nanâtohkokwâsowak | Bidakiigiwewog at AKA

Wally Dion, antidote, 2025

nanâtohkokwâsowak
They sew patchwork blankets
Bidakiigiwewog
They put needles into fabric

May 8 – June 26, 2026
Exhibition Opening: May 8, 2026, 5 – 7pm
Artists in Conversation: May 30, 2026, 1:30pm

KC Adams, Holly Aubichon, Lora Daniels, Wally Dion, Norma Houle and Sarah Houle, Niki Little, Bre Little

co-curated by Jen Smith and Tarin Dehod

Quilts preserve our family stories, are physical representations of collaborative making, learned techniques, and tangible representations of the labour of ancestral hands. So often the common narrative centres quilting as a settler tradition, but we know that sewing patchwork blankets was transformed into its own practice by many Indigenous cultures.

nanâtohkokwâsowak | Bidakiigiwewog brings together Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Saulteux prairie artists using quilting as an exploration of relationship building, understanding familial relationships, building new friendships, and the impact of gifting.

Quilting is an action, one of bringing something together, each stitch holds more than the fabric it binds together.

KC Adams, Morning Star (detail), billboard project, 2026

KC Adams (Ininnew/Anishinaabe/British), relational maker, educator, activist, and mentor living in Winnipeg, creates work that explores technology in relationship to her Indigenous culture. Adams is an award-winning, nationally and internationally known maker with a B.F.A. from Concordia University and an M.A. in Cultural Studies, Curatorial Stream from the University of Winnipeg.

Holly Aubichon (Métis/Cree) imagines ways ancestral knowledge reaches​ urban Indigenous people through ​memories, land, and storied experiences. Her practice includes painting, tattooing, writing and curation. Aubichon was​ born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her Indigenous relations come from Green Lake and Lestock, SK.

Lora Daniels has been making blankets for over 10yrs. Sewing became a big part of her life, after overcoming grief it became a pastime. Along with healing, making Star Blankets is a way to be remembered and how she became whole again. What started as a dream, became a reality; a successful small business.

Wally Dion is a visual artist living and working in Binghamton, New York. A member of Yellow Quill First Nation (Salteaux), Dion holds a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Throughout much of his career, Dion’s work has contributed to a broad conversation in the art world about identity and power, and can be interpreted as part of a much larger pan-American struggle by Indigenous peoples to be recognized: culturally, economically, and politically, by settler societies. Dion has exhibited extensively throughout Canada & the USA.

Sarah Houle is an artist and performer from Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement in Northern Alberta. Her practice is collaborative and timebased, evolving from personal mythology, familial roots, and material explorations to encompass film, animation, installation, sound and performance. Sarah makes her home in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, but family – near and far – is integral to her process, both as subjects and collaborators. She draws from ancestry and creates in community, never alone as she explores hidden worlds. Her roles as an artist, mother, bandmate, collaborator, and community member evidence Sarah’s belief in interconnected relationships, stretching across place and time.

Breanna and Niki Little are connected by blood, and craftrooted in the kinship and worldview of their Anishininew community, Kistiganwacheeng (Garden Hill Anishininew Nation) in Manitoba. Breanna Little reclaims and practices Indigenous . rooted in reclamation, relationality, and a deep love for community. Breanna has shared her skills through workshops, within schools and organizations like MAWA andhe shows up for her community daily as an ultimate Aunty, fierce mum, and a Family Enhancement Worker for Island Lake First Nations Family Services. Niki Little is a mother, artist/observer, cultural connector, and founding member of The Ephemerals. Her work digs into Indigenous women’s ways of knowing, continuums, and community-centered methodologies that range from cultural material to drawings and paintings, to installation.. Niki is a Producer with the National Film Board of Canada and previously served as Artistic Director of imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival from 2019 to 2021.

sīkwan it is springtime

AKA artist-run has been renamed by Ruth Cuthand, Felicia Gay, Kris Alvarez, and Aurora Wolfe, past and current trusted stewards. In the summer of 2025, at a local hot spring, leaders of AKA contemplated our history and our recent governance evolution and the subsequent small moments that have brought about far reaching change; ripple effects.

sīkwan (pronounced SEE-gan) both honours the seasonal shifts of this land and the symbolic seasons of our organization. Our new name is a land acknowledgement, a word that resonates across the Plains, and symbolizes the messiness and beauty of change. We continue to be a space for all voices working with communities as collaborators and storytellers. This name reflects the kindling and renewal of what began as a grassroots collective (1971) and what has returned to a grassroots collective (2020). Learn more about our history and our group agreements.

In this season of change, sīkwan welcomes new partnerships with Bridges Art Movement (BAM) and Saskatoon Makerspace. This September our free studio program will shift to include a gallery space, a dedicated BAM residency, and a new studio membership with Makerspace giving artists access to specialized tools, equipment, and training. As a continuation of our collaboration, the gallery space will be used by all three organizations to expand opportunities for artists. Sikwan utilizes our capital resources to be a responsible neighbour. In this time of fixed funding, we see our facility as an opportunity to share resources where they can be useful, growing communities and connections.

AKA
424 20th Street West
Saskatoon, SK S7M 0X4
306 491-6102 | Accessible
derek@akaartistrun.com
akaartistrun.com
Facebook | Instagram

AKA is an artist-run centre operating on Treaty Six Land that encompasses the traditional homeland of numerous First Nations, including Cree, Dene, Plains Cree, Nakota, Saulteaux, and Ojibwe, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.