Rebecca, Kwakiuł, Dzawada’enuwx, and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, is a multidisciplinary artist with a BA from the University of British Columbia, major in the Indigenous Studies Program. She has been creating sewn and beaded regalia since the age of eleven. Rebecca began fashion design in 2021 and apprenticed under Pam Baker. She also completed the Indigenous Couture Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Rebecca debuted her first collection at New York Fashion Week, 2022. She has since shown her collections at SWAIA Fashion Show Santa Fe Indian Market, Vancouver Fashion Week, Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, and Indigenous Fashion Arts, Toronto. Rebecca’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum for Natural History in New York, the Bill Reid Gallery, Museum of Vancouver, and the YVR Vancouver Airport. She was featured in the October 2024 issue of Elle Canada. She is the Artistic Associate, dancer, and regalia designer (2016 – present) for the Dancers of Damelahamid.

Chesha7 iy lha mens translates as “the mothers and daughters,” which represents this group as they are a family of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. They continue their journey to learn their culture through songs and stories and to become confident in speaking their language. Their cultural ties are woven between Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:Lo, Tsimsian, Hawaiian, and Swiss peoples. Chesha7 iy lha mens represent and share their cultural songs and dances in the best way to teach and revitalize their culture for the generations to come.

The Chinook Song Catchers are an Indigenous dance group that descends from the Squamish and Nisga’a nations. This dynamic dance group has been representing their heritage at major venues in Vancouver for over fourteen years. Performing at multi-cultural festivals and art celebrations; and conducting welcoming ceremonies for international guests to Vancouver. The Chinook Song Catchers have traveled to international events as ambassadors of our respected nations, traveling to Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, Italy, and Turkey.

The Dakhká Khwáan Dancers are a National Award winning Inland Tlingit dance group based out of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, lead by Marilyn Yadultin Jensen. They focus on reclaiming their languages and traditional values through their inherent art form of singing, drumming, dancing, and storytelling. Since forming in the community of Carcross in 2007, they have grown significantly including dancers from the Inland Tlingit communities of Teslin and Atlin. Together, they have danced across Canada, the US, New Zealand, Taiwan, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and the Pam Am Games in 2015. The group received the 2014 National Aboriginal Cultural-Tourism Award and were nominated for an Indigenous Music Award in their collaborative work with DJ Dash for their album, Deconstruct Reconstruct in 2018.

The Dancers of Damelahamid is an Indigenous dance company from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia with a rich history of masked dance that inspires a compelling performance. Through dramatic dance, captivating narrative, intricately carved masks, and elaborate regalia, the Dancers of Damelahamid transform time and space and bridge the customary with a living practice.

The Dancers of Damelahamid will share and excerpt of Raven Mother at the Signature Evening Performances, which is their newly choreographed dance work in honour of late Elder Margaret Harris (1931 – 2020). Raven Mother illustrates the vast impact Elder Harris had on the revitalization of Indigenous dance along the Northwest Coast. Raven Mother illuminates the profound leadership of mothers, their essential contribution in this resurgence, and the force and transformation of this awakening.

Tasha Faye Evans is a member of Vancouver’s innovative and multi-disciplinary theatre community. Tasha Faye’s work includes critically acclaimed productions of Radix Theatre’s Box, and Bewildered, Boca Del Lupo’s The Beginners, and her own one-woman play, She Stands Still. Recently dancing Starr Murranko’s Spine of the Mother at Vancouver’s Dancing on the Edge Festival Tasha is thrilled to bridge her theatre practice with her love of dance. A teacher, theatre performer, and dancer Tasha extends her gratefulness to her Coast Salish Territory that runs strong through her blood and sings magic into her art.

Led in partnership by Mike and Mique’l Dangeli, Git Hayetsk are an internationally renowned Indigenous mask dancing group. Git Hayetsk means the people of the copper shield in the Sm’algyax language. Their dancers are bonded by common ancestry to the Sm’algyax speaking peoples with distinctions in their family ties to the Haida, Haisla, Tahltan, Tlingit, Lil’wat, and Musqueam Nations. Since 2003, the Git Hayetsk have shared their songs and dances at ceremonial and public events in urban and rural communities throughout Canada, the US, Austria, Malaysia, Germany, and Japan. The Git Hayetsk both sing the songs of their ancestors and create new songs, dances, drums, rattles, masks, and regalia to reflect and record their experiences as Indigenous people today.

Git-Hoan(People of the Salmon) was founded in 1996 by David Boxley, internationally recognized Alaskan Tsimshian Artist and Culture bearer. The group is composed of family and close friends from the Tsimshian, Tlingit, and Haida nations. The songs and dances are presented with an energetic and proud style that, while different from most contemporary dance groups, is based on ancient traditions that belong to all coastal tribes. The Git Hoan Dancers showcase the magnificence of Tsimshian art, resurrect the practice of the culture, and educate the world that Native culture is diverse and a “living” art and culture. The Git Hoan performance is through song and dance sharing legends of the ancestors.

Raven is an emerging choreographer, dance artist, singer, and visual artist in formline design. She is a 4th year Indigenous Studies student at UBC and the Artistic and Administrative Assistant for Dancers of Damelahamid. Raven’s work is available at Lattimer gallery, Coastal Peoples Gallery, MOA Gift shop, and has been on display at the Dance Centre. Her films Spanochnonga and Lax Yip were commissioned by FORM and screened at FORM 2022 and 2023, Matriarchs Uprising 2024, Weesageechak 2023, live at Vines 2023, and New Works 2023. Wolverine is an in-the works EP, music video, and choreographed performance supported by the Raven Spirit Dance Pakitinam mentorship program. The short experimental film was supported by Co Erasga and premiered at What Lab salon studio spring series.

Grizzlypaws, St’át’imc, is an accomplished educator, cultural leader, artist, and advocate for Indigenous language revitalization, land-based education, and Indigenous cultural heritage. With a career spanning education, curriculum development and artistic performance, she brings a dynamic and culturally grounded approach to her work. She is a candidate in the Doctor of Education program at Simon Fraser University, holds a Master of Education in Land-Based Learning from the University of Saskatchewan and serves as the Indigenous Educational Developer at Thompson Rivers University’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Grizzlypaws is a published author and her musical and artistic contributions amplify the importance of St’át’imc culture. Grizzlypaws engagement includes speaking engagements and performances across Canada, the U.S., Europe and South America, where she shares Indigenous teachings through storytelling, song, and dance. She has received Indspire’s Building Brighter Futures Scholarship and international accolades in fitness competitions.

Charles Koroneho is an independent artist working in the fields of performance and culture. Based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, Koroneho is the director, lead creative and researcher of Te Toki Haruru. Established in 1997, Te Toki Haruru is a conceptual platform created to explore indigenous creativity, cultural collaboration and the intersection between performance, visual arts and design. Te Toki Haruru projects are presented as performances, exhibitions, research workshops and arts collaborations exploring the collision between Maori creativity, Aotearoa New Zealand society and global cultures. Koroneho is a graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance and Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. He supports the arts community as a collaborative director, cultural consultant and mentor for dancers, actors, performance artists, educators and cultural workers. He shares his creative practice and research methodologies with contemporary arts and educational institutions, independent artists, performance companies and indigenous communities by providing a critical framework of movement and improvisation classes, creative workshops and collaborative projects.

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is an Innu writer and multidisciplinary artist from the community of Pessamit on the North Shore in Quebec, Canada. She has been publishing poetry, essays, novels and short stories for over ten years. Alongside books, television and music, Natasha has begun a return to visual and performance art in 2019. After producing her first interdisciplinary solo show Tshishikushkueu in 2019 at Tio’Tia:ke/Montréal about the Innu woman’s return to her ancestral territory – Nutshimit – through poetic ceremonies, she performs duets with Maori performance artist Charles Koroneho in Canada and New Zealand in pieces that push the physical limits of the body before the spirits of legends, and writes poems as inner journeys for Jera Wolfe’s choreographies in Ontario and Quebec. In movement, she is interested in Body Weather and Butoh, while searching her body for fragments of the memory of the ancestral culture of the Innuat, Innu aitun, the imprint of the circulation of her people’s territory in her mind, and the healing of intergenerational trauma. In New Zealand, she created the long-term performance Natai-Kukushu : elle remonte la rivière à contre-courant (she goes upstream against the current), which she presented at Studio 303 as part of the Festival Phénoména (Montréal) in October 2023.

Starr Muranko is dancer/choreographer, Mother and Co-Artistic Director with ​Raven Spirit Dance.  As a choreographer she is most interested in the stories that we carry within our bodies and Ancestral connections to land that transcend time and space. Her work has been shared locally and nationally and includes featured works such as Chapter 21 and Spine of the Mother as well as her newest work Tracing Bones premiering this Spring.

Starr has danced with the Dancers of Damelahamid for over 20 years and trained under the guidance and mentorship of the late Elder Margaret Harris. She is currently Artist-in Residence at Ballet BC alongside longtime collaborator Margaret Grenier and holds a BFA in Dance from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. She honours and celebrates her mixed Ancestry of Omushkegowuk Cree (Moose Cree First Nation – Treaty 9), French and German in all of her work.

Nyla Bedard (Tahltan, Kaska, French, Scottish) is a multifaceted performing artist currently residing in North Vancouver. She’s an actor, writer, powwow dancer and workshop facilitator. Nyla started to dance at powwows when she was a tiny tot and now has over 35 years of experience. She shares her experience by teaching the various powwow styles with focus on the fancy shawl, sharing the dance steps and the history. In 2011, in partnership with Raven Spirit Dance Company, she started the popular Powwow Bootcamp series.

Rainbow Creek Dancers (tuul gundlas cyaal xaada) was formed in 1980 by brothers Robert and Reg Davidson, as a response to the renaissance of Haida culture. They share innovative masks, regalia, and songs created by renowned artists Robert and Reg and other group members. The objective of Rainbow Creek is to bring meaning back to the songs and dances of their ancestors, performing them as they were taught by their elders. They also strive to continually grow and connect with ceremonies that are relevant today to all people, creating new songs and dances, building upon the cultural foundation of their ancestors, and drawing upon their collective cultural, ceremonial and professional stage experiences. Rainbow Creek Dancers have performed at esteemed venues and events across BC, Canada, the US, and internationally.

Spakwus Slolem are members of the Squamish Nation. The group presents a glimpse into their culture through singing, drumming, dancing, and audience participation. Spakwus Slolem is pleased and honoured to present songs and dances of yesterday, as well as today, and feel very honoured to represent their people in a good way as their Ancestors had intended. Spakwus Slolem has performed across the world, including Taiwan, Japan, Hawaii, and Europe.

Under the guidance of Wiradjuri Dancer and Choreographer Jo Clancy, Wagana is a collective of First Nations women and girls who practice traditional and contemporary dance, song and fibre art from the creation stories and landscapes of the Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri peoples, who have occupied and cared for the unceded lands of the Blue Mountains and NSW Central West since time immemorial. Most recently we opened the Indigenous runway for Australian Fashion Week with Gawura Cultural Immersions, toured to South Korea and China with Blacktown City Council and performed in Hawaii for the Honolulu Festival. The Wagana collective harness a matriarchal strength from the Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri mountains, rivers, rocks and sky. Wagana supports and lifts others, Wagana is a gradual, continuous spiral that allows people to enter and exit as they need.

Xwelmexw Shxwexwo:s (Salish Thunderbird) shares history through song and dance from the coastal and river people of the Pacific Northwest and the Salish Sea. They are a family group from many First Nations, including Sto;lo, Musqueam, Sts:ailes, Snuneymuxw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Squamish, and other surrounding tribes. The group has travelled and shared at venues across BC, Canada, and the US and have presented with other groups such as Smokey Valley and Tsatsu Stalqayu. Making new ventures with a new beginning, Xwelmexw Shxwexwo:s hope to electrify audiences with energetic songs and dances to educate the world of their unwritten shared history of their people and heritage.

The ‘Yisya̱’winux̱w Dancers are a professional, adult and youth dance group whose members represent many of the 18 tribes of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw. Many members live and work in Alert Bay, BC. They come together to ‘share’ traditional knowledge by invitation or special arrangement for private events. Although, ‘Yisya̱’winuxw is the most recent formed dance group of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw, many of their members have ‘shared’ professionally for over 20 years. Each of the ‘Yisya̱’winuxw dancers are initiated in their Potlatch ceremonies. The dances and songs they use in their performances are owned by the members, and families within their group.