Siku Allooloo paints her resurgence with sealskin poetry. The 2,700 letters are carefully stitched with a soft thimble of moosehide. In black sealskin letters on three large strips of canvas, this poem is draped from the wall. Siku Allooloo, an Inuk/Haitian/Taíno artist, created Akia (2019) out of her longing for home and reparative care. In October 2021 I visited the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG)-Qaumajuq for the first time and was able to experience Akia. My eyes watered with pride and joy when I saw what my cousin Siku had created. I shared a video on Instagram of myself standing beside her sealskin poetry, which towered over me.

Siku is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, journalist, award-winning filmmaker and founder of Akia Films. Through her numerous creative practices, she explores the transformative experience of grief and love for her mother in the spirit world. She has an effervescent understanding of land-based practices and cultural traditions. 

In an interview with WAG-Qaumajuq, Siku sits by the ocean as she explains that Akia was based on a conversation between herself and her ataata. “It’s also about home and trying to repair what has been severed through colonialism as an Inuk woman. My father was a residential school survivor, and I wanted to reflect a lot of his strength through this piece and to try and hold him as a whole person with love and care.”[1]

COURTESY MORRIS AND HELEN BELKIN ART GALLERY PHOTO RACHEL TOPHAM © THE ARTIST

A line from Akia that resonates with me is “I know him like the deepest part of myself / and barely at all.” Through my own experience with grief and this kind of parental estrangement, I find it inspiring to see the ways that Siku is able to explore the hurt. She examines these stories and difficult histories with care and creates something beautiful to represent it. How do we repair our ancestral wounds? Some ask, and some forget that creation is like a thread through time and space. We take the hurt and sift it, crossing it over into reparative songs of soft waves. Poetry and art come from the same waters. Akia is a teacher, showing us how we can communicate our hurt and our grief with the kind of care and gentleness that these conversations require. 

Siku explains that Akia “is also based on the creation story of Sedna. The poetry and the artwork are set in her descent to the bottom of the sea as she’s transforming.” Siku’s poetry is draped across a wall, like blankets embracing viewers with stories of Sedna and ancestral resilience. As I study Siku’s art and poetry, I find myself transported to a mountain brook, watching its clear water flow over each precious stone. With such a gentle strength, each line of Akia permeates all space like the smoke of sage and sweetgrass.

Sacred circles rise up from these words. So many of us are searching for ways to come full circle in our journeys. Here, in Siku’s poetics of repair, I am at peace.

Kaitlyn Purcell is a Dënésułıné artist, writer and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Calgary. She is a proud member of Smith’s Landing First Nation and a recipient of numerous awards, including a doctoral research SSHRC award and the Metatron Prize for her debut poetic novella, ʔbédayine.

Notes

1 All quotes Siku Allooloo, interview with WAG-Qaumajuq, 2021.