Today is National Indigenous Peoples Day and we’re excited to share our new building sign at 15 Mountain Highway which includes a beautiful piece of Squamish Nation art called Ts’its’apnewas (Working Together). This piece is the result of a successful Squamish Nation art call for submissions that started back in early February when the team saw an opportunity to integrate a piece of art into the design of our new building sign.
The piece was designed by Calvin Charlie-Dawson, an Indigenous artist from North Vancouver. The piece was created to evoke Western’s values of integrity, accountability, collaboration, respect and entrepreneurship. The piece also signifies the continuation of Western and Squamish Nation’s positive relationship. More broadly, this collaboration (and others to come) speaks to our intention to build meaningful, lasting and sustainable relationships with our Indigenous partners.
About the Piece
The piece is called Ts’its’apnewas (Working Together). The design is a modern interpretation of a spindle whorl simplified and made to mimic a compass with various coloured Salish style form line faces. The Blue face represents West on a compass. It relates to Western’s brand blue, and blue to represent the ocean. The East of the compass is red to represent the land of the Squamish Nation. Red represents earth or Temixw for the Squamish or Mother Earth herself. The design itself is circular and multicolored as a play on the Indigenous design of the medicine wheel which honours the four directions and four colors of humankind, and in this application it represents the relationship between Western and Squamish Nation.
About the Artist
Calvin Charlie-Dawson is an Indigenous artist from North Vancouver. He is a descendant of the Squamish and Kwakwaka’wakw nations as well as the Sto:lo nation. Calvin’s path for the past couple of years has been digital art, however he is also an apprentice in more traditional styles of art including carving and canoe building.
