Event: Carving Lost Family History: Ukrainian and Indigenous Cultural Revival in the Face of Colonialism

6 November 2025

5–6 p.m. Food sharing at kihêw waciston 
6–7:15 p.m. Carving Lost Family film screening and discussion

Location: kihêw waciston Indigenous Centre, MacEwan University

Register here

Join Heiltsuk-Ukrainian master carver Ivan Rosypskye and historian Keith Thor Carlson for a conversation about identity, memory, and reconciliation. Through carving and research, Rosypskye explores his Ukrainian refugee father’s long-buried story alongside his mother’s Heiltsuk traditions of cultural resistance. This project brings together art, history, and storytelling to show how identities suppressed by colonialism can be revived and honoured, offering pathways toward reconciliation. A documentary on the carving process will open the event.

Ivan Rosypskye is a First Nations master carver of Heiltsuk and Ukrainian heritage. He has been carving since 2001, as learned from local artists in his home town of Powell River, British Columbia.

Keith Thor Carlson is a professor of history at the University of the Fraser Valley and a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History.

Moderated by Shelby LaFramboise, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications, kihêw waciston, MacEwan University.

This event is co-hosted by the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre and kihêw waciston Indigenous Centre at MacEwan, in partnership with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

The ‘Carving Lost Family History’ project was awarded a CIUS Grant for the Study of Indigenous-Ukrainian Relations in Canada, offered in affiliation with the Indigenous Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative, a joint initiative of the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre at MacEwan University and the Kule Folklore Centre at the University of Alberta.