted in short fiction and literary essays work or fail, and how to build a traumatic scene that conveys compelling trauma that doesn’t trivialize the event or its characters.

Friday, June 13th – April Manderson and Linda Brogan
10:00am to 2:00pm – East Park Campgound Beach Pavilion
Creative writing, finding voice through the twelve word process, all welcome. (rain venue at the Legion)

Saturday, June 14th – Multiple Artists Workshops at the Market
10:00am to 1:00pm – The Quarry
Working with raw clay, making inks and dyes from indigenous plants and more.

Saturday, June 14th – Carrie Ann Peters
2:00pm – Mission Hall
Participants will learn indigenous worldviews and ways of knowing, with emphasis on the importance of the moon as a source of knowledge and connection.

Coming Together Workshop Artists

Carrie Ann Peters – Carrie Ann was born and raised in Windsor and it was instilled in her by her Mom to be proud to be Potawatomi. Moving to Leamington 30 years ago and being able to truly connect with what that statement really means.
Carrie Ann began to learn her Teachings, Ceremonies and Language 15 years ago and has reconnected whole-heartedly with the lands that her Ancestors once thrived upon and protected. In 2010 Carrie Ann began working for her Nation – Caldwell First Nation in her role as Culture & Language Coordinator began in 2018, where she has the opportunity to revitalize the Language, Teachings and Ceremonies. Carrie Ann believes sharing stories of Caldwell’s Ancestors journey on Turtle Island and Anishinaabe Culture with others helps cultivate understanding and awareness. Carrie Ann will be hosting a workshop at The Mission Hall on June 14th at 2pm, where participants will learn indigenous worldviews and ways of knowing, with emphasis on the importance of the moon as a source of knowledge and connection.

April Manderson is a BACP (British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists) Mental Health Practitioner and Writer, currently engaged in PhD Research at the University of Salford, UK. Her research looks at the health advantages of creative writing as a therapeutic tool in group and individual settings and, cites her personal experiences managing mental health as a neurodiverse woman through the lens of auto-ethnographic enquiry. She is the Director of Write the Power, a grassroots community-interest writing collective funded to develop and deliver creative interventions to support better mental health outcomes through shared experiences of creative expression. She is interested in connecting with like-minded groups to share experiences and learn from other marginalized communities. She seeks to understand cultural nuance better and identify any emerging learning from these connections of creative solidarity and self-expression. April is an active performer on the Manchester Spoken Word scene and delivers mindfulness journaling workshops in NHS Health Clinics.

Linda Brogan‘s specialty is excavation with mind-maps. In 2020, when the Reno at the Whitworth is closed by Lockdown, using a 12-words technique that effortlessly creates content, Linda excavates the intertwined memoirs of three Reno ladies, who have never written before. Their book TWELVE WORDS is published by Bluemoose. A technique Linda has developed over 25 years. “This is what I am here to teach. To begin with.”