âhkamêyimok Mural

Title: âhkamêyimok

Artists: INST 1260 Students & Instructors

From left to right: Jeanien Cooper (former Indigenous Studies Program Chair), Maddy Boudreau, Amber Smith (INST 1260 Instructor), Pres Wedzin, Annette Campre, Mason Peterson, Charity Tambour, Chantelle Enns, Devanshu, Komalpreet Kaur, Jlynn Boyce, Muskaan Dhaliwal, Justice Twin

Year: 2025

This mural is our class’s collective response to the Tawatinâ Bridge — a public art installation by artist David Garneau that spans the North Saskatchewan River and holds more than 500 paintings that reflect the land, life, and layered histories of this place. Inspired by that vision, we created our own sky of stories: thirteen moons, each one carrying both harm and healing, silence and voice, memory and resurgence. Our mural is called âhkamêyimok — a Cree word that means “keep going” or “all of you try hard.” These words are not only the title of this piece — they are also a message to everyone who passes through the Learner Centre at NorQuest College. They remind us that even when the path is difficult, we are not walking alone. We can keep going, together.

Each student created a moon representing a different phase, mounted on a star-filled night sky. The stars connect us to something larger: to Creator, to the ancestors, and to all those who came before us, walking paths of hardship, resistance, and love. The dark side of the moon speaks to the weight of colonial violence — land theft, language loss, residential schools, intergenerational trauma, environmental destruction, racism, and the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. These stories are not distant. They live in our families, our bodies, our grief, and our questions. But each moon also holds light. That light shines through ceremony, kinship, land connection, language revitalization, intergenerational healing, activism, and the beauty that continues. Some moons reflect personal memory or familial storywork. Others honour the power of collective action — from Idle No More to Every Child Matters — or explore reclamation through Métis identity, Indigenous art, and relational learning.

Our mural is not about answers. Like the Tawatinâ Bridge, it offers an invitation — to pause, to witness, to remember. Each moon is a window into a journey. Together, they form a sky of stories: where flowers bloom beside wounds, where stars shine through grief, where ancestors walk with us, softening the ground.

This mural is our offering. A way of being present with difficult truths. A way of holding care. A way of saying: despite what was taken, our connection survives. And we keep going.