I am incredibly grateful for the space that was held for me at SAR to launch an investigative project that considers mining histories and historicities across so-called Canada and the ways in which the state’s contemporary extractive industry sector, grafted to national myths of the frontier and terra nullius, perpetuates environmental racism at a planetary scale in the name of realizing the technologification and “clean” energy infrastructures of the global north. I felt rich beyond words to have unhurried space to learn, think and sketch atlases for other possibilities for living on this earth. My time at the residency was characterized by many cups of tea, long hours of reading and countless walks along the Similkameen river or across the captivating Okanagan desert where, in slowing my attention to see an ecosystem teeming with life and relational agency, I could always reconnect with hope. I am grateful to the Syilx tmixʷ Nation for stewarding this place such that I could be met and taught by the grammars of change and transformation that the winds had to share, among many other things.

Anneke Dresselhuis, Testimonial