Place des Festivals transformed

Place des festivals has been transformed by a setting created by Michel Marsolais. He has permeated it with the cosmic vision of the First Peoples and drawn upon the inspiration of contemporary Indigenous artists who convey the rich spiritual and artistic heritage of the land in their own style.

A visual and light show has been created specially for Pésence autochtone, including a multimedia creation by Caroline Monnet and Sébastien Aubin of the collectif AM.

Meaningful architecture

The great central teepee evokes the vertical axis uniting the sky, the earth and the underwater world. At the apex, a goose in flight recalls the birds that carried Atahensic, the Skywoman, on the first day of the world. At ground level, the turtle represents the sea world and her shell the earth’s crust, which she carries on her back.

The longhouse is architecture in the Iroquois tradition, thus very typical of Montreal.

The teepees (Amerindian nations) and the tupik (Inuit) are forms of textile architecture evoking the prairies, the taiga and the tundra.

The cervids in the fountains are references to the animal kingdom and the nourishing forest; the water sprays represent the soul that instils life into creation.

Wall projections

From Thursday August 3 to Sunday August 6
From 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm, alternately, each evening.

A luminous visual setting has been specially designed for our 2014 edition by the Anishinable artist Caroline Monnet from the AM collective. Her geometric frames and vivid colours are drawn straight from the visual heritage of Amerindian imagination. From 9pm to 11p.m., alternating, every day.

A sequence created by Michel Poulin (Athanor) is an homage to Mother Earth as Amerindians see her. The video refers to the birth of the world, the first spark of life, Missinak the turtle’s crossing, up to our world. A performance bridging the gap between tradition and modernity, from the roots (tradition, memory) to the tree (the human community) and treetop branches reaching to the future. From 9 p.m. to 11 p.m, alternating, every day.

Tradntional arts honoured

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons

The drums of the Buffalo Hat Singers, the traditional dances (with Barbara Diabo and her InterNation troupe, Alan Harrington and the Ray Deer Family Mohawk Dancers) and the fire where game meats are grilled express our attachement to Mother Earth and our belonging to the unity of living things. In the shadow of the great teepee, whether they are Mohawk, Naskapi, Inuit, Atikamekw ou Innu, the artists take up the thread uniting us to the ancestors whose spirit continnues to live in contemporary creation.