Damien Eagle Bear
when you see it |
October 22, 2026—June 27, 2027
How do we see the world and how do we come to understand it? The significance of Indigenous knowledges and their deep relationship to the land should come as no surprise. However, the appreciation of these ancient sciences and ways of knowing continues to be minimized despite having been the backbone of survival on this land since time out of memory.
when you see it | (Blackfoot translation) contemplates a personal and cultural relationship to the land. Audiences are asked to confront their own comprehensions and connections to the land through these portraits of significant areas in Blackfoot territory.
Drawing from his experience as a documentary filmmaker, Damien Eagle Bear challenges the formal standards of the medium to embrace a Blackfoot gaze of the land.
Damien Eagle Bear is Contemporary Calgary’s 2026-2027 Ksahkomiitapiiks resident artist.
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Damien Eagle Bear
About Ksahkomiitapiiks (Earth Beings)
Begun in 2022, Ksahkomiitapiiks is an annual, Indigenous artist residency focusing on responsive practices and dynamic public programs that interrogate and nurture our relationships with the land.
Interpreted in English as Earth Beings, Ksahkomiitapiiks, is both a noun and a verb: embodying who we are and what we create as guests on this earth. Spoken aloud, it is an invocation — a blessing, a call for prayer, witness, and inspiration.
The residency is conceived as an active land acknowledgement, offering an alternative to static statements. It is intended as a process of collective learning – an opportunity for all peoples to reflect on our shared responsibilities as custodians of the land.
Through ongoing dialogue with the advisory committee and local Indigenous communities, we have come to understand that land-based knowledge is alive and resilient – carried within the body, collective memory, and the land itself. It is intuited and learned through observation and care, and is rooted in a relationship of stewardship, not ownership. Across cultures and histories, people have long lived in close relationship with the natural world, guided by practices of care, reciprocity, and respect for the land. Ksahkomiitapiiks was developed to create space for new generations of Indigenous artists to deepen that reconnection, to generate new knowledge, and to carry forward ancestral languages, practices, and relationships with the land.
Ksahkomiitapiiks is developed in consultation with an Advisory Committee of Indigenous Community Members and Elders. This year’s Advisory Committee consisted of Faye HeavyShield, Clarence Wolfleg Sr., Adrian Stimson, and Lauren Crazybull.
Faye HeavyShield was the mentor of this year’s edition of the residency.
About the Mentor
Faye HeavyShield
Faye HeavyShield, of the Kainai (Blood) Nation, was born and raised on the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta, and is a fluent speaker of her first language, Blackfoot. Heavyshield studied at the Alberta College of Art in 1980-85 and focused her art on images of memory, environment, body and language in a minimalist sense with land and rivers as significant influences.
About the Advisory Committee
Clarence Wolfleg Miiksika’am: Warrior, Leader, and Teacher
Clarence Wolfleg is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. Elder Miiksika'am holds an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Mount Royal University; his exemplary leadership in Calgary, Alberta and Canada is recognized around the city. Born in 1948 in the Siksika Nation, Broken Knife, as he was called as a child, was barely seven years old when he was taken to live at the Old Sun Indian Residential school for five years. It was there he was named Clarence Wolfleg. Miiksika'am went on to attend public school, graduating from Crescent Heights High School in Calgary in 1966. At 17 years old, like his father had done before him, he joined the military, serving in the Canadian Regular Forces with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery where he would earn three medals. After serving in the United Nations' peacekeeping initiatives in Cypress and NATO Forces Continental Europe missions during the Cold War, his military service came to an end and soon after he became a police officer with the Blackfoot Tribal Police, which he eventually headed. His other roles included directing outpatient services at Siksika Alcohol Services and serving ten terms on the Siksika Nation Council. He was also recognized with a headdress, given the name Miiksika'am, initiated into the Crazy Dog Society, and was bestowed a sacred bundle and warrior pipe from the Horn Society.
Elder Miiksika’am now speaks to younger generations about restorative justice, residential schools, and stories from his past. He is also a spiritual advisor for multiple groups and organizations and played a major role in facilitating the creation of the Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park.
Adrian A. Stimson
Adrian A. Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. He has a BFA from the Alberta University for the Arts and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Adrian is an interdisciplinary artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. His paintings are primarily monochromatic, often depicting bison in imagined landscapes. Melancholic, memorializing, and sometimes whimsical, they evoke ideas of cultural fragility, resilience, and nostalgia. Stimson is renowned for his performance art, particularly his persona, Buffalo Boy, whom he embodies to consider the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. His installation work predominantly examines the residential school experience; he attended three residential schools in his life and has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss, and resilience. Stimson was awarded the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018, Reveal Indigenous Arts Award – Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017, Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005, and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.
Lauren Crazybull
Lauren Crazybull is a Niitsítapi (Member of Kainai First Nation), Dené artist currently living in Vancouver, BC. In her work, Lauren considers Indigenous presence and multiplicity through paintings, creating worlds where honest portrayals trespass onto romantic representations of Indigeneity. Working primarily in portraiture, a long-standing genre that is often embedded with an imbalance of power between the artist/viewer and sitter, Crazybull seeks to examine the relationship between herself as an artist and the individuals she paints. Through this ongoing work, Lauren uses her practice as a way to assert her own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous peoples.
