Cheryl Simon (Mi’kmaw, Canada) is a Mi’kmaq woman and visual artist from Epekwitk (PEI), currently residing in Halifax, who works with porcupine quills, birchbark, spruce root and sweetgrass. She fell in love with Mi’kmaq quillwork as a little girl studying her mother’s collection of quill boxes. She started learning and studying the insertion technique and design upon moving back to Mi’kma’ki in 2007, and launched her business, Mi’kmaq Quill Art in 2011. Cheryl is committed to community education of the art form and has been teaching quillwork workshops for over ten years. She took on her first apprentice in 2015 and opened a short-term studio in Epekwitk in 2016 to begin a program of instruction for three more apprentices.

While Cheryl focuses on traditional quillwork and construction, she also developed a process for accurately depicting the petroglyphs (rock carvings) after visiting the petroglyph sites in Nova Scotia. Over the past two years, she decided to incorporate both traditional designs and the petroglyph technique into the same quillwork pieces. This blending of styles lets her showcase the importance quill size can make in enhancing the detail of the design. She was recently inspired by contemporary Mi’kmaq art to move beyond the quill box lids which influenced her early work to split the design into separate pieces, which adds a vibrancy to the designs.

Cheryl has taught her children to harvest and quill and is excited to begin the process of teaching them the intricacies of designing in the traditional style. She feels that quillwork requires strong connections and is proud that the community of quillers is expanding to include the younger generations.

Doctor Nativo (Mayan, Guatemala) is one of the most outstanding new talents in Central America. His music layers topics from Mayan spirituality to social activism, with a re-evolutionary lifestyle over a propulsive sound combining reggae, cumbia, hip-hop, and pre-Hispanic instruments.

The official release of his debut album, GUATEMAYA, was on September 15, 2018 at the Lincoln Center in New York City produced by Ivan Duran from the legendary Stonetree Records.

Faumelisa Manquepillán (Mapuche, Chile) was born in Wallmapu, Futawillimapu, Lof of Kuilche Mapu, Puquiñe, today the commune of Lanco, province of Valdivia, region of Los Ríos. She is a Mapuche artist, poetess, and sculptress. In 2000, she published a bilingual edition of the book “Sueños de Mujer.” Later on, her poems were featured in different anthologies.

She defines herself as a stone, wood, textile artisan, poet, and singer-songwriter. She says the Calfuleo has always been the territory’s ngenpines, in charge of connecting the earthly world with the sacred world. After years of absence from the Mapuche culture rites, Faumelisa’s art again brings these two worlds together. Now through her poetry, her songs, and her craftwork. All of them are full of her culture’s symbols and a special force that feels as if it flows from her spirit. Faumelisa says: “As a Mapuche woman, I look for the word and it comes riding the wind. We look for each other; I find it, and we meet in the most unexpected places. Sometimes I see it in the fall of one single leaf in autumn or in the sound of water. There is poetry when a gentle breeze plays in the wind, when a cloud passes by, when the rain falls when a bird flies by, when you walk barefoot on the ground taking Earth’s energy.”

She has been featured in many other anthologies.

In 2001, she was invited to show her art, music, sculpture, and basketry in the US.

She has been invited to poetry festivals, such as the International Festival of Medellin, Colombia, in 2011 and the International Meeting of Women Poets in Colombia’s coffee route, in 2014.

She currently works as a teacher in her native land, Puquiñe, Lanco, in the Los Ríos Region.

Dr Johnson Witehira (Māori and Pākehā, New Zealand) is a leading indigenous designer, researcher and consultant. His design projects consider how customary Māori knowledge and ways of thinking can be applied in contemporary settings. His creative works extend across designed communications, digital, interiors, urban design, product design and public artworks.

As a co-creative director at Indigenous Design and Innovation Aotearoa (IDIA) he now applies his design expertise to work with businesses, community groups, and Government agencies to instigate design solutions that effect positive change in people, practice and place. Within academia Witehira’s research focuses on decolonizing design education. He is at the forefront of developing bi-cultural and Māori responses to teaching art and design in Aotearoa.

Aqqalu Berthelsen (Inuk, Finland) also known as Uyarakq, was born in Nuuk, Greenland in the mid 80s. He is a self taught music producer/composer and DJ with a background in metal music.

Growing up in Uummannaq, Northern Greenland and Nuuk, the capital, has played a large role in shaping him to be a versatile musician between two worlds. He is currently doing a lot of work in the Indigenous circumpolar hip hop and rap scene with a foot in two continents, the North American arctic and the European arctic.

He won a Greenlandic Koda Award in 2015 for his solo album Raatiu Nukik (2014) and got nominated for Nordic Councils Music Prize in 2016 for the collaborative work Kunngiitsuuffik (2015) alongside the Greenlandic rapper Peand-eL.

He is now living in Inari, Northern Finland/Sápmi.