Yellowknife photographer’s 1st book captures relationship between Dene and the church

One of the N.W.T.’s most well-known photographers says his latest project aims to reflect on the relationship between Indigenous people and the Catholic church.

Pat Kane, who has spent the past 18 years photographing people and communities in the North, is launching his first book: a collection of photos titled Here Is Where We Shall Stay.

Speaking with The Trailbreaker’s Hilary Bird Friday morning, Kane said his book is meant to be a meditation on how Dene people in the N.W.T. have set about reclaiming their identity in different ways.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about the idea behind this book.

The book is about religion, and it’s about the church’s influence and impact on people in Northwest Territories. It’s also about how people have dealt with the the legacy of the church in their communities, and how people are now reclaiming their narratives after so many years of trauma because of the church.

I’m of Algonquin and Irish-Canadian ancestry, myself, so I kind of grew up between those two worlds, too. I always kind of struggled with my Irish Catholic upbringing, and my mom’s side of the family was very much about Indigenous spirituality. Living between those two worlds, I really wanted to explore that here in the Northwest Territories — it’s so visual here, with the churches, but also there’s people doing very traditional activities, too.

Can you describe a couple of the photos and give us a couple of the stories behind them?

I wanted it to be kind of meditative. When people go through it, there are a lot of quiet photos and a lot of reflective photos.

There are people getting married in a church in Behchokǫ̀, for example, and they’re wearing moosehide vests. To people who are not from here, that visual alone is quite different. It’s quite interesting to see that people are still connected to the church in that way, but there’s still a traditional element to it.

I went to a caribou research camp a couple years ago, and we did the rosary every morning. At first, you’re kind of like, ‘OK — this is interesting and different.’ But after doing it for several days, it became quite beautiful. It was a way for everyone to get together. It was spoken in Tłı̨chǫ, as well, so that just has a beautiful kind of tone to it.

I want to talk to you about the name of the book: Here Is Where We Shall Stay. Why did you choose that?

That comes from a story in the Book of Dene [a collection of legends collected by Father Emile Petitot and published by the Department of Education in 1976], which I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with. The legend is called The Two Brothers. The story goes, two brothers — they’re very young — they get lost in a canoe. Over many decades, they go around the world trying to find home. They are faced with racism, a lot of hardship, not knowing what to do, relying on each other to find their home.

When they’re grown men, they travel west, south, east, and then finally to the North — and they’re welcome there. It’s the first place where they are welcomed, and one brother says to the other, ‘Here is where we shall stay.’ And it turns out they actually arrived back where they lived, because they got reunited with their parents.

I thought that was a good metaphor of this idea of colonization — of getting lost, being taken from your family, religion coming into your life and taking so much away. And being lost for so many years, then coming full circle and landing in a place where you always were, and you’re always supported, and just realizing: ‘Yes, this is our land, this is where we belong.’

You’ve lived here for almost two decades. You’re originally from Ontario and you’ve travelled across the North. You photograph lots of people. How has this place and the work you’ve done shaped you as a person?

I think it’s changed my life. I mean, it’s a place I call home, it’s a place I love. It’s a place where my friends and family are.

I came here, like a lot of us do, to work and to see that sense of adventure. But I’m very fortunate that I have travelled so extensively in the Northwest Territories that I do feel like I’m part of many communities.

When you’re growing up in Ontario, you don’t really appreciate your Indigenous side. It’s so hidden, unless you live on a reservation all the time, and colonization also teaches you not to be proud of that. But when you come to the Northwest Territories, that’s when I really reconnected with my Indigenous heritage.

That really changed me in many ways: it’s kind of wild and also beautiful.

There are lots of ways to tell and document stories. What do you think photography offers, as a medium?

I think it’s an underused way to tell stories about where we live, especially in the North. There are a lot of people who take amazing, incredible photos of the landscapes, wildlife and people, and I would love for more people to document their own communities.

When I do mentorships in communities, that’s one thing I say: You don’t need to travel the world to take great photos. You can do amazing storytelling in your own family, your own backyard, your own communities.

It’s also become more accessible — you know, there’s rarely a person without a smartphone these days.

Yeah, you don’t need a fancy camera to do this. Believe me, a lot of my shots are iPhones.

What do you hope readers take away from this book?

I hope when they go through the book, they reflect on the church and its relationship, its impact on people and people’s relationship to it — but also see how people are moving forward in decolonizing and reclaiming identity, their narrative and language. And just to mediate on that.

The Two Brothers story is kind of woven in throughout the book. If you just flip through it, you’re not sure why it’s there. But when you really go page-by-page, you understand the flow of the book.

It’s also meant to look like an actual Bible in a way — that was by design. We wanted to make it reclaim that book format as well.

I hope people go through it, see the beauty and realize the bigger story behind this book.

You mentioned that this sort of project, you’re hoping people can sort of move forward with that tension between their Indigenous spirituality and organized religion, and you talked about your struggle with that. How has this project helped you move forward with that?

I think for a long time, I was very confused. I went to Catholic school, and you’re kind of told what to do. Now, there’s a lot of anger toward it, too, but I’ve also learned there are a lot of really devout Indigenous people, and that needs to be respected as well.

So I think I’m not — an understatement — pleased with the Catholic church. But I’m also respectful of the people who are very devout. People are going to kind of decolonize and reclaim their sense of culture and connection to their Indigenous heritage at their own pace, and that needs to be respected as well.

So it’s not, ‘We’re going to move on from this.’ There’s always going to be that underlying colonization of people that we just need to be aware of and appreciate and support each other through.

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Kane is hosting a book launch for Here We Will Stay this weekend in Yellowknife, at the Sundog Trading Post from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday.