My conversation with Emily Marie Séguin, a Franco-Ontarian 2-spirited performer, musician, theatre creator and visual artist of settlers and Anishinabe descent who creates work to recognize those who walked before her, and to support those who will after her. I wanted to speak to Emily because she is member of Éclore, a collective that builds bridges between artistic, environmental and activist communities, bringing people together and building hope for a fairer, more sustainable future. I had already spoken with Léa Vandycke, about Éclore, in episode 164 of balado conscient, and so Emily is about to tell us, in English, the story of Éclore from her point but she will also talk about her own work and vision as an indigenous artist, such as her G’zaagiin maleńki – I promise you a forestproject. I also had a French language conversation with Emily, see balado conscient épisode 168.
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Imagine a world where art, environmentalism, and activism intertwine, creating a tapestry of hope for a sustainable future. Emily Marie Séguin, a passionate Two-Spirit artist, shares her journey of bridging these worlds through her work with Éclore and her dedication to honouring the land.
Chapter Summary
00:00 The Duality of Art: Accountability and Hope
01:23 Introducing Emily Marie Seguin
03:44 The Birth of Éclore: A Collective for Change
07:15 Art as a Reflection of Nature
11:43 Taking Action: Empowering Artists and Cultural Workers
Featured Quotes
Behind the Story
Emily’s involvement with Éclore stems from a deep-seated passion for plants, nature, and advocating for social justice. Inspired by the vision of Éclore's founders, she joined the collective to help build a community that serves as a resource for artists and fosters conversations across diverse disciplines, all united by a common goal of protecting the land and promoting sovereignty.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00] Emily Marie Séguin
Alongside the responsibility of holding people accountable and calling out what they see as unjust. I think that there's also an element of hope with artists, even when we're maybe a little bit melancholic, or even when we're in heavier periods in our lives, the act of creating, I think, denotes hope because why would you create something if you didn't believe that it was going to lead to something? Why would you, why would you put energy into something if you didn't hope that it would nurture either a change or a feeling of belonging or something that'll bring people together and that'll create a sense of community?
[00:00:55] Claude Schryer
Episode 234. My conversation with Emily Marie Seguin, a two spirited performer, musician, theater creator and visual artist of French and Anishinaabeg descent who creates work to honor those who walked before her and to uplift those who will after her. I wanted to speak with Emily because she's a member of Eclair, a collective that builds bridges between artistic, environmental and activist communities, bringing people together and building hope for a fairer, more sustainable future. I had already spoken with a colleague of Emily's, Lea Vandycke, in episode 164 of balado conscient. And so Emily will tell us from her point of view the story of Éclore, but she'll also talk about her own work and vision as an indigenous artist. A sense of community.
[00:02:09] Emily Marie Séguin
No, there's artists that were so, so profoundly hurt and living with so much sadness, and they still managed to create, you know, they still, they still brought something new into the world and in such vulnerability and honesty and authenticity and. And it's so courageous to offer yourself up like that. And I think that hope lives in that. Even when a piece is so heart wrenching and so gut wrenching, it's there because an element of this creator believes that it's going to serve something or feels that they just need to say something and, and those pieces inspire change and inspire people as well. You know, doesn't have to be rainbows and sunshine and. And, you know, hope can be messy and it can be gross and it can be ugly, crying, and it can be all of that because it just has to be real, it just has to be authentic. And after that it'll bring other people in.
[00:03:44] Claude Schryer
You're part of a collective called Éclore, and there's lots of things we could talk about today, but I want to focus on that in part because I interviewed one of your colleagues, Lea Vandycke, on the French side and we'll also do a French interview, you later. And it's interesting to see this group evolve. So how. Do tell me how it came about for you and what it is and why you're part of it.
[00:04:08] Emily Marie Seguin
Well, I'm very lucky to have known a very dear friend and wonderful artist whose name is Clémence Roy-Darisse, who is one of the founding members of eclair, her with Lea and Lea. And they actually have been dreaming up this organization for sure, quite a long time and trying to kind of piece everything together to get things started. And Clémence reached out to me when they were at the phase of doing an official launch of eclair, and she invited me to get a feel for what the organization would look like and what it would be and if I was interested in being part of the committee for the ngo. And I accepted, and we had our first couple meetings, and then we established the roles of everybody within that committee. And I think part of it also goes back to the work that we were doing beforehand. So I'm very passionate about plants and little. Little things in nature, which has always kind of been part of my.
My creative process, whether it's in sound and music or writing or visual art. And so Clemence, being a friend of mine already, I think, recognized that love for those little things and also the. The work that I've been doing in terms of advocating for certain social causes and injustices that are present in our society. And so she invited me to be. To be part of this association and kind of join in this. In this beautiful adventure, which I think is so beautiful, because there isn't a lot of spaces like Éclore that exist. And I think it's, you know, at the base of it all is a desire to bring people together and to create this community that's also a resource for artists and for people in other disciplines as well.
And I don't want to say that as in, you know, that we have artists on one side and everybody else. It's more so that there's a lot of conversations where we feel any way that artists could be involved in these various spaces and that it could uplift and create new opportunities for these discussions. And so I think it's really exciting to have this. This community that's building of all these different people who are. Who have their own language of talking about the land, talking about sovereignty, talking about protection of the land, talking about climate change in their own ways, in their own languages, but towards a common goal and within a caring Collective space.
[00:07:15] Claude Schryer
Well, I noticed that when I spoke to Lea about the collaboration of artists and scientists. But I like the way you put it. People from different walks of life, because we wear many different hats or labels, if you want. And what about your work as an artist then? Do you do climate art or.
[00:07:35] Emily Marie Séguin
That's a great question. I think we rephrase that. I just. I just love talking about the land. I think that we're, you know, something I share with my friends is just how incredible I find it that. That we as humans are kind of. We're kind of the last ones to have, you know, been created or to be alive.
And what I mean is that, you know, plants came before us and animals came before us and the waters and everything that sustains life came before us. We're kind of like the little babies, you know, still trying to figure things out. And so I think that, you know, they are deserving of respect and attention. And when I say they, I mean the land and all of her inhabitants. And so the work that I do always kind of revolves around that. I have a project right now with two co creators who are also very dear friends that is on tour, which is really exciting. And it's 30 minutes of music for young people, but also for all ages.
It's especially beautiful for families. And we go through the sounds of the seasons about half an hour. And the goal of this 30 minutes is to let that audience feel what they have to feel in a space that is safe and welcoming to think about the sounds that we hear and to really recognize how, you know, bird songs and wind and water. And it's all that soundtrack, it's all a soundtrack of the world that we live in. And there's music all around us all the time, even when there's city noise that passed by. It's all part of that soundtrack that we get to hear. And that's pretty incredible.
And it was also created with the goal of talking about forests to young people. Because I think we all share the belief that if you care about something, if you love something, you're going to want to fight for it and you're going to want to protect it. So that project is called Gazagan Malenki. I promise you a forest G’zaagiin in Anisnabemowen is a way of saying I love you. G’zaagiin Malenky is a little one in Polish, which is the language of one of our co creators, Melena Buziak and Je te promene fore the original title, which is in French, is. Is the mother tongue of Marie Massimo, who is. It's also the language that brings the three of us together, because we're all French speakers as well.
And I also write on the side and paint, and I draw. And a lot of the work that I create tries to call attention to the land and to the beings that we need to be seeing. I have a selection of works of drawings of plants that are native to our territories and that are in danger and need to. Need to be seen and need to be protected and making links to humans and bodies and just trying to draw links between what we see around us and what we are, which is, you know, an animal. We're part of this whole incredible world, and I think when we try to distance ourselves from that, that's when we have problems, you know? But if we saw ourselves as just one tiny piece of this enormous puzzle that works when everything kind of plays its own role, I think we'd have a lot more respect for all of these individual elements that come together to allow us to live.
[00:11:43] Claude Schryer
The issue of our disconnection with nature comes up a lot in this podcast, and I see a lot of artists doing healing work of themselves and sometimes of the land, and that is being multiplied and amplified and all that. Now, amazingly, we're almost out of time, so we will oh, so quick.
We'll talk again. But we covered Ekla and we covered a bit of your work. I always end with action points because listeners, especially artists and cultural workers, are interested in becoming more involved. What do you suggest artists and cultural workers do in these times of ours?
[00:12:20] Emily Marie Séguin
In these troubling times of ours? Absolutely. It can feel really overwhelming because there's so much going on and there's so many things to fight for, and there's so many beings we want to protect, and. And so I think the biggest thing, first of all, is to learn, to research, to see kind of what's going on already, to know that you're not alone in wanting to fight for these things and to choose one or two things that really call to you. Because if you try to support everything that's going on, you're going to burn yourself out. And I know a lot of beautiful people who are experiencing that right now, because whether you like it or not, you know, people who care, they care. They care about everything.
So to kind of choose your lane and really invest in learning what you need to know to be able to have an educated voice on that topic, I think another important thing is to look to the people who have been there for generations before. Us who have been advocating, see their example, the example that they've set, the way that they've communicated their points, and what you can add to that conversation, to that generational fight for those injustices. Support grassroots movements, I think is really important. There's a lot of people on the ground who don't necessarily have a lot of funding and who need support, who need to be seen supporting Indigenous grassroots movements as well. I think that the fight towards a more just and sustainable world, especially in a land based context, needs to include Indigenous voices because Indigenous communities have been the stewards of these territories for generations. And there are so many solutions that are based in that community. So I think learn as much as you can. Stay updated.
You know, you support the people that surround you, the grassroots, grassroots movements that surround you. And in learning and making those genuine connections and humbling yourself as well, you'll find where to kind of situate yourself, you know, and keep the hope. That's the thing that I would want to close on, is just to keep the hope. Because without hope, we wouldn't do anything, we wouldn't act, we wouldn't continue to fight. And we need that. So we need to inspire as many people as we can to be hopeful.
[00:14:57] Claude Schryer
Thank you, Emily.
[00:14:58] Emily Marie Séguin
Thank you.