Lianne Charlie
Whitehorse, Yukon
Northern Tutchone
Through art and land-based education, Lianne is helping First Nations in the North connect with their culture, stories and context. She started her journey of reconnection later in life and hopes to help those who are on a similar path.
Lianne’s art projects began during her PhD when she engaged with First Nations communities in the Yukon to build a hot pink papier-mâché bull moose out of the Umbrella Final Agreement and a paper hide out of the 11 Yukon First Nations land claims maps. Through this process she realized that art can be a place for people to create, learn and recover traditional knowledge.
“I was raised in a city. You can drop me off in any city and I’ll figure it out, I’ll be fine, but I still get quite scared in the bush. Dechinta has really played a big part in making me feel comfortable by teaching me skills for being out on the land. I bring Luka and he is off doing bush things all the time. He’s going to be way more comfortable than I ever was and that feels really good.”
Today, she runs community engaged arts projects in Whitehorse and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. She knows from experience that the most important thing youth can do is to keep showing up because it supports their community as much as helping them on their journey.
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