RISING: Festival Opening at The Square

For three nights marking the opening of RISING, Fed Square transforms into an open-air canvas for Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Midéegaadi.

Warm up by the fire pits as this massive multi-channel video piece dances across Fed Square. Cuppas and hot chocolates will be on hand, Killara Foundation brings community to the barbie with a reimagined sausage sizzle celebrating First Nations flavours and native ingredients, and there are beanbags and deck chairs to sink into.

After lighting up Times Square last year, Midéegaadi arrives in Narrm on Wurundjeri Country. Beneath the city glow, Fed Square becomes a place to connect — to each other, and to something larger. The Times Square iteration was an invitation to envision the regeneration and return of the North American bison: a meditation on the importance of more-than-human kin to Luger’s community and local Indigenous peoples.

For RISING, a new iteration and a new context — here, Midéegaadi considers how First Peoples globally interconnect through dance and new media, honouring Ancestral knowledge. Incorporating customary dance and figures wearing newly made regalia inspired by Luger’s Ancestors and Indigenous futurisms, it is a testament to the power of contemporary Indigenous practice in cultural continuity — and a resistance to ongoing colonial attempts to diminish it.