An office of Mennonite Church Canada, Indigenous-Settler Relations helps Mennonite communities grow in their awareness of host peoples and the realities of settler colonialism, and nurture justice-based friendships. Its aim is to honour the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and live into the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the pursuit of the costly path of Christ.
The Intotemak Trilogy comprises three special editions of Mennonite Church Canada's since discontinued Intotemak publication. At a length of roughly 160 pages, each volume contributes to the larger effort to elevate the truth of colonial injustice and the church through a particular theme, highlighting ways Christians and the church are engaging in and can better engage in the work of reconciliation, both individually and collectively.
Each book's theme engages a different sub-theme to the overarching question of Christian Colonialism and Indigenous peoples, past and present. Short articles written by both Indigenous and Settler authors, combined with poetry and visual arts provide a rich, engaging and accessible resource for individuals and group conversation. Study guides are included in each volume.
I began work on the first book, Wrongs to Rights, as the layout designer and art director during my work as an in-house Multimedia Artist at Mennonite Church Canada. The basic art style is based on a redesign of the original Intotemak magazine that I undertook early in my time on staff at Mennonite Church Canada.
I was laid off at the end of summer 2016 when financial shortfalls hit the denomination, but continued work on the trilogy with editor Steve Heinrichs in a freelance capacity, completing Yours Mine, Ours in October 2016 and Quest for Respect in April 2017. At this point, the three came to be known simply as the "Intotemak TRC Trilogy."
The essential challenge in these volumes was how to create a black and white resource that would be visually appealing to readers and yet still perform effectively as an educational and curricular resource. In the ensuing years since its release, it has come to be known both for its aesthetic presentation and the grounbreaking nature of its content.
The three books of the trilogy, technically at their inception special editions of Intotemak, build on the magazine's 2015 redesign, albeit more comprehensively, at a longer length, and with space at less of a premium. As such, they lean heavily on the aesthetics of Inknut Antiqua, the primary display typeface. Source Sans and Adobe Caslon cover informational text and story text respectively.
Editor Steve Heinrichs' own work with Indigenous solidarity and extensive research into archival photography, public domain imagery, and partnerships with artists like Christi Belcourt, Edgar Heap of Birds, Nicholas Burns, Jonathan Dyck, and Arlea Ashcroft provided an incredibly rich starting point of images that appear all throughout each book. Along with the editorial collection of images, a small amount of stock phtography makes an appearance, along with a handful of boutique graphics I created from scratch in the course of the books.
This incredible quality of content allowed the layout styles to tread lightly, pulling back most of the time and allowing content to speak for itself.
One interesting content form to note was the script - each book features a creative play written on the topic of colonialism and reconciliation from various playwrites. For these, we broke with the standard and injected Courier to elicit the proper feel.
Additional creative visualizations of information of many kinds can be found throughout the book.
Each of the volumes features a full spread, full-colour photograph from established Canadian photographers and photojournalists.
The abundance of archival images led to the style for the covers, each of which features a collage of imagery overtop historical colonial maps of the Americas and the Atlantic.
Wrongs to Rights
At the time that Wrongs to Rights was conceived, the possibility of a trilogy had not been considered, so its cover art is a more general exploration of Christianity and Indigeneity. The covers of the next two books in the trilogy zone in more specifically on the topics they discuss.
Yours, Mine, Ours
Yours, Mine, Ours sees a more intentional use of conquest imagery. The density of faces and images atop maps of North America are a nod to the disgraceful irony of terra nullius, a racist and colonial papal doctrine officially declaring the Americas to be "empty" and free for the taking by generation after generation of colonizers.
Quest for Respect
Quest for Respect, meanwhile, focuses thematically on Indigenous spiritualities and connections at its edges with Christianity through figures engaging with or participating in Christian spirituality and religious practices.
In addition to design, I handled all of the coordination for printing with Friesens in Altona, Manitoba, Canada. All of the books and associated resources can be found online at CommonWord.
Alongside the printed books, Wrongs to Rights and Yours, Mine, Ours were released with free downloadable poster-sized versions of historical timelines that were featured in both books.
A critical success, the trilogy has gone into multiple printings and editions, receiving favorable reception in justice circles, both Christian and secular alike. You can read more from The Banner, Do Justice, Citizens for Public Justice, the MB Herald, Canadian Mennonite and more. The books have also become required reading for classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels at universities across North America.
Afterthe release of the final Quest for Respect in 2017, the quarterly Intotemak magazine was discontinued. Mennonite Church Canada's Indigenous-Settler Relations office decided to focus on releasing books year on year, and started with the award-winning Unsettling the Word, a simpler but highly illustrated book by fellow Manitoba graphic designer and nationally renowned illustrator Jonathan Dyck, published in 2018.
As of November 2021, I am working again with editor Steve Heinrichs to create a single volume that combines the Intotemak Trilogy into a single book in digital and print versions to create a simpler approach to further printing runs given that most new interest involves the trilogy as a whole.
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