Thank you contributors!

tsatassaya Tracey White

tsatassaya is a curator, producer, event planner, and community mobilizer from the Snuneymuxw and Hupacasath Nations. A dedicated advocate for Indigenous arts and culture, tsatassaya has directed, produced, and performed in theatre works presented in both English and her Indigenous language, hul’q’umi’num’. She is the founder and co-producer of the annual Sumshathut Festival, celebrating the Winter Solstice, and qwuy’ulush ‘utl Swy-a-lana, an Indigenous dance festival—two cornerstone events that have enriched Nanaimo’s cultural landscape and amplified Indigenous voices through vibrant, inclusive community gatherings. In April 2025, tsatassaya received the City of Nanaimo’s Honour in Culture Award for her outstanding contributions. She also served as lead consultant for Breaking Bannock, a year-long community reconciliation program on Gabriola Island in 2024. Her work with Dance West Network includes curating Indigenous Dance Talks in 2021 and 2024 in collaboration with prominent Indigenous dance leaders across British Columbia.

Art Action Earwig

Art Action Earwig is an interdisciplinary collective composed of Wryly Andherson, Minah Lee, and Tadafumi Tamura, living and working on the traditional land of the Snuneymuxw people of Vancouver Island and the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations of the Lower Mainland, unceded territories. 

We bring “Placate-ring” to Bowen Park this Earth Day, a community participatory circular movement to regain balance in interrupted circulation and heartful communication. This work is a living thing, and we learn from experiencing how a work resonates differently in different times and places. We are curious about what “protection” means in the context of place and history, in this place and moment. What does protection mean to you in the world today? What am I protecting? Where does a sense of protection belong? Three members of Art Action Earwig try to create a ring of protection with you, by feeding the spirits in all directions. Perhaps it’s an odd spiritual potluck where you can (b)ring something to share.

Christi York

Christi York is a contemporary artist who has been studying basketry techniques for the past decade. For York, the material is the muse. By hand harvesting her own plant materials, she spends many hours processing plants into a more refined state; invaluable time spent learning her materials by feel—a kind of moving meditation that informs the work ahead. 

Her work speaks to a sense of place; including disturbance, balance and history. Knowledge, memory, and mourning are explored by engaging in ancient plant technologies, and hand skills that used to be passed down through generations.

As a materials and process driven studio artist, she is obsessed with plants and how humans fit into their world. York has spent her life on the West Coast of British Columbia, and now resides in the Southern Gulf Islands, traditional Coast Salish First Nations Territory.

Maji the Magi (Mitch Miyagawa)

Maji the Magi is a dancing clown-mage who brings people together in rituals, performances, and gatherings. Part circus ringleader, part trickster shaman(ish), Maji uses improv, dance, and participatory ceremony to crack open everyday life — inviting participants into aliveness, wonder, and the feeling that something genuinely magical just happened.

Maji’s practice draws from Shinto animism, chaos magic, Jungian depth work, and other traditions that take the powers of nature and the unseen world seriously. 

As Mitch Miyagawa, they bring 25 years as a multidisciplinary artist with award-winning work in film, theatre, and prose — including the 2012 documentary A Sorry State, which won the Writers Guild of Canada Award for Best Documentary.

Based in Nanaimo, Mitch is co-artistic director of Murmur Arts Collective and works as a Senior Project Manager with Forager Hill Consulting, supporting cultural revitalization with First Nations communities across the region.

linktr.ee/mitchmiyagawa