FUTURE PRAIRIE

Future Prairie (Remediation Plot) is a collaborative artwork led by Api’soomaahka (William Singer III, Niitsítapi knowledge holder, artist, educator, and environmental activist from the Kainai Nation), Alana Bartol (artist and educator), Kara Matthews (horticulturist, educator, and site steward), and Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed (botanist, artist, educator, and native plant grower). It takes place at the Coutts Centre for Western Canadian Heritage, owned and operated by the University of Lethbridge in Treaty 7 territory, the ancestral lands and traditional territory of the Siksikáí’tsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), the Tsuut’ina and Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 1.

Rather than restoring land for human use, Future Prairie supports the recovery of prairie ecosystems, creating a habitat for native species. The project embraces plant-led processes, ecological reciprocity, and interspecies collaboration. Activities involve removing invasive grasses and tending native plants through collective labour and stewardship. Blackfoot knowledge shared by Api’soomaahka grounds the work, while Kara and her team provide on-the-land care. Seeds are shared with Naapi’s Garden and the Katoyiss Seed Bank, contributing to Indigenous-led stewardship beyond this site. Founded by Blackfoot knowledge holder Api’soomaahka, Naapi’s Garden supports native grassland regeneration and creates space for the transmission of Blackfoot cultural practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and medicinal plant care, while addressing the impacts of invasive species.

This conversation took place on September 14, 2025, after Kara, Latifa, Api’soomaahka and I facilitated a public event that invited people to to learn with plants through the hands-on work of cleaning native prairie plant seed collected from the Coutts Centre property.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Alana (AB): Can you tell me a bit about your background and how you came to this work?

Kara (KM): I finished high school not knowing what I would do. I found a two-year program in environmental reclamation, and pictured myself cleaning ducks. Then I learned plant taxonomy and completely fell in love. These beings are so smart, and we are not. My training in land reclamation was oil and gas adjacent, and I was told the work would be tough and gruff. I applied to 65 companies for a practicum and got nothing. Then the Coutts Centre posted a position for help caring for their grass plots—which share and protect the diversity of Indigenous prairies. I was hired, and once I got on this land and saw how many rules were broken by mixing ornamentals and native plants, I thought: this is special.

When the University took over the property, the head gardener and other gardeners moved on, but I stayed. Part of me felt that if I left, the verbal knowledge would leave too. Fourteen years later, I feel anchored to this place, like I’ve been rooted into the property.

AB: This is, in part, because you live here.

KM: Yes. I moved on-site in 2021. Meeting the needs of the plants is the work. I want to advocate for them.

Latifa (LPA): I’ve always loved plants too. In university, I studied biology. There wasn’t a particular reason at the time, except that my dad is Bangladeshi, and—it is a common stereotype—as a parent from the Indian subcontinent, he wanted me to become a doctor. I studied biology at the University of Calgary and realized that I liked plants a lot and was fascinated by them. While the scientific training provided a strong foundation in taxonomy, it often treated landscapes and living beings as objects, and we rarely learned about the Indigenous plants where we lived.

After my degree, I wanted to learn about the medicinal aspects of plants, and I trained in herbal medicine in England. Along the way I was also creating art, but I got fed up with gatekeeping in the art world and the use of conventional materials for artworks. I did not want to make more stuff to throw away.

In 2019, ALCLA Native Plants was for sale, and Ben Hartney and I decided to purchase it. I have never had to work so hard in my life! Ethically, it feels like the right choice to do this work. For me, this comes from a desire to question the conventions put on us by colonial society and to reconsider our responsibilities as good neighbours with all living beings, not just in theory but through the actions we take. Rather than offer an abstracted version of this, I try to live my ethics and embody what I perceive as necessary and critical action. Perhaps it is no surprise that art followed me, despite my initial rejection of it, as I have always been an artist, always reflected on the world I live in, always yearned for justice for all, and always wanted to share this with others. One of the most meaningful aspects [of my work with ALCLA] has been the opportunity to connect with Indigenous community members across Treaty 7. Working with native plants has opened a path for me to contribute something genuinely helpful to all beings and to build reciprocal relationships that honour both human and more-than-human communities. And what a privilege to support Api’soomaahka’s work. I cannot ask for a greater gift.

Api’soomaahka (API): I was raised with plant knowledge. My parents and my grandparents knew it, but I’m the only one in the family that really hung on to learning it. I didn’t really see its value at first. What I mean by that is: my father was a pipe holder, and so I was his assistant. There was a lot of knowledge that was transferred to me, but for a while it didn’t sink in.

I spent time in residential school and with that…. It really worked on you, aside from making you not speak your language. Anything that had to do with your culture or history, they stopped you from doing.

So then, I was with my dad a lot when I was in high school. He wanted me to get a desk job or something. One of the courses he suggested was agriculture. Something a lot of our people go into. It wasn’t something that really appealed to me, agriculture.

And so, I was having issues personally and mentally, and I was attending the University of Lethbridge and wasn’t happy. I asked my dad about these problems. He said, “You know when we talked back then after we smoked a pipe. Do you remember the thing I used to tell you about? Whatever answers you want, they’re outside and that’s where you are gonna find them. And it is gonna take you a while.” I started working with plants and with sweetgrass. I have devoted the rest of my life to working with plants and understanding them, because they’re our relatives, and they can heal you. I’m still learning. I don’t know everything.

There’s this [Blackfoot] artist I used to work with, the late Everett Soop. He had muscular dystrophy. He was the one that started all this. On one of our drives, he asked, “As much as you know about our history, do you know what we ate a long time ago?” And I said, “Well, yea, buffalo?” He said, “In our early days we ate barks, berry shrubs, roots, no meat.” So that stuck with me to the point where I needed to find out more.

Once, I made my vows to the land, to take care of it. This is where I am meant to be; no matter how much I have tried to do something else, this always brings me back. That’s what my dad wanted to do. He wasn’t alive long enough to see that, so that was something that I wanted to carry on for him—to heal the land.

Everyone relies on plants. But in my community, when we lose a plant, we lose our language. And not only because we’re not speaking it, but these plants and animals disappear and then you don’t speak their name anymore. And so, they’re lost. This is where, with the help of Latifa and others, the work with plants has been helpful to me because it’s not an easy thing to do in a community that has been [impacted] by the residential school system.

So, like Latifa, I live and breathe with the plants, 24/7; that’s my whole life. Even right now, I am thinking about the plants back home. I get attached to them like family. It’s important what we did today. But another cool thing about this work is it is a way to stick it to the government, by growing your own food. What better way than to do that? I encourage people to do that. We don’t have to have someone telling us what to grow. We can grow it ourselves.

We have to be able to adapt. According to our stories, we [the Niitsítapi] are the oldest people here. Growing food is essential if we are going to save our language, our way of life, and our health. For the Blackfoot Confederacy, this is a return to a horticultural phase. Growing food is not only survival; it is a way to save our culture, because the root of culture is with the land.

There is so much that comes with this work, and it takes time. But yeah, I have all the time in the world. Carrying on from my parents and grandparents, this is what I want to instill in my granddaughter. I want her to carry on this knowledge.

AB: My background is in visual art, and much of my work is site-responsive and collaborative. I make artworks that can be presented in galleries, but part of my practice is developing projects like this one, that exist outside of gallery spaces. For me, this type of project helps resist the disconnection from my own body and the more-than-human world that settler colonialism and capitalism has ingrained in me. As a treaty partner, I have a responsibility to the land; I want to learn with the plants, not just about them.

I think art can offer different ways of being and relating to each other and to more-than-human beings, and we don’t have many opportunities to do that in the world. The capitalist-colonial-heteropatriarchal systems holding power in place don’t want us to find other ways of relating because it threatens these systems.

People at the native plant seed cleaning event today were asking what the plan is for Future Prairie (Remediation Plot). We do have goals, like finding ways to integrate reciprocity, growing native plants and sharing seeds with Naapi’s Garden, but we are trying not to dictate outcomes and to allow the work to be process-driven.

This connects to another question I had for you all: how do you see the plants shaping or guiding the way the work is going to unfold or is unfolding?

API: What I see out there is hope. The seeds will spread. People will grow them in other places. That little patch holds immense knowledge for health and for mental health too. These plants are disappearing on the land. To see them together in one place is like seeing a family. I see a connection between actually utilizing them, and the seeds being grown [elsewhere]. And so, their kids are moving away.

KM: Yes, I like that. I get the benefit of being with the plants here every day. Watching how quickly they adapt makes me curious. The more you know, the more you know you do not know. I find myself wondering if their roots will connect, whether they will act like friendly siblings or bullies, who will jump the edges. Even small discoveries shift my thinking. Just today, I was digging up a rhizome, assuming it was quackgrass; then realising it was Western Wheatgrass changed how I approached the whole bed. The public wants things to “look nice,” but the plants want what the plants want.

LPA: People are seeking what is missing in their lives and often do not know that it is a relationship with everyone we share this planet with. If we are open, the plants guide us. Sometimes it is as simple as drinking tea and letting them become part of our bodies. But it takes discipline to listen. There are constant distractions and demands living inside capitalist systems. I try to come with good intention and trust that small, unseen acts accumulate.

These are culturally significant plants. It is easy to slip into exploitation because that is how colonial and capitalist systems are structured. I grow plants like sage because we need them on the landscape, and I gift medicine plants [to Indigenous folks] when needed. I also listen to Api’soomaahka on Niitsítapi protocols. I want everything to be done in a good way.

API: The plants have memory. They know someone put them here. They should not have to tell us what to do.  We should be looking at them and say, you guys are in need of help and let’s do this! I see that approach because they speak to you in various ways. And so, for me, what I see here is that we’re here to take care of them, and they’re here to do the same, the reciprocity of it.

KM: My instinct is to prevent and protect. I see grasses creeping in and want to control them before they take over. But this plot is teaching me to follow flow rather than impose a rigid schedule. Reclamation studies taught a 100-year cradle-to-grave timeline that was really just vegetation cover. This is different.

AB: The plants in this project shift my sense of time and concepts of art. Prairie soils took thousands of years to form and were degraded so quickly and violently, in about 100 years of settler agriculture.

Art in gallery and museum contexts is thought of as an object in a fixed, preserved state of permanence. Living systems and materials resist that. This work embraces change and cycles of life and decay. It asks us to think beyond short timelines and to act with future generations in mind. Api’soomaahka, can you talk a bit about your projects Naapi’s Garden and Katoyiss Seed Bank?¹Naapi, often translated as “Old Man,” is a shapeshifting trickster in Niitsítapi (Blackfoot) oral tradition. In creation stories, he shaped the land and beings, and his actions teach important lessons. Katoyiss, sometimes known as “Blood Clot Boy,” is a Blackfoot cultural hero who restored balance to the land. Api’soomaahka shared a longer version of this story, from which the summary here is condensed.

API: When I began planning to grow plants, people talked about Naapi, our trickster, who changed the land in many ways. The world needed to be made safe again for people and other beings. There is another story about a being born from a blood clot, sometimes translated as Katoyiss. He travelled the territory stewarding the land. He did not finish his work. For me, Naapi’s Garden and the Katoyiss Seed Bank carry that responsibility forward. We are continuing that work today.

AB: What do you think we need to keep in mind as we move forward with the plants?

KM: My knee-jerk reaction is to try and control things. I want to go and weed the plot right now. I want to keep the [non-native] grasses from getting in and turning into a problem. I would say, prevention and protection.

LPA: I want to make sure we are doing everything in a good and respectful way. These are culturally significant plants, and I look to Api’soomaahka for guidance. It is so easy to slip into exploitative actions and ways of thinking, since colonialism and capitalism are built on exploitation. My priority is that everything we do honours the plants, is carried out with respect, and that we are respecting Indigenous cultural protocols.

API: You and the plants become part of each other. They are a big part of us now that they are here, and what they ask of us is to keep their memory alive. They are living beings, and it is good to keep them going, along with the knowledge that comes with them. Even today, showing the community what the plot looks like, grass and all, was an opportunity for learning. People took away a lot from that experience.

AB: I am curious to see what other life forms get supported through the project. We can see evidence of leafcutter bees on the strawberry leaves. There were so many insects around today.

LPA: The flies like the yarrow.

KB:  I learned about the different types of pollinators and how having different flower types encourages different types of pollinators. I had no idea how many species of flies pollinated plants. It’s incredible! And then I thought, Oh, I shouldn’t have judged them.

AB: Yeah, I guess flies get a bad rap.

KM: Yeah, they do. But they’re important too.

Our conversation continued around the importance of the native grass plots at the Coutts Centre, how many native grasses are being lost in the landscape, and some of the issues with planning at the site where trees shade out the native grasses. Future Prairie (Remediation Plot) plays an important role in keeping these conversations going. We are starting to recognize the importance of working with and sharing the native grasses at the Coutts Centre. We also discussed some of the challenges of working within a university context (e.g. controlled burns are not allowed).

Documentation of Future Prairie (Remediation Plot), along with a participatory seed-cleaning component, can be experienced in the exhibition (Re)mediating Soils: Field Notes at the Hess Gallery, University of Lethbridge, until April 4, 2026. The exhibition will then travel to the Yukon Art Centre, the Woodstock Art Gallery, and the McMaster Museum of Art.

We are grateful to Josephine Mills and Katherine Lawless for their support of Future Prairie (Remediation Plot) through the University of Lethbridge Art Galleries and the (Re)mediating Soils research project.

Future Prairie (Remediation Plot) is an artwork, but it is also an invitation to be with a living system that exceeds us. This project is really just in the beginning phases. In the spring, we will meet again on-site to observe how the plants have changed over the winter and to begin planning the next phase of the work. Kara has been sharing updates from the plot, and this spring we will meet to discuss ongoing stewardship, possible workshops, and how the work might continue to evolve both on the land and through exhibitions and online platforms. The work asks us to think in longer timelines, perhaps 100 years or more, and to consider what the plants might make possible beyond our lifetimes.

Api’soomaahka (William Singer III) is a Niitsítapi (Blackfoot) knowledge holder, artist, educator, and environmental activist from the Kainai Nation. He founded Naapi’s Garden and Katoyiss Seed Bank to revitalize culturally important plants, ecological relationships, and language.

Alana Bartol (Mohkinstsis/Calgary, Alberta) is an artist and an Assistant Professor at Alberta University of the Arts.

Kara Matthews (Nanton, Alberta) is a Red Seal-trained Journeyman Horticulturist with education in environmental reclamation.

Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed (Carstairs, Alberta) is a botanist, herbalist, educator, and co-owner of ALCLA Native Plants, where she grows and stewards grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs native to central and southern Alberta, in Treaty 6 and Treaty 7 territories.

Footnotes:

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  Naapi, often translated as “Old Man,” is a shapeshifting trickster in Niitsítapi (Blackfoot) oral tradition. In creation stories, he shaped the land and beings, and his actions teach important lessons. Katoyiss, sometimes known as “Blood Clot Boy,” is a Blackfoot cultural hero who restored balance to the land. Api’soomaahka shared a longer version of this story, from which the summary here is condensed.