The festival 2023

A drum waved over a toppled John A MacDonald

A contemporary young Aboriginal man on a skateboard flies above the statue of John Alexander MacDonald, knocked down by anti-colonial activists in a civic gesture of landscape hygiene. Drum in hand, he embodies the rebirth of Aboriginal cultures as the remnants of the ethnocidal era fall away one by one.

The visual of the 33rd International First Peoples’ Festival is a cheerful allegory, a graphic representation of the energy of today’s Aboriginal youth, fully engaged in the global movement that is bringing down the indecent, marbled remnants of colonial triumphalism and propelling the original peoples towards a reconciled future.