Spotlight: Rihkee Strapp

Rihkee Strapp is metis of the wolverine clan with Cree and Sioux heritage who was born in Red Lake in Northwestern Ontario. Rihkee is an artist, currently living in Sault Ste. Marie, who is committed to growing the local arts and culture sector and connecting others to opportunities. Along with creating artwork, Rihkee is involved in numerous organizations, initiatives and community projects such as ArtBridges, Urban Indigenous Youth for Change, Thinking Rock Community Arts and Soo York Urban Arts Collective.

Check out their story below:

Q: What inspires you?

A: In my hometown of Red Lake in the late 70s, there was a silkscreen cooperative that was all indigenous owned and operated called the Triple K Cooperative. Started by Norval Morriseau, and the Kakegamic family. It was a group of artists who advocated and fought for indigenous representation in galleries. Around the 60s and 70s, a lot of indigenous art wasn’t considered “fine” enough art and it was often classified as artifact and positioned in the past in museums. So they were one of the groups that advocated for this change along with the Indian Group of 7. The power of collectives is important to me because a lot of people know about Morrisseau but not many know about the triple K cooperative. And so for me, it’s always been about the collectives and how a collective supports artists.

“And just like the transformation that took place in my life, being a part of this collective of people really empowered me and it empowered the group of people.”

I ended up moving to Sault Ste. Marie at a young age and lived inside this cooperative art building — the whole building and the people inside it were considered a social sculpture, so we were actually part of a living art piece. And just like the transformation that took place in my life, being a part of this collective of people really empowered me and it empowered the group of people. When you look at a lot of the artists that lived inside of this social sculpture, they’ve gone on to do great things so the power of collectives really inspires me.

I am also inspired by Rebecca Belmore, who I believe is from a place just north of Thunder Bay. She does radical, political performance art, based in the experience of being oppressed as an artist but also as a First Nations woman. As well as people like Christi Belcourt, Issac Murdoch, and the Onaman Collective. So you’re also seeing another group of people and the way they can educate, elevate and empower through that collective of artists rather than just an individual.

Q: What is the motivation behind your business?

A: I know that figuring out what you want to do with your life for most people is incredibly difficult, but I knew since I could talk that I wanted to be an artist. My motivation for my business now is I just want to be an artist. At the same time, growing up and facing different types of barriers, I want to use art for social change and for community development. Wanting to be an artist and realizing how difficult it was and then using the money I started making to support other artists to actually have their own business is part of my motivation.

“I want to use art for social change and for community development.”

Q: Who do you hope to impact through your business?

A: I’m interested in supporting people and collectives, who are facing barriers in their artistic careers. Because everyone should have the opportunity to pursue the career they dream of pursuing. I’m looking for artists who, because of those different barriers, especially class barriers, don’t have their voice heard as much. So I like to call that underrepresented, I don’t really like “at-risk” or “vulnerable” but I feel that these are voices aren’t as represented in the mainstream.

Q: Would you consider yourself a social entrepreneur?

A: Yeah, I remember years ago, when the Sault Youth Association was still together, a lot of the work that we did was really just connecting young people to different opportunities. When I think about social entrepreneurship as opposed to entrepreneurship, it’s about connecting people and getting them to what they need — sometimes money is involved in that, and sometimes it isn’t. I think that a lot of volunteers are social entrepreneurs and they don’t even realize it.

“I think that a lot of volunteers are social entrepreneurs and they don’t even realize it.”

Q: Are there any other terms that you may connect with more?

A: Yeah, I find that terminology for me is very fluid because it depends on who I am communicating with. For people who understand what social entrepreneur is that’s probably when I would use it, but if I’m around a group of people that isn’t used to that more corporate language, I might just explain it more colloquially and say “I connect people to other people, I connect people to opportunities.”

Q: So what barriers or challenges have you encountered?

A: I actually found myself on the street for a short period of time or in under-housed situations where I was staying on some person’s couch and if that person who’s house it was decided they’re going to throw a party, they can kick me out at any moment. So it was really unstable housing and I always had such poor self-esteem about that experience. But when I look back at it, I was actually going to university and I had a job at the same time while sleeping in a tent on Whitefish Island; so I was working really hard while facing these barriers.

“But a lot of barriers and challenges actually haven’t gone away because unstable funding with the arts and lack of infrastructure and opportunity in the North is a reality for more than just me.”

I still face barriers regarding my gender identity because I use ‘they’ and ‘them’ pronouns and identify as gender fluid. It is unwarranted the amount of hostility people can have towards non-binary gender identities. Because my community work often means I will doing media interviews, there’s always extra correspondence correcting errors in articles, or even fighting to have my identity represented properly in the media.

But a lot of barriers and challenges actually haven’t gone away because unstable funding with the arts and lack of infrastructure and opportunity in the North is a reality for more than just me.

Q: What resources do you need as you move forward with your work?

A: We need physical space to work together, that do not put our health at risk. You would be surprised how many of our local artist’s workspaces do not have potable water or do not have proper ventilation.

Community is really important too. I would say a strong community of artists is really essential to advocate for those needs. Artists also need to share ideas and be critical of each other’s work to become better. Part of the motivation behind two of the projects that I’m working on now is the need for more training in and outside of school. I think the most crucial resources is not sustainable funding for myself, but sustainable funding for the organizations that are meant to support artists.

“I think the most crucial resources is not sustainable funding for myself, but sustainable funding for the organizations that are meant to support artists.”

At the Arts Council of Sault Ste. Marie and district, for example, a huge part of the work is just finding the money to support the staff, administration costs, rent, and overhead. If that were a budget line in the city through the community fund, they would actually be able to relax from writing grants and actually be able to do the work. So do I need these resources specifically? No, not so much, but I need the resources to be available for everyone so I can also partake in them as well.

Q: Who is your community of support and how important is it for a local face-to-face community of support?

A: I have quite a few people. Urban Indigenous Youth for Change is one of my favorites. It definitely revitalizes me and I really like the way that we gather, the relationships we have with each other and the way we treat each other.

Other communities of support include Thinking Rock Community Arts and Robin Sutherland. She was actually the first person to give me a job in community arts with national youth arts week in 2011–12, so she’s been a mentor to me throughout my career. Others include the local queer community, and the Art Gallery of Algoma.

The Gore Street Café is really huge; the fact that they are interested in pay-what-you-can and bartering also helps out when you don’t make a lot of money as an artist. So, not only do they provide this wonderful community space for me to do workshops in and present my music on the side and putting up art, they also have really incredible food for people who may not be able to afford fifteen-dollar plates at a fancy restaurant.

There are also tons of community organizers that I’ve worked with on the ground in the heavy metal scene and the punk rock scene and the hip-hop community; the community organizers are just absolutely amazing.

And while I do really love Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma and Bawating, and the local face-to-face interactions, I’ve also found that it’s really important for me to connect online, kind of face-to-face through Google hangouts because it’s really helped me connect to a larger community of artists to sustain my need to talk about art and reflect with other artists about their practice. So, the local and the global are just as important for me.

Q: What would make this process easier for you?

A: Seeing not just the local buy-in from the city but also from the local businesses, and seeing more investment from various ministries into the arts and culture sector. And investment in the organizations that support artists, because how am I going to be able to stop struggling if the organization that’s supporting me is struggling.

“I’m hoping to have learning circles where people talk about different ways we can build our capacity as artists through advocacy, writing business model canvases, talking about dealing with rejection, people saying no, going to meetings and maybe even being discriminated against and how do you deal with that.”

Q: What community initiatives are you involved in?

A: I actually work for a national organization right now called Artbridges. We get together through the Artbridges national network and talk about a variety of topics once a month online. One group that I’m working with is community artists; so artists that are working with communities to make art together, who either are situated on reserves or who go into reserves to do programming. It’s incredibly interesting because there’re such a huge variety of organizations and individual artists who show up from organizations that are massive with huge budgets, to organizations that are completely volunteer-run, to individual artists that are incredibly traditional, to contemporary artists that are into graffiti and you know, site-specific political performances so it’s a great variety. Watching the organizations begin to collaborate with one another is one of the things I think is so amazing and we’re going to be starting to have conversations about Urban Indigenous Arts as well pretty soon so that’s very exciting and very relevant. As well, we’ll have Google hangouts where we talk about connecting seniors through the arts. So that’s my work with Artbridges.

I’m also working on an installation and performance project on the land, using found materials, and when I say the land I don’t just mean the beautiful Algoma/Bawating landscape, I also mean the concrete jungle of downtown Sault Ste. Marie. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I know that I’m going to be making this piece with Teddy Syrette, and a group of people hopefully from Urban Indigenous Youth for Change and then displaying that at the end of September of next year.

As a recent bursary recipient from the Michael Jean Foundation through their TD bursaries and through that program and in partnership with UIYFC, I’m hoping to have learning circles where people talk about different ways we can build our capacity as artists through advocacy, writing business model canvases, talking about dealing with rejection, people saying no, going to meetings and maybe even being discriminated against and how do you deal with that. I want to talk to other people because I know in my talks with people who are from the entrepreneur side; they always say that confidence is one of the most crucial factors of being an entrepreneur because once you stop believing in yourself, you stop working towards your dreams.

Q: Are you aware of other youth social entrepreneurs or those with innovative ideas that need support and resources?

A: Through the project that I just finished, the Mill Market Mural Project, I ended up meeting with tons of local artists and just talking to them while we worked on this mural together. There is definitely a need for support and resources, and a need to get together to talk about those supports and resources. A lot of youth organizers have had the most amazing and innovative ideas I could possibly imagine.

I’d really like to see more collaborations between the academic and research community with these more grassroots arts-based initiatives. We’re seeing a lot of the social value that’s coming out of these projects and it would be so amazing to have someone to really be analyzing that process and breaking down the statistics and numbers that are being collected, which would also help artists make the case for what they’re doing having an impact. There’s absolutely a lot of amazing young social entrepreneurs, especially in the arts that are totally in need of collaborators and resources definitely. And shout out to Soo York City urban arts collective!

Originally published at www.seethechange.ca.