Feinberg’s essay begins with the renaming of Amherst Street in Montreal in October 2019. The new name, Atateken Street, refers to a term in the Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) language that means “the idea of equality among people” (164). The street’s previous name honoured the genocidal British general, Jeffrey Amherst, notorious for distributing blankets on which people dying of smallpox had lain to First Nations peoples in an attempt, he wrote, “to extirpate this execrable race” (qtd. 164). Atateken Street is the first street in Montreal to have a Mohawk name, and it reflects the importance of “the Kanien’kehá:ka nation, the recognized custodians of these lands and waters” (164). 

“The controversy that led to the street’s renaming reflects a colonial legacy that is pervasive in this region and characterizes the disjointed sociopolitical context in which the artist-activists Émilie Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) and Cam (Innu/Québecois) both work within,” Feinberg writes. “Although we are witness to dominant colonial narratives that have been systematically perpetuated for generations but are not being challenged, Indigenous languages, cultural symbols and stories are still rarely seen or heard in everyday places” (164). The two artists take up these concerns in their practices (164). 

Monnet is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans theatre, performance, visual, and sound art, and she is also the founding director of Onishka, an interdisciplinary organization (165). Cam is a street artist and the coordinator of Unceded Voices, which supports street artists who are Indigenous women, women of colour, queer, two-spirit and gender non-conforming (165). “Cam and Monnet expose and respond to visual culture that is complicity in the systematic erasure of Indigenous voices and perspectives,” Feinberg writes (165). Walking “plays a generative role in the work of both artists. They employ walking as a pedagogical force that is personally grounded and politically imbued. In other words, while walking, they come into relation with multiple and intersecting encounters with people, places and things that inspirit their relationship to place” (165). For that reason, walking in their work “is fundamentally pedagogical”: “it enables interactions with the place-world that inform reflections and intentions” (165). For Feinberg, “the identity and memory of place is formed by our traces—the manifold ways that our presence effects where we walk” (165). It’s not a case where place affects us; we also affect place, and that’s particularly true of the work of Cam and Monnet, which shapes “the felt and seen world to better reflect their sense of belonging to the regions they move through and with” (165).

Feinberg, drawing on Jane Bennett’s work, suggests that “each step is charged with connectivity,” and so “this aliveness that radiates can be attributed to the inherent vibrancy or dynamics of place,” even in urban centres, “in green spaces and in the plant life that emerges through cracks in concrete or asphalt” and in weather (165). “We are propelled and compelled by our interactions with the dynamics of place as they move with and through us,” Feinberg continues, describing places as “experiential entanglements” (166). She draws on Doreen Massey’s discussion of place as a “constellation of processes” (qtd. 166). Of course, many factors limit the ability of people to experience space (gender, race, class, physical ability) (166). Cam and Monnet “both invite us to consider how we can reveal, confront, alter and contribute to dismantling and transforming these disempowering limitations in our relational context of place” (166). Their works “are efforts to transfigure public urban space to contest dominant narratives while honouring the presence of those who have been disavowed” (166). Those practices are ways to re-story place, Feinberg suggests, citing Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (166).

“Cam’s art practice focuses on creating more spaces for Indigenous voices and stories through street art such as wheat paste (applying paper prints to walls with a glue made from wheat and water), stencils and textile arts,” Feinberg writes. “Since 2012, Cam has been weaving Indigenous feminism and queer politics into the everyday visual tapestry of the city” (166). She looks for sites for her work by walking in her neighbourhood with other women (166-67). In this way, “[w]alking is a co-creative reflective mode through which she listens to the dynamics of place to consider where her works will resonate and provoke” (167). Her work is colourful and often includes text (167). Cam puts her art in the streets because of “her experience of walking and feeling like her culture and identity are not reflected” there (168). She is also motivated “by the potential benefit that her images and texts might offer others” (168). Cam has also organized events where murals were collectively created in Montreal (168-70). She has taken Feinberg’s students out for mural walks, offering a “formal and semiotic interpretation of the works while also sharing anecdotes about the processes that were involved with coordinating, making and preserving the murals” (171). “The resonant emotions and revelations sparked by the guided mural walk and subsequent discussions move the students from a theoretical treatment of decolonization as an abstract word towards a recognition that to decolonize is a personal, felt, lived and reflective process,” Feinberg writes (173). 

Next, Feinberg describes Monnet’s 2015 work Hand on Hand, which began as a guided walk from the ViVA! Performance Art Biennale building and went around the corner to the building where the Royal Canadian Navy Office is located (174). Once she arrived there, she discussed the symbolism of the logo, which shows two hands shaking (174). “The participants were invited to reflect on the physicality of this gesture by walking to the following destination while holding hands with another participant,” Feinberg writes. “it was remarkable to witness nearly one hundred people walking together down a narrow sidewalk while holding hands with another person. For those involved, the simple gesture challenged our comfort level with the unexpected intimacy involved with touching the hand of a stranger” (174). The event was convivial and comfortable: “Through our awkward bodily entanglements, we were drawn into consideration about the implications of becoming so closely intertwined, perhaps not entirely by choice, along an unknown trajectory” (174). The event’s next stop was at a monument fountain in a small park that’s intended to commemorate the voyages of Jacques Cartier (174). Monnet “read from texts and sang with her drum to draw attention to the fragments of Donnacona’s story that are silenced by the historical narrative conveyed by the fountain” while the group held hands in a circle and listened to the water (174-75). 

Monnet also states that walking in the bush “allows for intuitive listening,” which informed her 2018 multimedia performance work Okinum (177). Okinum (dam in Anishnaabemowin) was inspired by a dream about a giant beaver; the solo performance was “an exploration of language, identity, [and] the presence of ancestors” (178). Okinum used movement, sound design, and video installation to examine Monnet’s heritage and spirit, and the artist described how ideas were revealed to her while walking with the territory of her ancestors (178). 

These works “shed light on the possibilities of walking as a pedagogical force—a force that enables learning through somatic as well as affective emplacement,” Feinberg writes. “The emplacement of their work, however, is not limited to the tactile connection of their feet, but rather is also formed by story-sharing through social media and other influences that have helped to make public simultaneous and thematically intersecting walking-based initiatives in multiple Indigenous communities” (180). Those activities include Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute’s 2016 exhibition Footprints: A Walk through Generations, presented in Ouje-Bougoumou in Quebec (180). “The central message of the exhibition was to emphasize that walking contributes to reinforcing ‘the strength of our culture, the strength of our people, and what we have gained from our relationship with the territory, with the land, with the animals’” (Herodier and Little, qtd. 180-81). Feinberg also discusses the 2014 walk of 20 Cree youth from Mistissini to Montreal in protest against a proposed uranium mine on their traditional lands and the water walks of Josephine Mandamin. “Each of these examples of walking-based actions influence Cam and Émilie’s work,” Feinberg states (181). They see their art as taking place in solidarity with such walking initiatives (181). 

“The pedagogical force of walking in Cam and Monnet’s work is palpable in how they each develop ideas, questions and responses while walking, but it also manifests in how one encounters their work,” Feinberg concludes. “By offering opportunities to engage with Indigenous perspectives, as well as reconsider residual colonial narratives, their work reconfigures our relationship to where and how we walk, both visually and conceptually,” thereby contributing “to indigenizing and decolonizing place by shedding light on Indigenous voices, both past and present” (181-82). Cam and Monnet’s work makes their perspectives and presence as Indigenous women known and heard, honours their ancestors, amplifies Indigenous voices, contests colonial narratives, reconfigures collective memory and contributes “to the re-storying of place through artistic intervention” (182).

Feinberg’s essay presents me with an account of two walking artists I didn’t know about. Its final paragraph introduces me to a literature of walking written by arts educators—something I might look at if I have time. I find the notion of walking as part of an artistic research process interesting, and could easily align that with the research I’ve been doing. And the reference to Jane Bennett’s work suggests that I should read her book sooner rather than later, as the reference to Doreen Massey’s work suggests that I should probably reread her work.As well, Feinberg’s use of Robin Wall Kimmerer might suggest that I should finish Braiding Sweetgrass, although in one of our class discussions it was dismissed as overly romantic. There is so much to read—and it feels like there is so little time in which to do that reading. The trick is to find a way to balance walking and reading, something I haven’t been able to do since last summer. I’ll have to try harder.

Work Cited

Feinberg, Pohanna Pyne. “Re-storying Place: The Pedagogical Force of Walking in the Work of Indigenous Artist-Activists Émilie Monnet and Cam.” International Journal of Education Through Art, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 163-85. DOI: 10.1386/eta_00056_1.