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The Future Has Arrived – Aatl’aan K’atgwaa tluu. k_aatlaagang

The Future Has Arrived – Aatl’aan K’atgwaa tluu. k_aatlaagang

I’d been going to the Hastings Community Centre for over a year before I truly noticed this wonderful mural. It was just a bunch of colour out of the corner of my eye, then one day for no particular reason I saw it.

view of "The Future has Arrived / Aatl'aan K'atgwaa Tluu. K'aatlaagang," a large-scale mural painted on the dark exterior wall of the Hastings Community Centre in Vancouver, BC. The mural depicts Northwest Coast Indigenous figures in a glowing canoe set against a cosmic, aurora-like background. The mural spans the full width of the building above the Centre's parking lot.
Close-up detail of "The Future has Arrived / Aatl'aan K'atgwaa Tluu. K'aatlaagang," a large mural featuring Northwest Coast Indigenous art style figures riding in a carved canoe against a dark, nebula-like background in deep blues, purples, and teals. The central figure wears a ceremonial mask and holds a golden sphere, flanked by a wolf or bear figure on the left and a totem-like bird figure on the right. Smaller human figures appear within the composition, which glows with bioluminescent light beneath the canoe.

I’d love to know more about the Indigenous figures, but all I could find is this from the artists’ statement at the UBC Library Open Access Journal Hosting: The Front – bc studies no. 207, Autumn 2020:

The Future Has Arrived – Aatl ’aan K’atgwaa tluu. k_ aatlaagang is a celebration of the very essence of Indigenous identity; the protection of the land, water, and all living things which makes life on Mother Earth possible. […] We used the symbology to illustrate these concepts in our design, taking inspiration from late Haida Master Bill Reid’s famed Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Jade Canoe. 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of Bill Reid’s birth.

Some references I found:

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