Waking bears and arts combined

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This year the BC Festival of the Arts was held May 23 to June 3 in Nelson, which has been called the "best small arts town in Canada."

Every year the festival attracts 900 participants to take part in workshops, conference sessions, and master classes given by more than 70 professional artists. This year, 40 Indigenous artists from across the province participated in the Indigenous Arts Service Organization Showcase 2000, the final festival event and was aired live on CBC radio.

Chief Sophie Pierre of the Ktunaxa/Kinbasket Tribal Council was on hand to welcome the festival delegates and others to the Ktunaxa territory.

The Indigenous showcase emcee was Art Napoleon, who was instrumental in keeping the show going despite a slow start because of technical difficulties. At the first sign of trouble, Napoleon strapped on his jar harp and acoustic guitar and provided a great musical interlude while the program was corrected.

The BC Festival of the Arts offers programs and presentation opportunities for emerging artists in visual and literary arts, songwriting and world music, theatre and dance, film and Indigenous arts.

Each year the Indigenous showcase works with a theme for four artistic disciplines. This year's theme was called "Bearing Our Images Forward." Each discipline has its own mentors and a participant works within his area of interest. The visual arts mentor was Barbara Marchand, literary arts mentor was Jordan Wheeler, multi-media mentor was Dorothy Christian and dance performance mentor was Denise Lonewalker.

Part of the showcase was a theatrical performance that began with sleeping bears waking from their hibernation. Poems and prose were elegantly read and a number of visual elements were thrown into the mix.

A visual arts exhibition titled, "artWORK 2000" was part of the festival. There were quite a few works by Indigenous artist on display throughout the makeshift gallery, the gymnasium of the local college.

About 8,000 visitors attended the exhibition designed to highlight the province's emerging artists.