In May 2022, Alisha gifted her painting, “Gifts of the Heart Berry”, to Camosun College.
“In my own culture, which is Kanienʼkehá꞉ka, or Mohawk, we have a lot of understanding around the medicine of the heartberry, or the strawberry.“
“It is believed that we began from Skywoman, and the heartberry came from Skywoman’s heart. This berry really represents gifts from creation, and so I wanted to bring that concept of gifts and gifting to this project. I wanted to gift this artwork, and I wanted to gift this way of seeing disability differently.”[1]
The original painting, acrylic on wood and framed in cedar, hangs near the Centre for Accessible Learning in the Lansdowne-campus library. A 640×834 JPEG copy of the painting is shared below.
Before copying or using this image, please carefully read about the terms of use associated with its Creative Commons licensing and Traditional Knowledge Labels.
To understand the component parts of ‘Gifts of the Heart Berry’ and what they each mean in the context of supporting disability, refer to Heart Berry Methodology.
Gifts of the Heart Berry, by Alisha Parks (2022). Refer to Permissions for Reuse to find CC-BY attribution and TKL acknowledgements.