What does it mean to be a treaty person in Toronto?

A Treaty Guide for Torontonians is an artful examination of the complex intercultural roots of treaty relationships in the place we now call Toronto. From the Two Row Wampum and Dish with One Spoon, to the Treaty of Niagara and the Toronto Purchase, we trace the history of treaty making between Indigenous nations, and between Indigenous nations and the Crown. Part of Jumblies Theatre + Arts’ multi-year Talking Treaties project, A Treaty Guide inspires an active approach to treaty awareness through embodied learning tools. Land-based activities, theatrical exercises, drawing and writing prompts help readers find their own relationship to this history, and to take up their treaty responsibilities in the present.

Ange Loft's profile page

Victoria Freeman's profile page

Martha Stiegman's profile page

Jill Carter's profile page

Ange Loft is an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator from Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka Territory, working in Tsi Tkarón:to. She is an ardent collaborator, consultant, and facilitator working in arts-based research, wearable sculpture, theatrical cocreation, and Haudenosaunee history. She is a vocalist with the music collective Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.

Victoria Freeman is an author, historian, theatre cocreator, and educator of British settler heritage. Her work focuses on Indigenous-settler relations and the Indigenous and colonial past of Toronto. She has collaborated on numerous community projects, including with Jumblies Theatre, First Story Toronto, Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, and L’Arche Toronto Sol Express.

Martha Stiegman (settler) is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her community-based research and collaborative video work examine Indigenous-settler treaty relations in their historical and contemporary manifestations, with particular attention to food sovereignty and justice as well as participatory and visual research methodologies.

Jill Carter is an Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi theatre practitioner, researcher, and educator at the University of Toronto. Based in Tkaron:to, where she was born and largely raised, she is an active member of the Talking Treaties Collective, serves as researcher and tour guide for First Story Toronto, and devises land activations, mapping interventions, and personal cosmography workshops.