Longhouse Labs

"Longhouse Labs reimagines what collaboration and community intersections can look like within an institutional setting. The project is about empowering and creating dedicated space for Indigenous-led experiences and learning.” -Logan MacDonald, Director of Longhouse Labs and CRC in Indigenous Art

Land Acknowledgement:  The Longhouse Labs (LLabs) at the University of Waterloo, is situated on the traditional territory of ‎the Haudenosaunee, as well as Anishinaabe and Attawandaron (also known as Neutral). This region, known as Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract, is a stretch of land that runs six miles along both sides of the Grand River. It is land that belongs to the Six Nations through colonial agreements, but which has been colonially exploited away from their stewardship with only 4.85% of this area currently held by Six Nations. 

About the Longhouse Labs

The Longhouse Labs (LLabs) aims to be a destination for Indigenous artistic practices, knowledge sharing, heritage preservation and creative practice while creating community engagement and supporting commitments for Indigenous reconciliation at the university. 

The Longhouse Labs (LLabs) is an ambitious project focused on offering three concurrent artist residency fellowships to Indigenous artists, to be complimented by dynamic public engagement programs and educational activities to support the Fellow’s creative research.  The goal is to integrate Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, traditions and leadership broadly within education. 

This ambitious program unfolds in our newly renovated innovative Longhouse Labs facilities, which includes three private studios for Fellows, alongside the LLabs Gallery, Heritage, Circuit, Garden and Community Lab public spaces. 

2024/25 Longhouse Labs Fellows

The Longhouse Labs Fellowship offers three concurrent, paid, artist residency fellowships to Indigenous artists.  In the fall of 2024, the first cohort of Longhouse Fellows were welcomed to the Longhouse Labs to begin their eight-month residencies. 

Upcoming Longhouse Labs Events

Events will be updated here as they are announced. 

Longhouse Labs Exhibitions

Treaty Girl

“Treaty Girl aims to make visible the many generations of girls who are embodying Treaty, survival, and joy.”

In the fall of 2024, Longhouse Labs hosted Treaty Girl, an exhibited created by Courtney Skye (Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan) and curated by Alex Jacobs-Blum (Cayuga Nation, Wolf Clan). Running from October 1 to November 5, Treaty Girl was open to the public on Tuesdays or via appointment.

This exhibition is a love letter to Haudenosaunee girlhood. It is for Haudenosaunee girls who carry on our ways of being and knowing. Girls who inherit the responsibility to carry on the centuries-old governance, land stewardship, and material culture. Girls who will become parents, teachers, healers, storytellers. Girls who are paying attention to the legacies we leave, the tools we hand to them, and the burdens colonialism has placed on their shoulders.

Rooted in Y2K and femme aesthetics, Treaty Girl reflects the nostalgia of my girlhood and explores Haudenosaunee worldview and the influences of western pop culture on our lives.

 - from the artist statement

 We Remain Certain

On April 11, 2024, guests packed the LLabs to see the new creative space and the inaugural exhibition, We Remain Certain, curated by Protect the Tract, a group of Haudenosaunee artists, community members, and academics and the 2023 Longhouse Fellows. Courtney Skye, Tract co-director, spoke at the event. She said the exhibition was intended to honour her homelands in the most beautiful way possible, and for her that was Haudenosaunee raised beadwork.

The collaborative exhibition was a contemporary telling of their traditional narratives, how they see the world, and how they live their lives on the Grand River Territory. The exhibit offered a glimpse into the unique worldview of the Haudenosaunee and how their lifestyle has been maintained in Waterloo region for over a thousand years.

Arenhátyen tsi ní:tsi teyottenyonhátye’ kwató:ken tsi nī:tsi yonkwa’nikonhrayén:ta’s
Awęhęgyeh shęh hodęˀ dewahde:nihs, haˀgadagyeˀshǫˀ shęh nˀagwanigǫ̲ha:do:gę:
It does not matter what continually changes, our understanding remains certain. 

Prior to the main opening remarks, visitors were able to experience music by Layla Staats, an inspirational and creative multidisciplinary Artist based in the Six Nations, whose works stem from her journey of understanding and reclaiming her Indigenous strength as a generation survivor of residential schools.

The exhibition also displayed “Bead the Tract” – the culmination of a project to create an artistic representation of the Haldimand Tract. The tract is made of purple velvet and adorned with 150-year-old white raised beadwork of flowers, animals, leaves, and birds.  Fish from the Grand River are depicted in each corner, symbolizing the health of the river and its connection to the Great Lakes. The artwork is beaded onto stretched deerskin canvas on a frame made of tree branches.

Four Haudenosaunee artists trained in the raised beadwork technique -- Tesha Emathle, Kahionwinehshon Phillips, Talena Atfield, and Jija Jacobs -- spent approximately 1,500 hours to design and create the artwork. They learned the traditional raised beadwork style typical of the Tuscarora nation in the mid-1800s from an elder communicating in the Tuscarora language. “It’s considered one of the highest forms of art that our culture has. We wanted to use that form to convey our connection to the land,” said Courtney Skye, co-director of Tract.

Haudenosaunee teachings are communicated through the artwork as well as the way in which it was created. “You can see the common themes and the way the different artists incorporate and express our culture,” said Skye. “I think it really demonstrates that we’re a living and vibrant people, a vibrant culture.”

Bead the Tract is being used as a catalyst to educate the public and to share and promote the Haudenosaunee culture. It is intended to spark conversations about unwanted development along the Grand River, and to increase civic engagement in land stewardship along the Grand River watershed. An unanticipated outcome of this artwork is the resurgence of traditional methods and techniques at Six Nations. Young people are expressing interest in learning these traditional ways of artmaking.

Longhouse Labs Past Programming

Indigenous Speakers Series - Greg Staats

On November 28, Greg Staats was part of the Indigenous Speakers Series at the University of Waterloo. Roughly 100 participants attended the event, which was also recorded.

At the event, Staats discussed his evolving methodology based on phenomena, lens-based issues and a lifelong practice focused on Hodinöhsö:ni imagery and the responsibilities to land body and memory. His presentation included selected images that identify key moments of movement over a 40-year career of exhibitions and sharing.

Greg is a founding member of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers' Association (NIIPA).  He was awarded the 1999 Duke & Duchess of York Prize in Photography from the Canada Council for the Arts and, recently, the 2021 Toronto Arts Foundation’s Inaugural Indigenous Artist Award. Greg has had 17 solo national, regional and artist-run exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Gallery 44 and the McMaster Museum of Art, as well as 16 group exhibitions, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, in Sante Fe, USA, Mercer Union and the International Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. He has lectured extensively nationally, and his works are held within public, private and corporate collections. Greg has served as faculty for two Aboriginal Visual Arts Residencies at the Banff Centre. Greg Staats grew up on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ohsweken, and has resided in Toronto, Ontario, since 1986.