Just Breathe, Okâwîmâwaskiy is a collaborative project created by Cree artist Sandra Lamouche and settler artist Melanie Kloetzel. Developing from a shared concern regarding the state of the planet, Lamouche and Kloetzel came together to consider how to use an immersive and site-specific dance theatre experience to address the intersection of climate change, capitalism, Indigenous knowledge and mental health.

 

With support from the University of Calgary, Canada Council for the Arts, and Environment and Climate Change Canada (Mobilizing Alberta), multiple live presentations of the project occurred between January 2023 and January 2024. These presentations involved taking audience-participants (including full classes of students) on an immersive ‘tour’ through a site-specific landscape where they engaged in physical and state-based embodied tasks, faced a mock climate emergency, and experienced the sharing of Indigenous knowledge through a healing hoop dance. Each tour ended with a one-hour focus group conducted by a clinical psychologist, who helped the audience process the emotions of hope, fear, confusion and anger that emerged.

 

The project has recently been reconstituted as a 22-minute film that can be used as a springboard for discussion and facilitation around eco-anxiety, its roots and the paradoxes surrounding it. In this keynote address, we will share this film, along with lecture, imagery and discussion, as a way to explore how creative practice can support community wellness and catalyze cross-cultural and place-based learning.