Write it with us
BABA & KOKUM tells the story of one printed cloth with two names. Half of that story belongs to Indigenous families, and we want Indigenous co-authors to decide how it is told, and whether parts of it are told at all.
No Indigenous community or organization has endorsed or partnered in this project yet.
Who we are
A community project started at UAFest, a Ukrainian-Canadian festival in Carleton Place, Ontario. Maksym Stepanenko and a team of UAFest volunteers make it: the words, the drawings, the code. We are Ukrainian-Canadians, and everything here so far is our work. The digital work, the hosting and the grant applications are carried by his company, INNOVA CONSULT LTD, a private Canadian company. He is also volunteer Secretary of the Ukrainian Community of Lanark County, the organization behind UAFest, and he declares that role and abstains whenever it is the applicant. Any agreement with a co-author names the entity that signs it.
What exists today
The scarf journey
A ten-minute web app in English and Ukrainian. Seventeen flowers, each opened by one sourced fact, and a scarf the visitor composes and keeps.
The sourced archive
History chapters with the source named under every claim, from the 1881 permit system to the 2022 solidarity wave.
The corrections page
Everything we withdrew, and why. It is public on purpose.
What an Indigenous co-author would decide and own
These decisions sit with you. We write them down here so they can be held against us.
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The fourteen unwritten cards
Fourteen of the seventeen motif cards carry no Indigenous voice. Who writes them, in whose words, and whether a card is written at all.
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Which plants and motifs appear
Which flowers belong on the cloth, and which stay off it.
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Veto and removal
Any depiction, text or image comes down at your word, with no explanation owed.
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The maker of the first printed scarves
The choice of an Indigenous-owned maker for a first print run.
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How any proceeds are shared
Agreed with you before anything is sold. So far the project has earned nothing.
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Funding applications
Co-authorship of grant applications where you want it, and no application in your name without you.
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Your name
Where you want it, and absent where you do not.
What we bring
Our digital work, design and hosting; the festival audience of UAFest; grant writing. Right now this is volunteer work for everyone involved, and the people who join become part of the team and its decisions as the project grows.
Your stories stay yours
Stories and knowledge you share stay under your control. You decide what is recorded, where it appears and for how long, and you can withdraw it at any time. Anything you share is published only with your written yes.
The first step
Tea in the Ottawa Valley, or a thirty-minute call, with no commitment and nothing to prepare. We show you the journey and ask what sounds wrong.
Or write to info@uafest.ca
What happens to your message
We keep your name, email, organization and message in the contact list the UAFest volunteer team works from, so that a person can answer you. Stored with it: the page you wrote from, the language you wrote in, the date and time you ticked the consent box, and the identification your browser sends with any request. Sending it also raises a short notice in the team’s private chat, so somebody sees your message the same day. Only the people running this project can read any of it. We add no one to a mailing list. To see or delete what we hold, write to info@uafest.ca with the word “delete”, and we delete it.
Other ways to help
Ukrainian families
A scarf still folded in a drawer, a photograph, the name your family used for it.