Aki-Terre, a visual art event at Windigo Falls

Enter the world of Aki-Terre, a mural inspired by the traditions of the Anishinaabeg people, which celebrates nature and the cycle of life. Through the voices of its artists, this podcast offers a multifaceted perspective on the mural’s significance, its symbolic language, its rootedness in place, and the collective memory it evokes. 

This project was made possible through the financial support of the Government of Québec and the MRC d’Antoine-Labelle, as part of the Entente de développement culturel, and the Parc régional Montagne du Diable. 
This project was made possible through the collaboration of the Anishinabeg community of Kitigàn Zìbì. 
Guest artists: Summer-Harmony Twenish and Emily Lachaine Gauthier. 
Anishinaabemowin translation and voice by Mariette Buckshot. 
Narration and original music by Bruno Lachapelle. 
Flute by Emily Lachaine Gauthier. 
Podcast concept and production by Jardin des glaces.

Transcription :
What a peaceful and wild setting for a podcast. We're at Parc de la Montagne du Diable, in the Windigo Falls area, in the spring of 2025, and we're contemplating the mural titled Aki-Terre, in the Desjardins Pavilion.

We're currently recording this podcast from the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg.

Kwey Kakina, Nìbinokwe nidijinikàz, Kitigàn Zìbì nidondjibà.
Hello, my name is Summer Harmony Twenish, I'm from Kitigàn Zìbì, Anishinaabe, 
a visual artist, and a digital illustrator.
I'm Algonquin and Anishinaabe.

Hello, my name is Emily Lachaine, I'm a visual artist, native of Ferme-Neuve, also a arts teacher at the Secondary School of Mont-Laurier, and a mother of two beautiful children and in love with nature.

The Windigo Falls was an element of encounter between Summer and me because, when we met, it was summer. So we sat together at the edge of the falls, discussing our ideas. We were also accompanied by this spirit, of summer, of the falls, of the peacefulness of the present.

I've heard of the falls, a lot of people come here to swim, but I had never been here myself. And it was really great to come and have a little tour with Emily and experience it…

Born in Ferme-Neuve, I grew up in close connection with the forests and the land of the Hautes-Laurentides. From a very young age, I would spend time at remote wild lakes — one of them known as the Windigo.
Now we're here, but this is also a place where I often feel adrift. I've been immersed in its vastness since birth. And I've always been drawn to that word — Windigo. It has stirred my curiosity for as long as I can remember.

So, I am from Kitigàn Zìbì, and grew up in Chisasibi, Quebec, where my mom was a teacher, which is in Bay James, in Cree Territory.

Since moving back home from being up North, I've connected more with my father's side of the family, and learned, when we started this project, that we come from Tapani Lake, or Lac Tapani, near Saint-Anne-du-Lac. And over time, our family has migrated and is now in what is Kitigàn Zìbì, but our territory stretches beyond that. So it's been really cool to be in this region that I'm not as familiar with and just to see the beauty.

When we met, Summer and I, right away, we recognized some common values, such as anti-colonialist, feminist and environmentalist postures.

To be able to transmit these values in the mural and also share and reunite our visions of the world. At the center of the work, there is THE mountain.

When I was sitting in front of the mountain, at the lake, I saw a woman lying down, stretching her breasts towards the starlit sky and the milky way. I saw a woman lying, comfortable, with her eyes open. 
That's what I saw, and that silhouette, I drew it. It became the center of our work. It is hard to imagine that this same Mother Earth is colonized and her natural resources are exploited.

It was interesting when I started to work on this project to think, oh my god, I'm going to Devil's Mountain. That sounds so scary. But then you get here, and it's this beautiful lake and this beautiful mountain.

What we do know, if we're looking at it through a historical lens, is it was probably used as a landmark and as a way to determine maybe changes in family territory, the way that certain lakes and other landmarks were used. One thing that is really interesting to me with the way that the mountain is named now is it's something that is very menacing, that's very demonic, and it's very tied to the church.

The name for it in Anishinaabeg is spirit.
Monetoo.
Our word for spirit is something that was very neutral, something that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  
The word «Manitou» means spirit, and this is a word that we've heard associated with the mountain. The thing is, with the arrival of the church, indigenous spirituality was often seen as pagan or demonic, or hedonistic, or whatever. 
Something that wasn't proper.

There are so many lakes, so many parts of our territory that have names that predate colonial names. We didn't have things named after Champlain. We probably had them named after the way that the islands looked, or the rivers looked, or something about it might have reminded us of something else in our natural world.

The Desjardins Pavilion mural is a self-portrait by artists Émily Lachaine and Summer-Harmony Twenish. Behind them stands the Montagne du Diable. Around them, the seasons. The multicolored ring surrounding them is called the Medicine wheel.

In my research, I only had the word Windigo as a reference point. Then I discovered that 
La Lièvre River was meant to represent, in fact, the spirit of the Great Hare (Le Grand Lièvre).

I started to build a story for myself. I tried to understand the seasons and the world through two figures — the Windigo and the Great Hare — as a kind of balance that holds everything together. Spring and summer felt connected to the Great Hare, with life coming back, water flowing again, and a sense of renewal. Fall and winter, on the other hand, felt closer to the Windigo — almost like being inside the Windigo’s belly during the cold months.

And the mountain is in the center of the frame, and it's like we're reclaiming that, and we're subverting the gaze from this menacing mountain to something that's beautiful, something that we honor, and something that we're kind of, it almost looks like we're protecting. And a lot of the elements within our mural have that same vibe. So in it, me and Emily are braiding our hair together, and in Anishinaabe tradition, your hair is your spirit.

It's something that you care for, and it's something that's an extension of that inner part of you to the point where if we grieve, we cut it off. And we either bury it with our loved ones, or we burn it. It belongs to the spirit world.

And so the symbolism there is that these core beliefs that unite us, that make us who we are, allow for us to work together, and to learn together, and to be on this road together.

So we are here, in the center of this painting, braiding our hair together…

All over the world, women braid their hair. In Indigenous cultures, too, you see shared ways of being — especially among women. When we braid our hair together, when our braids intertwine, it’s a simple but yet powerful gesture. It’s a way of honouring what each of us carries.

And so our hair is becoming one, and it transcends the frame a little bit into, you see these berries coming out into this, like the bottom of the mural is meant to represent the south, but also the summer, and the heat, and a time of abundance.

And it leads you into the beginning of the cycle of the mural, and through the summer you see plants, and animals, and everything that's in abundance, and it transitions into the autumn when there's a harvest.

I felt it was really important to include the moose tracks in the harvest season and the autumn because it’s such a staple of our diet as an Anishinabeg. It’s an important part of our foodway. Because it's not just something that feeds us, it feeds our community.

So, you know, the moose and the deer and the animals in our territory, that we see in the fall, it's a special time. Even though we're killing them, we're honouring them in the sense that we're grateful for the life that they give. And we know that it's not something we're taking easily because we understand the impact of it.

So, in the autumn, you see that transition from the late summer into the early winter, when the animals start to change their coat, they start to get ready to hibernate. And then you get to this, the top of the mural, and it's this beautiful stillness almost where the animals are a little more sparse, the vegetation is a little bit more sparse. And when we were talking about the winter, it's a time of stillness and reflection.

And in the Anishinaabe worldview, the spirits are at rest, and we can share stories, and we can talk about these legends to get us through the winter. And that's how our oral history is passed on. And I think in one of the writings we were doing to talk about the winter, we talked about the falls and like Windigo Falls, and how it doesn't fully freeze, but it slows down.

And that's something that we need to carry with us. And it's a teaching about the winter, it's okay to rest, it's okay to replenish yourself before the spring comes again. And what's really interesting about the seasons is, for Anishinaabeg, there aren't four, there's six, and they're fluid.

And there's early winter, which is “pijipibun”, and that's around November, December, when the ground is still kind of soft, but it's starting to freeze, and the snow is coming and going. And then there's “pibun”, it's like the deep winter where everything is frozen and it's dark and you're in it, there's no escaping it. And then eventually that leads into early spring, which is another season…

Where the snow is still kind of around, but you can see that things want to come back to life.

So, in the mural, you see that early spring, you start to see the water dripping as it's melting, but you see a bit of wind. And then you get into the springtime, and you see the beginnings of plants blooming. And there's a bear and her cub coming out of hibernation and experiencing the world together for the first time.

And then that leads into the summer. And you can follow that cycle again and again in the mural and find yourself within that cycle. And it takes you on this journey of appreciating everything every season gives. It's not just the summer when the sun is out, there's beauty to be found in all of it.

The seasons shape the rhythm of all living beings; they anchor our passage on this Earth.

Since I was little, the land has taught me many things — nature has been a constant guide.
I remember, when I was very young, my best friend was a tree.

Every day, I would go to that tree. That’s how I received many of my first teachings. And my deep, intimate connection with nature meant that, later on, when I began to discover the teachings of Indigenous spirituality, I was truly fascinated to see how deeply these people live in harmony, in symbiosis, and with great respect to nature. It really did me some good and helped me reconcile, in a way, with humanity.

The Anishinaabeg have lived on this territory since immemorial times. Today, how do they express their vision of living in relationship with the land that sustains them?

But if we are going down a river together and we're in one canoe and you're in another, we can go down together, just never crossing into each other, never interfering with the other's lives, but maybe trading or collaborating. Over time, obviously, the way that the settler colonial project functions in Canada is to displace Indigenous people and utilize our resources, so the land that we don't use it like it's a tool for us.

That goes against the settler colonial project, and over time, these two canoes aren't side-by-side anymore. We don't have a canoe. And the other one is zigzagging all over the river and dumping oil into it.

But we're here now, and we have very different ways of thinking, and there's room for collaboration, but there's also room for us to discuss feminism and environmentalism, and even despite the language barrier, those core beliefs that we each carry are what united us and what helped to inform how we designed this project and how we approached it. Emily, you paint, and I'm more of a digital illustrator, but the core of our practice as artists is being on the land.

As artists incorporate nature as a central element of their work, what would they like to convey to us?

So, part of my dream is being able to access the land in the ways that we accessed it before being removed from it. So, being able to reconnect with our family hunting territories and to relearn these traditional methods of harvesting and living on our territory and a move away from resource extraction. This idea that Canada's economy depends on exploiting the land and instead being able to say okay, we're here on this earth for a very limited time as human beings and we deserve to enjoy it and not be terrified our earth is going to explode. I also think now more than ever we need to return to a world where there's no hierarchy between humans and the lands and the animals and the waters and be in a more reciprocal and symbiotic relationship with each other and the territory that nourishes us.

Thank you, Summer, for sharing your dream. I hear it. It resonates in my heart.

My dream, above all, is that my children can swim in clean water and drink clean water. I want my life’s work to be about building a relationship with the living world — learning, relearning, and listening to Indigenous wisdom. I want to keep learning about plants and growing knowledge, so I can gain some autonomy within the community. I believe it’s essential to place human connection and human collaboration at the center of this dream.
What I realized, in my twenties, is simple: we protect what we love. 
Being in a place like this park, surrounded by the beauty of nature, helps us connect with it. And from that connection comes the desire to protect it.
So my dream is that people learn to love nature, respect all living beings, and pass that respect onto future generations — our children, and those who come after. 
This is my dream.