What is Finding Flowers?
Finding Flowers Project is an interdisciplinary research project that integrates art, ecology and education within a biocultural approach to native pollinator and plant diversity conservation.
Inspired by the work of the late Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald, Finding Flowers grows, revitalizes and cares for native pollinator gardens as art installations, and as spaces for community contemplation and knowledge co-production.
Co-led by Anishinaabe artist, curator and educator Lisa Myers and native-bee ecologist Dr. Sheila Colla, Finding Flowers' main focus is researching, replanting and caring for the more-than-twenty Medicine and Butterfly Garden artworks created across Canada by the late Mi'kmaw/Beothuk and 2-Spirit artist Mike MacDonald.
MacDonald's gardens were originally planted, and some continue to exist, surrounded by different plant life and languages across the land we know as Canada. Distinct from colonial conceptions of gardens, MacDonald conceived his gardens as art installations, and as spaces for community contemplation and environmental reflection.
Our research team is housed in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC), at York University, and is funded in part by the Government of Canada New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Objectives
Over the past decade, pollinator decline and its implications for the sustainability of natural ecosystems and food crop production, has emerged as one of the more important environmental topics among the public and policy-makers (Klein et al. 2006; Hall & Steiner 2019). Thus far, research on pollinator declines has been heavily biased towards intensive agriculture and urban systems (Kremen et al. 2002; Hall et al. 2017). Largely absent from this framing is the cultural importance of wild pollinators and economic importance of wild pollination services for rural, Indigenous, and other communities.
In this context, and inspired by Mike MacDonald’s important legacy, Finding Flowers seeks to mobilize spaces for cross-pollination between environmental matters, Indigenous artistic practice, and biocultural research on native plants and pollinators. This is done by:
→ Supporting and working alongside Indigenous food and pollinator gardens.
→ Curating exhibitions of Indigenous artists who respond to elements and concepts from Mike MacDonald’s gardens
→ Developing socially-engaged arts, ecology, sustainability and citizen science programming
→ Undertaking ecological experiments to better understand plant-pollinator interactions
→ Expanding interdisciplinary academic research on these topics
→ Mobilizing knowledge through online and irl platforms both within and beyond academia.
A biocultural approach to pollinator conservation includes acknowledging relationships between people and pollinators where there is reciprocity, respect, and care (Hill et al. in press). Sourcing and creating gardens of Indigenous plants returns manicured lawns of art galleries to something resembling the original flora of a region. These gardens claim space through the clinging roots of perennials and bringing together artists to contemplate, respond to and build on scholarship related to MacDonald’s work, while at the same time considering the social and political context from which our current work has emerged, in light of the continued threats to land by extractive industries.
Guiding Principles
The three guiding principles of Finding Flowers are: Art + Ecology + Pedagogy. These three principles build and rely upon the concepts of:
→ Practise as Research
→ Biocultural Approaches
→ Cross/Inter/Trans Disciplinary
→ Proposing + Practising Care + Mattering + Relationships
→ Resistance + Refusal of Extractivism and Capitalist “Progress”
→ Community Building
→ Indigenous Practises + Knowledges + Languages
→ Food Sovereignty
→ Education
→ Environmental Conservation
→ Medicine Plants
→ Pollinators
Origins of the project related to Mike MacDonald's Work
From the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald recorded testimony and created visual documents for the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations during their land claim challenges. While shooting videos near Kitwanga, BC, in an area threatened by clear-cut logging, MacDonald’s encounters with butterflies inspired him to talk with Elders in the region. By his accounts, it was then when he gained understanding of the butterfly’s connection to medicine plants and healing.
MacDonald began planting medicine and butterfly gardens across Canada, in an artistic effort to learn about the flora and fauna, and value Indigenous knowledge of the region over the alternative, monetary value of deforestation. His gardens were created as places to contemplate human connections with all living things, after witnessing how resource extraction threatened Indigenous communities, land, and wildlife.
Inspired in MacDonald’s practice, YorkU interdisciplinary research project Finding Flowers is currently replanting, revitalizing and learning from his garden work, integrating community art, ecology, and education. Working alongside pre-existing gardens created by MacDonald from 1995 - 2003, we aim to preserve, expand and build new Indigenous gardens at various locations across Canada.
What is Finding Flowers?
Finding Flowers Project is an interdisciplinary research project that integrates art, ecology and education within a biocultural approach to native pollinator and plant diversity conservation.
Inspired by the work of the late Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald, Finding Flowers grows, revitalizes and cares for native pollinator gardens as art installations, and as spaces for community contemplation and knowledge co-production.
Co-led by Anishinaabe artist, curator and educator Lisa Myers and native-bee ecologist Dr. Sheila Colla, Finding Flowers' main focus is researching, replanting and caring for the more-than-twenty Medicine and Butterfly Garden artworks created across Canada by the late Mi'kmaw/Beothuk and 2-Spirit artist Mike MacDonald.
MacDonald's gardens were originally planted, and some continue to exist, surrounded by different plant life and languages across the land we know as Canada. Distinct from colonial conceptions of gardens, MacDonald conceived his gardens as art installations, and as spaces for community contemplation and environmental reflection.
Our research team is housed in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC), at York University, and is funded in part by the Government of Canada New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Objectives
Over the past decade, pollinator decline and its implications for the sustainability of natural ecosystems and food crop production, has emerged as one of the more important environmental topics among the public and policy-makers (Klein et al. 2006; Hall & Steiner 2019). Thus far, research on pollinator declines has been heavily biased towards intensive agriculture and urban systems (Kremen et al. 2002; Hall et al. 2017). Largely absent from this framing is the cultural importance of wild pollinators and economic importance of wild pollination services for rural, Indigenous, and other communities.
In this context, and inspired by Mike MacDonald’s important legacy, Finding Flowers seeks to mobilize spaces for cross-pollination between environmental matters, Indigenous artistic practice, and biocultural research on native plants and pollinators. This is done by:
→ Supporting and working alongside Indigenous food and pollinator gardens.
→ Curating exhibitions of Indigenous artists who respond to elements and concepts from Mike MacDonald’s gardens
→ Developing socially-engaged arts, ecology, sustainability and citizen science programming
→ Undertaking ecological experiments to better understand plant-pollinator interactions
→ Expanding interdisciplinary academic research on these topics
→ Mobilizing knowledge through online and irl platforms both within and beyond academia.
A biocultural approach to pollinator conservation includes acknowledging relationships between people and pollinators where there is reciprocity, respect, and care (Hill et al. in press). Sourcing and creating gardens of Indigenous plants returns manicured lawns of art galleries to something resembling the original flora of a region. These gardens claim space through the clinging roots of perennials and bringing together artists to contemplate, respond to and build on scholarship related to MacDonald’s work, while at the same time considering the social and political context from which our current work has emerged, in light of the continued threats to land by extractive industries.
Guiding Principles
The three guiding principles of Finding Flowers are: Art + Ecology + Pedagogy. These three principles build and rely upon the concepts of:
→ Practise as Research
→ Biocultural Approaches
→ Cross/Inter/Trans Disciplinary
→ Proposing + Practising Care + Mattering + Relationships
→ Resistance + Refusal of Extractivism and Capitalist “Progress”
→ Community Building
→ Indigenous Practises + Knowledges + Languages
→ Food Sovereignty
→ Education
→ Environmental Conservation
→ Medicine Plants
→ Pollinators
Origins of the project related to Mike MacDonald's Work
From the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald recorded testimony and created visual documents for the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations during their land claim challenges. While shooting videos near Kitwanga, BC, in an area threatened by clear-cut logging, MacDonald’s encounters with butterflies inspired him to talk with Elders in the region. By his accounts, it was then when he gained understanding of the butterfly’s connection to medicine plants and healing.
MacDonald began planting medicine and butterfly gardens across Canada, in an artistic effort to learn about the flora and fauna, and value Indigenous knowledge of the region over the alternative, monetary value of deforestation. His gardens were created as places to contemplate human connections with all living things, after witnessing how resource extraction threatened Indigenous communities, land, and wildlife.
Inspired in MacDonald’s practice, YorkU interdisciplinary research project Finding Flowers is currently replanting, revitalizing and learning from his garden work, integrating community art, ecology, and education. Working alongside pre-existing gardens created by MacDonald from 1995 - 2003, we aim to preserve, expand and build new Indigenous gardens at various locations across Canada.