MEET JANUARY ARTIST OF THE MONTH: KAIJA Heitland

“Recently transplanted to Vancouver after a fire burned down her home on the Sunshine Coast, Heitland has been taking what she has learned from her life experience and bringing her art into the city space. She hopes to inspire dialogue about traditional practices. "I was raised not to waste anything. The idea that we live in such a disposable culture that it extends to the way we raise animals, and how that has allowed us to disassociate with our food, that we find traditional practices, abhorrent, that really confuses me," explains Heitland. 

Heitland is proud of her lineage and speaks of her family history and the art renaissance she is producing in her work through Indigenous Nouveau. "I'm trying to shed more light on who the Métis are, and I think there's a lot more room at the table to see more diversity in Indigenous art in British Columbia," Heitland says. “