The 13th Annual Relate North Symposium 

The 13th Annual Relate North Symposium is happening online on November 3rd and 4th, 2025. The Symposium brings together artists and designers, knowledge keepers, researchers, and scholars from across the Circumpolar North to share Indigenous art and land-based knowledge, and land-based arts education more generally. This year’s theme is “Lessons of the Land”. ASL interpretation is provided by NLAD. See the full program.

Registration

To register for the Symposium, please follow the links below. There are separate links for each day. Once you register, you will receive the schedule and a video tutorial for using the Webex platform. Find the links for registaion in the PDF

Art Exhibition

 Relate North includes an arts-based exhibition. Artists from across the Circumpolar North have generously contributed their arts-based research for knowledge sharing and community building. The online exhibition opens on November 3. Relate North 2025 Online Art Exhibition. Relate North 2025 Online Art Exhibition

 

Team

The Symposium is organized by a team of faculty, alumna, and graduate students from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. The team is: Dr. Heather McLeod, Anne Pickard, Madeline Kennedy and Rozhin Seifpanahi. 

Lessons of the Land: New Genre Arctic Art and Land-Based Learning

The symposium is part of the project Lessons of the Land. The project’s overarching goal is to enhance cooperation and partnerships between Canadian and Scandinavian universities within the UArctic thematic network. ASAD encompasses 28 arts, design, and visual culture education institutions. The network carries out activities that integrate Indigenous and traditional knowledge with contemporary academic practices. This collaboration leverages Canada’s expertise in northern Indigenous cultures and fosters a shared understanding of art education’s role in addressing ecological, social, and cultural challenges in the Arctic.

Memorial University’s Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development has awarded $40 000 funding for the project from the Global Arctic Leadership Initiative Fund for Indigenous and Northern Collaborative Research and Education Engagement.