Future Prairie (Remediation Plot)
Future Prairie (Remediation Plot), 2025-ongoing, is a collaborative artwork developed and led with Api’soomaahka (William Singer III, Niitsítapi knowledge holder, artist, educator, and environmental activist from the Kainai Nation), Kara Matthews (horticulturist, educator, and site steward), and Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed (botanist, artist, educator, and native plant grower). It takes place at the Coutts Centre for Western Canadian Heritage, owned and operated by the University of Lethbridge in Treaty 7 territory, the ancestral lands and traditional territory of the Siksikáí’tsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), the Tsuut’ina and Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 1.
Rather than restoring land for human use, Future Prairie supports the recovery of prairie ecosystems, creating a habitat for native species. The project embraces plant-led processes, ecological reciprocity, and interspecies collaboration. Activities include seed cleaning and sharing workshops, planting, removing invasive grasses, and tending native plants, with members of the public participating in the ongoing care of the site. Kara Matthews and her team serve as the project’s primary on-the-land stewards, providing continuity of care throughout the year. Blackfoot knowledge shared by Api’soomaahka grounds the work, while seeds are also shared with Naapi’s Garden and the Katoyiss Seed Bank, contributing to Indigenous-led stewardship beyond this site. Founded by Api’soomaahka, Naapi’s Garden and Katoyiss Seed Bank support native grassland regeneration and creates space for the transmission of Blackfoot cultural practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and medicinal plant care, while addressing the impacts of invasive species.
Conceived as an ongoing artwork without a predetermined endpoint, Future Prairie asks what remediation might mean without control. The project follows the rhythms and timescales of the prairie itself, allowing plants, weather, insects, soil, and other beings to shape how the work develops. Prairie soils formed over thousands of years and were dramatically transformed through settler agriculture in little more than a century. Working within these uneven temporalities, this artwork considers remediation not as a return to a previous state, but as an ongoing practice of relationship, responsibility, and learning with the land.
Documentation of Future Prairie (Remediation Plot) and a participatory seed piece was included in (Re)mediating Soils: Field Notes at the Hess Gallery, University of Lethbridge, in 2026. We are grateful to Josephine Mills and Katherine Lawless for their ongoing support of of this work through the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the (Re)mediating Soils research project. Photography by: Kara Matthews, Sharon Stevens, and Alana Bartol.
Read a conversation published in COI Magazine here.
