In support of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation throughout Canada, Vtape presents an online screening of Everything is Right Here (2021), a new short video by Adrian Kahgee.

“In Everything is Right Here, I present my metaphorical survival bag, as influenced by an Anishnaabekwe Elder’s words, ‘Everything we need is right here! All we have to do is give thanks.’ In giving thanks, we acknowledge that there is an interdependence amongst all our relations. I explore this framework of understanding through my film, which I hand processed using flowers. I chose to work with processing in dandelions, a plant that is not native to my territory, and with trilliums which are indigenous to our territory. At the centre of my metaphorical bag is cultural knowledge that is deeply woven into the land and offered up to me in aid, as I navigate and adapt to change. As represented through my dress, made of an emergency survival blanket, I carry and wear that knowledge through change. I accept these gifts and the responsibilities that come with them, for everything I touch, I change.” – Adrian Kahgee

Sound notes: No dialogue, intermittent bird song, sounds of nature, traditional Indigenous drumming, and tinkling of the jingle dress.

Adrian Kahgee (Saugeen First Nation), founding member of Odeimin Runner’s Club, is an artist and Community Arts Educator, currently teaching Visual Arts with the Bluewater District School Board. Her artistic practices, of painting, performance-activated installations, and film, are centered around research into her Afro-Indigenous relations, as a member of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and as a freedom seeker/ Black Canadian descendant of the Oro, New Lowell, Negro Creek, and Collingwood settlements. Her work further explores the sharing of familial and communal knowledge, of our existence upon Turtle Island since time immemorial.

image credit: Everything is Right Here (Adrian Kahgee, 2021)