The Indigenous Voices Fund Grants program provides direct financial support to Indigenous artists in the Quinte region with the aim of facilitating a range of arts creation, sharing, and learning opportunities for Indigenous artists, and fostering understanding, exchange, and collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members.
2024 Round
We are delighted to announce and congratulate the 2024 Indigenous Voices Fund Grants program recipients! $13,000 was awarded in this second round.
Shyanne is an interdisciplinary artist who enjoys painting, printmaking, graphic design, sewing, beadwork, and quillwork and morphing them into wearable art. She grew up in the community of Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory where she was inspired by traditional Haudenosaunee arts. Shyanne attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2015-2018 where she studied studio arts with teachers such as Neal Ambrose-Smith, Jameson Chas Banks, and Linda Lomahaftewa. The IV Fund Grant helped Shyanne reach new audiences by participating in the December 2024 Akwesasne Indigenous Fashion Show. She designed, created, and presented a new line featuring gowns with acrylic paint, beadwork and quill work, silkscreen and natural-dyed fabrics, and re-cycled garments to share the harms and environmental impacts of fast fashion. Angela Wiggins is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) artist based in Belleville, Ontario. Her work is deeply inspired by her Indigenous heritage and connection to the land. A self-taught artist, Angela creates vibrant acrylic paintings, intricate graphite drawings, and mixed-media pieces that explore themes of healing, spirituality, and cultural identity. Her art is influenced by her personal journey of reconnecting with her family’s roots, particularly the trauma experienced by her grandfather, a survivor of the Spanish Residential School. The IV Fund Grant will help Angela fund the research and creation phases of a new major project, enabling her to create 30 medium and large scale acrylic and mixed media works and display them at an upcoming exhibition at Belleville’s John M. Parrott Gallery. Ceramist Marleen Murphy owns and operates Millside Ceramics, proudly located on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. Each of her ceramic pieces is hand crafted from earthenware clay and molds, and kiln-fired and hand painted by Marleen in her home studio. Marleen’s connection to traditional medicines and teachings can be found in her most renowned pieces such as the Friendship Circle, Smudge Bowls and Medicine Wheel Collections. Marleen will use the IV Fund Grant to design and create a batch of the first environmentally-friendly smudge bowls with an acceptable and alternative source to using abalone, a traditional material that is now endangered in Canada. Alyssa Bardy is a self-taught natural light photographer and a visual storyteller, a mother and a wife. Her photography showcases the intersection of humans and the Natural World, and the deep reciprocal love that runs between the two. Alyssa uses the lens as a tool for herself, her children, and future generations to learn and share the brilliance and beauty of both culture and creation. Alyssa is Upper Cayuga of Six Nations of the Grand River and is a member of Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, where she and her family reside. The IV Fund Grant will help Alyssa cover materials and other costs to help her prepare and display her work in upcoming exhibitions, with the aim of expanding and increasing visibility around her non-commercial photographic practice.
Shyanne Brant
Angela Wiggins
Marleen Murphy
Alyssa Bardy
—
Thank you to our Indigenous Voices Fund donors!
To better respond to the demand for support from local Indigenous artists (our first round of grants was significantly oversubscribed) we ran a fundraising campaign in June 2024 to increase this year’s grants envelope. Thanks to the donors and organizations mentioned below, we raised $3000 which will be matched by the Indigenous Voices Fund donor – the Elderberry Fund – to help cover other program costs, including paying industry-standard fees to Indigenous peer assessors.
We express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who contributed, including:
Learn more about the Indigenous Voices Fund program and read about the powerful impact of these grants in testimonials shared by 2023-24 recipients in the presentation below.
Indigenous Voices Fund (Presentation (4:3)) by Andrea Dawes
2023 Round
Through the 2023 application process, it became clear that there are significant needs for career support among Indigenous artists in our community. This first round was significantly oversubscribed, with grant requests totaling over $36,000, nearly four times the amount of funding available this year.
It is with sincere gratitude that we announce that the Elderberry Fund made an additional $5000 donation to help us better respond to this demand! Thanks to them, we were able to award $15,000 in grants in 2023 to four talented artists working in a range of artistic disciplines.
Sincere thanks to the panel of Indigenous artists who formed the Peer Assessment Committee, and to all of the applicants.
We are delighted to introduce and congratulate the recipients of our first round of Indigenous Voices Fund grants!
Brandie Maracle is Wolf Clan from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, and a day school survivor. She has been creating custom designed ribbon skirts for over 30 years, and spreads pride in her Mohawk culture by encouraging and helping others to create ribbon skirts that hold meaning for them. Brandie has exhibited with the Canada Border Services Agency as part of their Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women training program, in the Indigenous training room at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, and has two skirts in the A Path Forward exhibit at Macaulay Church Museum in Picton. The IV Fund grant will allow Brandie to welcome 30 participants, at a subsidized rate, to three full-day ribbon skirt creation workshops in Tyendinaga and help her purchase 7 new sewing machines to increase her workshop capacity for this series and beyond. Tara White is a Kanien’kahá:ka and Euro-Canadian author who has published books for a range of audiences and age ranges. Several of her books explore themes of identity and Indigeneity, inspired by her own life experiences growing up on and off reserve. Tara began to pursue her lifelong dream of being a writer in 2002, and recently launched her own publishing company, to publish her own work and eventually publish work by other Indigenous authors whose stories need to be told. Tara is also a Certified Public Accountant currently supporting finance and governance capacity building for First Nations through her employment at the First Nations Financial Management Board. This grant will help Tara publish and implement an extensive promotional campaign for Finding Joy, her new novel about self-discovery, self-acceptance and discovering the little pieces that make us whole. Noelle Maracle is an emerging pop musician with a modern/vintage R&B edge. Raised on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Noelle grew up in a home that was filled with music of all genres, from the pow wow drum and Native wind flute, to the old classics by Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. At a young age Noelle became determined to pursue music as a career, began writing songs as a teenager, and signed with her first record label at 17. Her first radio single “Daydreaming” debuted on the Canadian charts in early 2023, and she was nominated for Indigenous Artist of the Year at the 2023 Jim Beam Indie Awards. The IV Fund grant will help Noelle cover the costs of writing, recording, producing, mixing, mastering, and doing a radio release of her next single. Micky Colton is a retired Royal Canadian Air Forces pilot who has turned a life-long passion for horses into a series of children’s books illustrating the amazing connection horses have to people. As a Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning (FEEL) certified facilitator, Micky has introduced many clients and children to the healing and emotional agility powers of her horse herd at her Horse Sense farm in Demorestville. The IV Fund grant will allow Micky to create, translate, publish, and distribute to local libraries and nonprofits two illustrated children’s books with selected words translated into Kanyen’keha (Mohawk). The books will pass on messages Micky’s animals have imparted over the years, introducing children of all backgrounds to these stories while increasing their access to and knowledge of the Kanyen’keha language.
Brandie Maracle
Tara White
Noelle Maracle
Micky Colton
The Indigenous Voices Fund is made possible through a generous $30,000 multi-year donation ($10,000 per year for three years) from the Elderberry Fund (Sarah and Dave), who is committed to advancing our community’s reconciliation efforts and inclusion of Indigenous voices.
We invite Indigenous artists and organizations in the Prince Edward County and Quinte areas to get in touch so we can learn more about your artistic practice and goals, and keep you in the loop about upcoming opportunities. Please send an email to Andrea Dawes, Special Initiatives Manager at andrea@countyarts.ca to learn more.
The Indigenous Voices Fund Grants Program’s design was guided by the reflections and perspectives of Indigenous artists in the Quinte region, and aims to respond to their needs and aspirations in a way that respects, nurtures, and celebrates Indigenous ways of learning, knowing, sharing, and creating. Applications are evaluated by a Peer Assessment Committee composed of Indigenous artists. Please click here to view the full 2024-25 Call for Applications. We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the development of the Grants Program including Shyra & Rye Barberstock of Okhawo Equal Source for guiding us through this process.
Guiding Principles
Through our Indigenous Voices Fund work, County Arts aims to:
Our work is also guided by our new 2022-27 Strategic Plan, which is informed by our Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity Policy and our commitment to the support and advancement of Indigenous artists as stated in our Indigenous Land Acknowledgement (links and more info can be found on our Policies Page).
On December 8th, 2022 we launched the Indigenous Voices Fund with with a very special event – In Conversation with Jennifer Podemski and Shelby Lisk: The Arts as a Platform for Indigenous Storytelling and Activism. We were extremely honoured to welcome these two esteemed artists for such a crucial conversation, and look forward to presenting more events in the Indigenous Voices Series in the coming years.
We invite you to listen to the recording of this event on our Youtube page.
Thanks to attendees, over $1300 was raised to benefit Tsi Tyónnheht Onkwawén:na (TTO), a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing Kanyen’kehá:ka/Mohawk language and culture in Tyendinaga.
Jennifer Podemski is an Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi actor, writer, director and producer with a 30+ year career. Her on screen credits include Dance Me Outside, The rez, Degrassi TNG, Blackstone, Empire of Dirt, Departure, and Reservation Dogs. In 2020, Jennifer launched the Shine Network Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating Indigenous women in film and television through training, mentorship, and professional development.
Shelby Lisk is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and photographer from Kenhtè:ke (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory). Her writing and artwork have appeared in Red Rising Magazine, Room Magazine, Hart House Review and #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women, published by Annick Press. Shelby is also the co-host of TVO’s The Art of Sovereignty podcast, which profiles the lives of eight First Nations artists who are changing the way the world thinks about Indigenous art.
—
Cover artwork: Excerpt from Copper Reflections (Acrylic & Copper) by Debra Vincent.
