Plant Encounters is the Long Walk Collective’s first project.

Bo Yeung is a multidisciplinary artist residing on Tr’ondëk Hwëchin territory in Dawson City, Yukon. Yeung immigrated to Canada in 1995 from Sha Tang district Tong Lok village in Guangdong, China. Her work seeks to understand the complexities of cultural identity, diaspora, complicity, and memory with care and intimacy.

Yeung is a wanderer and forager. She walks on the Ninth Ave Trail often, smelling the changes of the seasons as the young poplar buds cut the warm spring air or the autumn leaves blanket the ground tucking the forest to sleep for the winter.

Georgia Hammond:
I was born and raised in and around Dawson City, surrounded by many of the plants explored in this project. I am first and foremost a cook, but I can also be found hunting, fishing, gardening, and foraging. In recent years I have turned my love of the outdoors, wild food, and the culinary arts into a small company, making and selling pantry staples that feature locally grown and foraged botanical ingredients.

In my work I aim to translate the colours, flavours, and essence of local plants into the language of food, a process that includes finding, gathering, and processing natural ingredients. This work has given me an eye and appreciation for the small details and essential nature of the plants I work with. 

I believe that a meaningful connection to the land is vital to personal and community wellness and it is my hope that this project will inspire others to dig a little deeper into their relationship with and responsibility to the land they occupy. 

I have had the privilege of growing up in Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin territory and am forever grateful to them for not only their stewardship of the land but also for the generosity of knowledge, culture, and language that has helped shape my relationship to the natural world. Mahsi cho.

Meg Walker is an interdisciplinary visual artist and writer. When she moved to Dawson years ago after a KIAC artist residency, she walked the Ninth Avenue Trail almost daily to learn the plants as a way of feeling at home (hello strawberry blite, who are you?). As a settler-descendent, Meg’s inherited relationships to nature are complex, and she is grateful to live, play and learn in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëchin.

Meg initiated Plant Encounters partly out of a desire to deepen and expand some of the knowledge she learned from her mother, her grandmothers and her maternal grandfather. They were the ones who first taught her many uses for rosehips, yarrow, and wild cranberries, among other plants that thrive both here and in the areas of B.C. that she used to roam. They also taught her to pay attention to calm beauty and respect other species.

Knowing that Bo Yeung and Georgia Hammond also know a lot about wild and domestic plants, Meg brought the idea to them. She will ever remain excited and honoured that they agreed to form the Long Walk Collective, to imagine this collaborative space.

Another motivation behind Plant Encounters is to celebrate the fact that so many artists come through Dawson, either through artist residencies or just for adventure. In these highly digitized times, what radiance appears when people shine a light on some of their plant-centred experiences?

The Long Walk Collective had the pleasure of working with Marina Osmond as our administrative assistant.

Marina is a freelance writer and enjoys living a quiet life on the outskirts of Dawson City and exploring its surrounding trails. She studied Journalism at Loyalist College and her years of living off-grid inspire her work. She has a personal connection to blueberries although she is fairly certain they are not found on the Ninth Avenue trail.

Jenna Roebuck is a graphic designer with a passion for old things and typography. She studied painting and art history at the University of Saskatchewan before being lured by the Spell of the Yukon many years ago. Her current work and interest is in the material culture of Dawson City and the spaces we inhabit north of 60.