Clouded Title is a series of workshops, interviews and exhibitions centred around ownership – its ambiguities, histories, and areas of contestation in relation to land.  Different landholding models – especially those emphasizing social and ecological relationships over private possession – are explored. 

 

In April 2018, Emily Artinian and Fawn Daphne Plessner hosted a one-day art & research workshop held at Pender Island's Community Hall.  The event included a pop-up art exhibition featuring artworks by 10 artists. The workshop also included a live (phone) interview with the Indigenous legal scholar, Robert Clifford (Tsawout First Nation), who spoke about WSÁNEĆ Law and its core principles of reciprocal responsibility to non-human beings that are necessary for sustaining healthy relationships with other beings.  Additionally, Artinian and Plessner chaired a panel discussion that brought together speakers Elder Earl Claxton Jr. (Tsawout First Nation), Mavis Underwood (then Elected Band Council Member, Tsawout First Nation) and David Boyd (environmental legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment). The panel discussed the complexities of the Douglas Treaty: North Saanich, the divergent interpretations and histories of the Treaty's making, and the widely differing notions of 'owning' land that are subtended by colonial and indigenous word views.
 

The event also marked the launch of an art intervention by Plessner, in the form of a newspaper, called Clouded Title (see the Tree Museum's Publications page for a pdf copy). The publication was distributed to all permanent residents' homes on Pender Island. It invited residents of the island to participate in a community thought experiment and to reflect on the implications of (purportedly) owning land within the unceded territory of the WSÁNEĆ First Nation People. The newspaper compared the (historical and current) claims of the Douglas Treaty: North Saanich to a WSÁNEĆ origin story of the birth of the islands. Each claim and phrase of the Treaty is examined and critiqued through writings by WSÁNEĆ and other First Nation authors revealing an important counter-narrative to settler beliefs about terra nullius and land possession. The newspaper also troubled the very notion of owning land (as a fungible asset) through an analysis of the WSÁNEĆ origin story by Robert Clifford, highlighting the important legal implications of that oral history and the nature of reciprocal relations and responsibilities to non-human kin enshrined within WSÁNEĆ Law.

Clouded Title expands on Street Road’s overall project of troubling received wisdom around the activity that enabled its inception: real estate investment and speculation. Clouded Title is a broad survey, taking in views from diverse groups to build a multi-perspectival understanding of ownership. Components and participants are added over time.  For more information about Street Road's exhibition program visit streetroad.org