One Otipemisiw dreams of the past, present, and future, to sit in a circle, tell stories, remember who we are and learn who we can be.

Otipemisiwak Fantasy is an exploration of contemporary Métis culture through an Indigiqueer and twospirited perspective. It is a love letter to my culture, a way of thanking my relatives who worked so hard to maintain our connection to our culture and land, and allowed me to dream and imagine Indigiqueer futures, Métis spirituality, and the role of the twospirited Otipemisiw. Through historic and contemporary ways of making, Otipemisiwak Fantasy takes the form of a boudoir setting, a sort of dressing room for the artistic personas Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband and Wife, Indigiqueer representations of Métis gender roles.

The exhibition asks the questions that linger on the lips of the public as they perceive and interact with Indiqueerness and the Michif culture as it exists in history and a contemporary context, revealing the discomfort in invasive conversations regarding native, trans bodies. In implicating the viewers, members of the general public who will pass by and possibly enter The New Gallery and engage with the work in their daily lives. I invite the public to sit with the discomfort of both the unapologetic displays of queerness and the heavy history of my people, reminding the audience that we did not end in 1885, we continue to own ourselves.

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Hey, Riel.
It was nice of you to give me this opportunity to write for your show. To be honest I worked on like, 10 drafts in my usual style, but nothing was clicking right. I figured I'd write to you as your friend since that's the only compelling thing I can think of for this text. I don't really know how to start, and I don't even know how to say this but...

sometimes, I wonder if he wears you like a mask

I first saw him half a decade ago in a photograph on your phone. Actually that's wrong, I first saw Louis Riel in 6th grade humanities on the smart board, but this was him today, and you were calling him Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband. He eclipsed the city skyline, wearing his tradesman tools crotchwise, flanked by ceinture fléchée battleworn from whipping plains wind. I caught him staring into me underneath the shadow of his brow. His eyes told me he was on a debaucherous expedition, that he was looking for someone DTF; to bounce on it like our ancestors once did. It felt like he was asking me if I wanted to join him.
I looked away from the photo and out of the study room, blinding myself with the snow tracks; there were impressions made where he stood. For some reason I figured he might still be standing there staring into me, but of course he wasn't.
You were talking about how the road network was built upon the impressions of red river cart tracks, that you could hear them from miles away, and that I would be able to hear them again soon.

I asked you if he's really back to take care of unfinished business.
"Yeah, he tends to do that."

He was in the AUArts building a month after that asking your class what they knew of him. Most didn't have any idea for all sorts of understandable reasons, plenty also knew of him, but no matter what they didn't know enough to placate his old fears, his old sense of satisfaction. When I rejected his call I figured he would let up after the winter solstice and leave for greener pastures. They believed him gone. Dead, even. So of course, he decided to keep doing what he always does, and begin making his presence here known consistently.

I saw him in person for the first time at the first TRESSPASSING event we put on. We were a collective of queer artists who wanted to do some real heinous performance art, and surprisingly Loophole allowed us to do it. I took photographs of the event, but I lost them in a google drive somewhere. I'm 50% sure that PJ drank a bottle of robitussin out of a dog bowl, although that could have been a different night. Anyways, I opted out of reading the "not a land acknowledgement" with you, but I remember the last line of it which we worked on together:

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What language do you speak to the birds?

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It's around here that the boundaries between history, self, my escalating drug problem, and speculation get all fucked for me... but I swear to god I blinked and you were gone and he was there. I had it on camera the moment it changed but it's all blurry and you can't make out what happened. It was the speech he gave before his tribunal all those years ago, but he was here and now. Maybe it was the drugs, but I thought that this land is time and that time is a flat circle. Do you know anything about this? It feels like you would know something about it. I feel like some shut-in on /x/ replying to some conspiracy thread about how you never see two similar looking celebrities in the same room.

I saw him a few times after that, but I can't say I saw him in person for a while. You would sometimes share photographs and video documents of his antics to everyone. He'd raid your wardrobe for beaver fur lingerie, and one time he scalped Ol' Macdonald in view of the decaying railroad. I regret neglecting to see him at the time.

I started saying "Taanshi" to the magpies as some sort of decolonial gesture in his service, but in truth I was too embarrassed to allow myself to join him in any of his expeditions. I didn't grow up with his image and legacy. I didn't look at my lineage after you and I did that one glance-over in fear that it was all being overstated, or that I would inevitably overstate it. I felt no connection to being of his people with the way my grandparents had had it stolen from them and with how well their kin skated above shiny wooden floorboards reflecting "live, laugh, love" respectability. I felt I had no right to join him, and it was killing me.
I stayed at your place for a week when it almost did.
In the mornings I would watch you smoke a bowl and look out at the northern migration resting on the telephone lines. When you left the room I would go outside and try, but I just couldn't say hello to them in any language I knew, and it felt ridiculous to try to say hello in a language I didn't.

I left for Denman Island without saying goodbye so I could be mute walking dead somewhere else.

2024 came and went trapped on that Island. By that time I was sick of the trust fund anarchists, the hippie boomers, and the small island politics of who hatefucks who. I was invited to a house party one night and despite all this sickness, I had nothing to do but go. My coworker was there, and tonight he was wearing the ceinture fléchée. He told me he was gonna head in to do karaoke, and that he was going to totally prank everyone by singing Judy Garland's "I'm an Indian too". I encouraged him, figuring it would be funny imagining some liberal Denman lady earnestly attempting to educate this Metis trickster on the offensiveness of that song.

I went inside, and he sang, and I laughed, and then it ended, and everyone watched, and I applauded, and nobody else did, and nobody said anything, and he left, and then I left. Nobody seemed to understand his satire, worse than that, if they did understand, I don't think it would have been funny. Away from the confluence all I could feel was landlessness. It was all Specters floating above treated oak.

On the drive back from the party I thought about the letter Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband read to Sir John A. Macdonald beside the railway. You talk about that one line of his letter a lot, how it really means something to you:

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and Riel is dead

but he just keeps coming back. [1]

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I always wondered how he keeps coming back, but I understand it now. He acts through people, he works through them like memory, his persona grander than mere historical record and tribute. For every time his persona is warped into a form suitably respectable for faux-tribulation by the political body, his face will be emblazoned prideful and strong on an ironic t-shirt in equal measure. When somebody forgets him, someone will wear his face and make them remember. When someone wears his face, he wears their face in turn.
When I get home from the party, he will be staring at me in my dreams.

His eyes keep promising me of things that I have been turning away from in shame. [2]
I was now too far away to hear the Red River Carts now developing paths in the place I call home. I told myself in the car that I was coming back. I will see him in person, I will not avert his gaze when I fall asleep tonight.

This is all to say that it's been good seeing you again.

We watched Point Break for like, the 7th time together a few months ago. You know that scene where Bodhi and Johnny Utah are in the helicopter with only one parachute? I looked over to you when Bodhi said that titular line[3]

and you were keeled over possessed with silent laughter. For some reason, behind the sound of helicopter wings and homoerotic screams, I can hear creaking wooden joints somewhere on the other side of Nose Hill.

If he really does wear you like a mask, he chose the right person to wear.

Artist Biography 

Riel Starr

I descend maternally from Métis families from the historic Red River Settlement and Batoche, notably my Berthelet ancestors were community leaders in Pointe à Grouette and my Caron ancestors fought in the Northwest Resistance of 1885. I was born in Amiskwaciywâskahikan, Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory and have been residing in Mohkinstsis, Calgary, Alberta since 2020. I introduce myself in this way, the traditional way of the Métis to contextualise my knowledge and experiences and situate myself on this land.

With mechanisms of survivance I oppose those of colonialism, by referencing historical aesthetics of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its bloody legacy, the public art and monuments installed throughout Calgary, the suburban Cowboys that come out of hiding on the outskirts of the city, riding steel steeds, raised trucks at the summer Stampede. Survivance is “more than survival, more than endurance, or mere response; [they] are the creases of sovereignty,” (Gerald Vizenor).

My recent body of work explores and honours my Métis two-spirited, transsexual personhood and challenges settler-colonial understandings of these intersecting identities through a sculptural practice engaging with themes of site specificity, local history, and past and present ways people engage with the land around them by revealing overlooked or hidden histories. I open conversations and opportunities for critiquing power structures using humour, performance and performative objects, orientation devices and material culture in the form of queer kink objects and wearables, writing, and traditional Métis material culture and ways of making. At the heart of my practice are notions of queer empowerment, survivance, Indigiqueer Futurisms, and the circular cycle of teaching and learning.

Elizabeth Fox (She/They)

My writing explores the spaces between social critique, transgression, and self-disclosure. My essays have covered many disparate topics including: internet pornography, combat sports, failure, identity, and technology. My work was featured in the 2023 emerging art writers publication alongside other emerging writers at AUArts. I have also published essays and showcased performance art with the TRESSPASSING collective (2023-2025). Our final zine included my essay pornosexual futurism which kickstarted my current artistic interest in gooning cultures. Unfortunately, my mom has also read that essay. I reside in Treaty 7 where I continue to be Riel Starr's biggest fan.

《自主之人的奇想》

Riel Starr

2026 年 10 月 23 日至 12 月 12 日