Basket On the Moon: Nipniku's (Trees Fully Leafed)
Canada | 2023
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The title Basket on the Moon is in dedication to young traditional basket weaver, Shanna Francis of Kisitaqn Basketry, Eskasoni FN.
This mural centers a basket design created by Francis, with the inclusive pride flag pouring onto the landscape that divides the artwork into night and day. The basket is positioned to the right of June’s full moon, Nipniku's, which translates to Trees Fully Leafed. The Mi’kmaw calendar, Tepknusetk, follows the lunar cycles and ecological happenings in L’nuekati’k (land territory of the Mi’kmaq, also traditionally known as Mi’kma’ki’k, spanning the Atlantic provinces of Canada) and highlights the cosmological and natural events observed geographically from the region.
The juxtaposition of moon and basket creates a lunar eclipse, visually depicted by the two separate night and day skies, merging in the middle. Likpenikn is a traditional and ancestral practice with intricate and involved workmanship passed down from generations through oral tradition. Weaving connects L’nu'k to cosmology and ancestral stories of family, the land and an overall philosophy of being.
It ties our people to a long entrepreneurial history of creating our own livelihoods through trade and marketplace for thousands of years. Our skills, creations, traditional knowledges, and artwork are made from our own minds, hearts and hands. Our resourcefulness is the key principle from our teachings of etuaptmumk.
However, knowledge transfer and passing down of the intricate weavings our people are highly known for is decreasing in succession by each generation through the impacts of colonization and Residential Schools in Canada (Shubenacadie School, NS).
Today, the number of weavers who carry knowledge of our traditional weaving techniques known as jikji’j, is heavily endangered. The work of Francis, as a young weaver, alongside those esteemed and celebrated in our communities, is acknowledged as a staple to the preservation and revitalization of our cultural practices.
This is why, in 2018, the Canadian Space Agency sent Francis’ miniature baskets into space, marked a deeply historical and reverent moment for our culture and communities:
News story:
Miniature Basket from Eskasoni Goes Into Space with Canadian Astronaut
Francis’ Basket on the Moon, is a hopeful moment in contemporary L’nu history. It harkens the possibility that our people can influence our future akin to a modern creation story or legend that remarks on the awe and wonder of space, the skills and gifts we carry as L’nuk, and most importantly, as being the creators of our futures and guiding our intergenerational healing.
Unfortunately, many of us have been left with contextual gaps in understanding due to the severity of what was lost.
Basket on the Moon holds the same magic and supernatural forces we find in our older creation stories. Our old stories are read as prophecies and fated events, and this one, like the others, is no different. It’s increasingly important to see younger people in these positions in our communities.
Through the creation of this artwork, I carry the stories of my community on my back and inside the depictions of plants that are special to me. Each plant in Nipniku’s is a story with an association to my family, chosen family, friends and elders. Plants on the left panel relate to the in-between realms, secret and closed knowledges of plant medicines that I hold close to me. These plants remind me of how I feel as a Two Spirit person. Learning and tending to these plant kin required a lot of patience, listening and observing of our roles and gifts in the natural cycles of life, how we weave through and mediate relationships between diverging perspectives, institutions, genders, individuals and networks.
Our outsider and genderfluid gifts of walking a unique road shows others how to integrate shadow parts of themselves about how we all want to belong and deserve love and acceptance.
We offer gifts of insight to evoke compassion through our stories and experiences. However, two spirit medicine can sometimes be challenging to receive or understand by others.
This is how some of the plants on this side of the mural are also understood.
Time-keeping of ecological cycles, timing of moments in history, timing of how we as people learn and take in things from our environment.
Nipniku’s features plants that are specific to the growing season of June and early Spring. We keep a calendar of events that reflects an accurate account of protocol and what there is to do around us to be part of the greater whole.
On a philosophical level, keeping accounts of the truth is similar. We cannot skip to reconciliation, but we can paint a picture of the ideal and build a vision for what could happen if we engage in restorative justice and accountable reconciliation processes.
The elements found on the bottom on Nipniku’s speak to the parts of this process that are operating under the surface, underground.
We are not privy to what is beneath the Earth, what is growing, germinating, incubating or asleep. Under the ground, we see what is rooting and taking shape and rhizomatically shifting the collective consciousness. To be responsible and respectful, we may not be able to explain everything that is happening that cannot be physically seen, these visuals tell a story of things indeed taking place and the trust needed to let these emerge when they are ready to speak and reveal themselves.
We experience personal rites of passage at times in our life where we’re required to succumb to the unknown and release what we have no control over until we are brought to the other side of it.
Growing through life’s challenges, learning from one another’s personal ways of looking at things and blending together the specific purpose, reasons we were put together to meet in this life, as well as what we have to show and teach each other individually.
This artwork comes from both artistic collaboration with them as well as through our love and determination to stay strong, strive and rise above our circumstances.
