Beading relations: Reimagining, remapping, and remembering through The Lake Nipissing Beading Project

As members of the Lake Nipissing Beading Project Collective, we reflect on a community-beaded map project that evolved from a partnership between Nipissing University, Nipissing First Nation, and Dokis First Nation, rooted in the traditional lands of the Nbisiing Nishnaabeg on Robinson Huron Treaty (1850) territory. The Lake Nipissing Beading Project (LNBP) emerged in 2020 as a gesture of community care in response to the socio-spatial challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The traveling beaded map installation reimagines, remaps, and remembers Lake Nipissing and surrounding watersheds through a collaborative process rooted in relationality and reciprocity. Critically situating and subsequently "taking back" provincial geospatial imagery, the project presents one attempt to decolonize geographical tools through creative intervention that combines storytelling practices of beading and countermapping. We reflect on the multi-layered histories enlivened through project activities, including those of our community-academic partnerships. We discuss what it means to recognize the beaded map as a living relation and carrier of living stories, re-orienting spatial knowledges toward an intentional ethics of care and community-led stewardship. In doing so the project re-centers Nbisiing Nishnaabeg relationships to, with, and through the lake.