About Circadia Indigena

Circadia Indigena was created to bring in to being gathering places where Indigenous artists can remember, and create new images that restore oral traditions (language), performance aesthetics, music/song, and the visual arts. The collective supports Indigenous artists to tell their stories through:

• Theatre
• Dance
• Storytelling
• Film
• Music
• Electronic Media
• Performance

and any other form of cultural presentations – creating stories that merge cultural history with our contemporary voices, presenting dreams and images for now and our future generations.

Themes of our work include:

• Culture
• Language
• History/Legacy
• Relationship with the Land

and most importantly the reclamation of voice, body, spirit within Indigenous space.

Circadia Indigena is based in the National Capital Region (NCR), Ottawa, Canada and comprised of professional and community artists from a variety of First Peoples communities who bring their artistic experience, expertise and knowledge to projects of a cultural, collaborative, and highly creative nature.

This arts circle is a diverse and flexible group of Indigenous artists dedicated to developing, presenting, producing, animating and disseminating outstanding visual and performance art rooted in Aboriginal culture, languages, and relation to the land.

Protocol

Circadia Indigena is committed to knowing, understanding and honouring the diversity of our cultural protocol, from the social to the ceremonial. This will be central and inclusive to all of our work.

One of the most important steps we have taken as an organization is to foster sincere connection and effective working relationships with the hereditary leadership of the Algonquin people of this territory. This is significant for Circadia Indigena and our mandate, as we strive to ensure we are working from a place of respect and tradition. We believe positive and effective working relationships will enhance our ability to develop connections throughout the territory and foster reciprocal investment with our surrounding First Nations’, Inuit and Métis communities. We believe these “local” relationships will always be foundational to the success of Circadia Indigena now and over the long term, and we are proud of what we have already been able to create together.

Mandate

• To develop, present, produce, animate, and disseminate outstanding works of First Peoples’ (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) art in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Ottawa, Canada.
• To be a mobilizing, active professional organization that fosters and presents a diversity of local, regional, and national First Peoples’ art in the NCR.
• To further develop local, regional and national partnerships with other organizations and groups working in the areas of art and culture.
• To contribute to developing effective business relationships with regional and national producers and presenters of First Peoples’ art, and work through the benefits of a national Indigenous arts network to inform and develop our local arts and culture ecology.

The theme that guides the collective is the development of Indigenous performance practice that bridges traditional cultural principles and contemporary expression. This includes supporting Idigenous performance companies and individuals—both established and emerging—regionally and nationally in the creation, production and presentation of existing and new works by indigenous artists. Other themes informing our work are culture, legacy, and the reclamation of voice, space/place, body, and spirit.