Mr. Nicolas Renaud

Areas of teaching and research include: Wendat worldview and history, Iroquoian cultures, colonialism and decolonization, Indigenous ecologies, wampum belts, Indigenous cinema, and relations between Québec society and Indigenous peoples.

Member of the Indigenous Futures Research Centre.
Associate member of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre.

Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching 2023-2024
Junior Professor category, Faculty of Arts and Science

Nicolas Renaud is also a filmmaker and installation artist. He has made documentary and experimental work since the 1990s. He received the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award (best 1st feature-length documentary) at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival in 2013 for the film Brave New River (La Nouvelle Rupert). His latest works include the short films Bear Cubs (Fr.v. Oursons, 2019), Métamorphoses (2020), Florent Vollant: I Dream in Innu (2021), Onyionhwentsïio' (2022), the found-footage collage project Holiday Native Land (co-created with Brian Virostek, 2023), and a series of installation pieces based on 17th and 18th c. Wendat wampum belts (2022-2024).

He also worked as an editor and consultant on documentary films and various audio-visual projects. Among those collaborations, he was an editor for the NFB animation program Hothouse 12: Indigenous, and for the essay film by Carlos Ferrand 13, a ludodrama about Walter Benjamin (2017). From 2014 to 2020, he was co-programmer of the film section at the Montréal International First Peoples Festival (Présence autochtone).

Prior to being appointed full-time in SCPA-First Peoples Studies, he taught part-time in Cinema and Studio Arts at Concordia from 2007 to 2021, and gave the MFA seminar "Indigenous Cinema of the Americas".

Nicolas Renaud is of mixed Québécois and Indigenous heritage, and is a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation of Wendake (Qc).

MA Sociology (UQAM)
BFA Cinema, Film Production (Concordia)

Trailers and samples of recent film and video work:
https://vimeo.com/nicolasrenaud

Film available on NFB.ca:
Florent Vollant: I Dream in Innu (5 min, 2021)
Free streaming
 

Concordia News story:

A First Peoples Studies course at Concordia delves into the historical and contemporary significance of wampum belts (Émilie Hervieux, June 13, 2024)

Courses 2007-2024:

Advanced Topics in First Peoples Studies: Wampum Belts (FPST 498)
Contemporary Politics in First Peoples Communities (FPST 401)
First Peoples' Cinema (FPST 298 / FMST 217)
First Peoples of Canada (FPST 203)
Globalization and Indigenous Peoples (FPST 341)
Intro to First Peoples Studies (FPST 201)
MFA Seminar: Indigenous Cinema of the Americas (Studio Arts, ASEM 654)
Le Cinéma québécois (FMST 215)
Film History to 1959 (FMST 211)
Films on Art (FFAR 298)
Film Aesthetics (FMST 212)

Current and recent exhibitions

- BACA 2024 (@ DRAC, Drummondville), March 23 - May 16, 2024: Onyionhwentsïio' (video loop, sound, text)

- Méduse permanent collection, Québec city, Dec. 2023 - ongoing: Wampum-vitrail #3 (backlit prints in light boxes and wampum belt with shell and crystal beads)

- daphne Indigenous art centre, Montréal, Nov. 3 - Jan. 13, 2023, two works shown:

Wampum-écran-vitrail #2 (installation with wampum belt in shell and glass beads, light boxes, video projections)

Paix et guerre en même temps (wampum with quahog shell, moose hide, and mirror)


- Group exhibition Yahndawa', Musée Huron-Wendat de Wendake, June - Sept. 2023, and Galerie Oeil de Poisson, Québec City, Sept-Oct. 2022: Wampum-écran-vitrail #1 (installation with wampum in shell and glass beads, video projections)

- Alanis Obomsawin in conversation with Nicolas Renaud, presented by Musée d'art contemporain (MAC) at the NFB, Montréal. January 2025.

- Wampum as Teacher. Guest speaker for the Dadibaajimo series, Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario. October 7, 2024.

- The Forest in Québec Politics: Environmental Racism and the Religion of Capitalism. Guest speaker on Dr. Catherine Richardson's podcast, 4th Space, Concordia. Sept. 2024.

- Indigenous ghosts in Canadian landscapes. Presentation on the panel "Filmic Futurities: Indigeneity and Settler Colonialism in Popular Culture", at the annual conference of the Film and Media Studies Association of Canada, Montréal, June 2024.

- Écouter les poissons et parler aux coquillages. Artist talk, BACA 2024, Maison de la Culture de Verdun, Montréal, May 2024.

- Festival de la décroissance in Québec City. Screening of films and discussion on colonialism and the exploitation of natural resources in Québec. May 2024.
 
- 19th Annual Indigenous Film and Arts Festival, Denver, Colorado. Online event "Our Stories": screening of short films and conversation with filmmakers Terry Jones, Craig Commanda, Nicolas Renaud. October 26, 2022.

- 8th annual conference Revisioning the Americas through Indigenous Cinema. August 15-16, 2022, in Kahnawake and Montréal. Contribution to the panel "Filmmaking and Indigenous Epistemologies".

- Wendat Ecology - Do you respect the fish? Does the fish respect you? 2022 Conference of the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability & Loyola Sustainability Research Centre. Concordia University, Montréal, March 23rd.

- Visiting artist - lectures, screenings and workshops. Davidson College of Liberal Arts, North Carolina, USA, 2019.

- Land of Reciprocity: relationship to nature in Indigenous cinema. Lecture at Barnard College, Columbia University, NYC, USA, 2018.

Decolonising pedagogy and promoting student well-being

Catherine Richardson/Kineweskwêw and Nicolas Renaud. Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice, Vol. 6, Issue 2, Winter 2023, p. 19-36. https://doi.org/10.28963/6.2.2 

L’univers idéologico-politique des peuples autochtones au Québec 

Nicolas Renaud et Daniel Salée. Bulletin d’histoire politique, Volume 30, no 3 : Le nouveau clivage idéologique du Québec au début du XXIe siècle (dir. Guillaume Lamy), printemps 2023, p. 130–154.

Wiñaypacha : La honte du fils
Essai sur le film Wiñaypacha d'Óscar Catacora (Pérou, 2017). Panorama Cinéma, no. août 2022. en ligne

Dans les montagnes de la Caroline du Nord
Récit (non-fiction short story), revue COMMUNS, no. Juin 2022.
EPUB & PDF

L'art au temps du colonialisme au Québec : le film of the North et la pièce Kanata.
Chapitre 4 dans: Devoir de mémoire - Perspectives sociales et théoriques sur la vérité, la justice et la réconciliation dans les Amériques, Éd. Leila Celis & Martin Hébert. Presses de l'Université Laval, 2020. 
https://www.pulaval.com/produit/devoir-de-memoire-perspectives-sociales-et-theoriques-sur-la-verite-la-justice-et-la-reconciliation-dans-les-ameriques