#gitxsan

Abundance from Balance - 2025 Charity Box

Meaghan McRae

from the website: This piece is part of our 2025 Charity Bentwood Boxes auction running from November 22nd to December 6th.

Artist Statement "Before I started designing this box, I had been thinking a lot about what Turtle Island looked like pre-colonial contact. I could Invision communities working together, honing their skills and their crafts, in a completely sustainable way with the land, plants and animals. A sort of Utopia, in my mind, except this place actually did exist once. In this image of pre-contact Turtle Island, no one in the community goes hungry, everyone is warm, loved, and has a roof over their head ... it sounds like dream to me. A dream where an artist could work while being supported by their community and they reciprocate with beautiful art that is rich in culture for everyone to enjoy. In contrast, I don’t think it needs much explanation when I say its difficult to be a full time Indigenous artist, in a single income household and living in one of the most expensive and socially lonely cities in 2025. This society makes it almost impossible for me to exist and create while still complying with their schedule and social structure. The feeling I wanted to capture with this bentwood box was a snapshot of that Utopia I could see. Of it absolutely bursting with abundance! I wanted to make a box rich in story, culture, and time spent creating it. To get this feeling across, I chose the salmon. Their life cycle is miraculous and a symbiotic relationship with the plants, animals and humans around it. When that cycle is taken care of their nutrients provide for dozens of species. If taken care of and respected, this cycle will continue for generation as a part of an ecosystem and society bursting with abundance. Abundance from balance. You can take this example of the salmon and extrapolate it to every living thing on this planet. They/we are all connected and when we take care of each other, no one is forgotten and everyone has (more) than enough to thrive. This box is a story of what once was of what could be again."

I have relatives- Gitxsan relatives- who have stood up for the Wet’suwet’en people in the past. Both our nations are neighbours, and we’ve been allies long before any of my family was born.

And now we, unfortunately, once again get to share the grief and frustration of having a pipeline jammed through our territory and waterways despite our complaints.

I’ve heard from my family firsthand how rough things have been as of late for the rivers; the amount of salmon being caught dropping by the year. My dad goes out hunting once a year to catch a moose that would give us enough meat to last six months. It’s been about 3-4 years in a row now where he’s caught nothing and seen barely any moose. The fact that the surveyors and officials connected with the project have bent legal rules to get the pipeline going faster makes all of this a lot more infuriating.

I know how devastating that social media and the news has been and that more stress is probably something that people would rather avoid, but if you have the time, please consider reading the article in its entirety.

"PAGANISM STILL GRIPS INDIANS." Kingston Whig-Standard. May 22, 1933. Page 13. ---- HAZELTON, B.C. - Under the towering peaks of "Falling Rocks" mountain range, the native graveyard is a blend of Paganism and the New Faith. Though many of the Indians have been christianized, complete miniature houses have been built over many of the graves. Clothes and belongings of the departed are placed inside.

In one skirts, shoes, corsets and mirror, brush and comb are hung on the walls. In another an enlarged portrait stands against a trunk filled with garments and toilet articles. Over chiefs' graves stone poems symbolical of their clan are carved.

“The New Residential School System”: How a First Nation Rallied against the Foster Care System

A six-year-old Gitxsan girl was removed from her community in northern British Columbia. The community brought her back

On a cold evening in October 2021, a social worker from the British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development knocked on the door of a house in Gitanmaax, a community in the traditional territory of the Gitxsan First Nation in northern BC. Two social workers of the MCFD had come to apprehend a six-year-old Gitxsan girl. Mia (a pseudonym) had been on a week-long visit to her matrilineal family, including her mother and her aunt, and that night she was due to board a plane that would take her more than 4,000 kilometres east, back to her foster home in Ontario.