2026 Earth Day Celebration Archive
At the Earth Day Celebration on April 25th 2026 at Nanaimo’s Bowen Park/ Millstone River, our community of creative land stewards gathered together in unity to celebrate our efforts at restoring Nanaimoโs native ecology, renewing our circle of protection.
Traditional Welcoming to the land…
At the opening to our celebration, we were welcomed to the ancestral land of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, by respected Elder Doug White II.
” I think that Earth day today is one of the best things that could ever happen… Snuneymuxw welcomes all of you into our territory to carry on in your good work, doing the same thing as we do, looking after not only the people but the lands, and we have to look after and protect what is very sacred to us, and that is the medicines that grow in the Earth and around the trees, and sometimes they get covered up and we donโt want to lose those, because the medicines worked for us a long time ago, before the ivy or any other invasive plants reached here. I think that we look at a lot of things that come into this world, our world, works very well, but there are some things that donโt work well. I think our medicines have been known to the doctors for a long time and have helped them in developing some medicines from their knowledge of speaking to Native People. So I thank you very much, you working here today. We call it nuts’amaat, on Earth Day today, that we are all working together as one. “
Doug White II
Art Action Earwig’s Opening Performance & Gifting Ceremony for 2026 Earth Day Celebration
Three members of Art Action Earwig, Wryly Andherson, Minah Lee, and Tadafumi Tamura warmed up our mind-body-spirit in a circle. Snuneymuxw artist tsatassaya Tracey White and her Elders joined them for a special gifting ceremony.
Feeding spirits and the community…
After Art Action Earwig’s offerings to the spirits in all directions, Michael Geselbracht of Nanaimo Forest School blessed the foods with lovely songs. Artist tsatassaya Tracey White also offered a blessing in Hul’q’umi’num’ language to the community lunch featuring hearty miso soup and rice balls.
Participatory Arts and Performances
In the afternoon, Earth Day lead artists from various disciplines and backgrounds, Christi York, Sonnet Labbรฉ, Mitch Miyagawa, and Tania Amaral, facilitated group ivy-pulling sessions followed by their individual co-creation gathering with committed community members. These creative gatherings brought music, poetry, dance, craft, and multimedia experiences reflecting on and integrating our collective actions of pulling invasive plants from the land. Each group had an opportunity to showcase a small sharable art piece they accomplished together.
Creation of ivy circles and community garland-chain
Led by Christi York
Community participants pulled ivy vines from where they were causing harm and imbalance, and used them as art materials to make something meaningful for ourselves and larger communities. The creation of individual ivy circles linked in a community garland-chain was an embodied process of this collective land stewardship. The garland-chain was installed at the Amphitheatre. Weaving wishes on the community creation, a participatory activity for both participants and audience members, was facilitated by Art Action Earwig.
Images by Rewild US Media/Rae-Anne
Weave Stream of Wishes
With hand-made botanical inks prepared by Christi York and Art Action Earwig. Facilitated by Minah Lee and Wryly Andherson of Art Action Earwig.
Images by Minah Lee
Leading to the celebration day, Christi also facilitated an ivy-basket weaving session with a group of passionate weavers. Some of their baskets were woven into the garland chain or displayed alongside the installation. Click below to witness the process!
About a week later, Minah and Wryly hosted a Weving Wishes session for participants to make protective wishes with Korean traditional mulberry paper and hand-made botanical inks. The wishes were tied to the baskets we made. Please visit the archive link below to see more.
Images by Rewild US Media/Rae-Anne
Sonnet Labbรฉ
Lead Artist
โ โThe Holly and the Ivyโ is a traditional folk Christmas carol that happens to name the two plants we will pull most in Bowen Park this Earth Day. As we gather on Snuneymuxw territory to yank out strings of ivy and prickles of holly, how might we work with these and other plants in song, to name how we want to relate to the land around us?โ
Dr. Sonnet LโAbbรฉ, poet and vocalist, guided a Community co-creation session that engaged participants through the poetry of talking, writing and singing with the plants. A composition of words and melodies reflecting their invasive pulling experiences was showcased.
Maji the Magi (Mitch Miyagawa)
Lead Artist
Maji the Magi, a dancing clown-mage brought people together in a participatory ritual performance. Part silent disco, Maji led a group of participants in improv, dance, and guided ceremony including a collect alter-building with natural and found materials, all to crack open everyday life โ inviting participants into aliveness, wonder, and the feeling that something genuinely magical just happened.
Tania Amaral
Lead Artist
Tania who is a passionate dancer, performer, teacher, and cultural educator dedicated to celebrating and promoting African heritage, generously shared her ancestral knowledge with the participants to embody deeply rooted connection to the land and community members around us. Participants moved through somatic and hands-on actions of ivy-pulling, movements and gestures inspired by the organic choreography of eco-restoration, and African dance moves facilitated by Tania’s expertise. At the Amphitheatre, a larger dance circle for everyone was formed to close out the event day with joy and our shared love for Mother Earth.
Ivy Pulling
Invasive-plant pulling has been an essential part of our creative ambition and reconcili-action, in which settler and immigrant community members and artists lead the project in collaboration with and support of our host First Nation. Everyone becomes an important actor in the mosaic of complex ecology while gaining deeper understandings about the health of the land and all beings relying on it.
Images by Rewild US Media/Rae-Anne
Huy tseep q’u contributors!
2026 Earth Day Artists
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, hulโqโumiโnumโ. She is the founder and co-producer of the annual Sumshathut Festival, celebrating the Winter Solstice, and qwuyโulush โutl Swy-a-lana, an Indigenous dance festivalโtwo cornerstone events that have enriched Nanaimoโs cultural landscape and amplified Indigenous voices through vibrant, inclusive community gatherings. In April 2025, tsatassaya received the City of Nanaimoโs 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 xสทmษฮธkwษyฬษm, Skwxwรบ7mesh, and Sษlฬรญlwษtaส/Selilwitulh Nations of the Lower Mainland, unceded territories.
We bring โPlacate-ringโ 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 โprotectionโ 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 itโs an odd spiritual potluck where you can (b)ring something to share.
Earth Day community art Lead Artists
Tania Amaral
Tania Amaral, also known artistically as PynKsy Shell, was born and raised in Mozambique, in southeastern Africa. She is a passionate dancer, performer, teacher, and cultural educator dedicated to celebrating and promoting African heritage. In 2015, she created a unique dance style called Afro Fusion Sharqi Dance, which is now officially trademarked. This style exclusively blends diverse dance movements from across Africa. Tania is also the CEO of Africa Day Nanaimo, a vibrant community event that celebrates the richness and diversity of African cultures. She is a two-time nominee for the Woman of Influence Nanaimo in the Arts & Culture category.
Sonnet L’Abbรฉ
Sonnet L’Abbรฉ is a writer, professor, poet, editor and vocalist who has been performing locally since 2019 and teaches English literature, public speaking, film studies and creative writing at Vancouver Island University. IG: @sonnetlabbe
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 feelโa 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 โ 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 โ 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.