Pat Kane. A dog walks near the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Łutsël K’é, Northwest Territories. The church was built near the present day settlement in the 1930s and moved to its current location at the tip of the peninsula – one of the tallest and most recognizable structures in the community.
An Algonquin Anishinaabe member of the Timiskaming First Nation, Canadian photographer Pat Kane was raised in a mixed-race home. “My mother was born on a reservation in Quebec and my father grew up in an Irish immigrant family,” he says.
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“It wasn’t until I moved to Yellowknife [in the Northwest Territories] that I reconnected with my Indigenous side. The people here are so proud of their culture and their elders. That was a turning point for me.”
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Photography provided Kane with a path to explore his identity by documenting the lives of the local Indigenous community, who are related to the Dene people of the Navajo Nation. Although Kane isn’t from their nation, his work over the past 20 years has established a bond of trust, understanding and respect.
Pat Kane. Instant photos of Terri Enzoe, Jaysen Michel and Jennifer Michel cover an archive photo of students and missionaries of the Chief Julius residential school in Teet’lit Zheh (Fort McPherson). Terri, Jaysen and Jennifer are land and water protectors from Łutsël K’é, working as part of the Ni Hat’ni Dene Guardians to preserve their homelands.Pat Kane. Sage burns in a smudging bowl on Lila Fraser Erasmus’ dining room table. “We’re connected to the land, it is part of who we are as people, we are inseparable from it,” she says. “Our traditional medicines have strong healing powers – sage, spruce tips, chaga, fireweed, rat root – all of these plants we find on the land can help us with common sicknesses to serious diseases. If you take something from the land, it has to be picked with good intentions or else it won’t work. This is a very spiritual process for us.”
