Looking for Medicine

“Finding Medicine is based on a story a friend told me about the first jingle dancer. The woman in the centre is wearing an old school jingle dress and looking for medicine. She is surrounded by a circle of contemporary dancers with their fans raised on the honour beat. I think the hospital will be a good home for them and hopefully they will bring some good medicine and comfort to some.”

Sherry Farrell Racette is an interdisciplinary scholar with an active arts and curatorial practice. Her work is grounded in story: stories of people, stories objects tell, painting stories, telling stories and finding stories. Farrell Racette began her academic career in Saskatchewan Indigenous education, working at SUNTEP (Gabriel Dumont Institute) and First Nations University of Canada. She remains committed to Indigenous ways of knowing. Farrell Racette has done extensive work in archives and museum collections with an emphasis on retrieving women’s voices and recovering aesthetic knowledge. She has illustrated eight children’s books, collaborating with noted authors Maria Campbell, Ruby Slipperjack, Freda Ahenakew and Wilfred Burton. Primarily a painter and textile artist, she also creates narrative objects, and has begun to incorporate soundscapes into her work. Beadwork is increasingly important as an artistic practice, creative research and pedagogy.