Film Screening & Talkback: The Creation Story of Michael “Cy” Cywink

Film Screening & Talkback: The Creation Story of Michael “Cy” Cywink

by | Aug 7, 2026

A screening of the documentary film The Creation Story of Michael “Cy” Cywink, followed by an artist talk and Q&A session with local filmmaker Cory Bilyea.

The film honours the life and enduring legacy of the late Anishinaabe muralist, author, and curator Michael “Cy” Cywink. For over 40 years, Cy dedicated his life to breaking down cultural walls, sharing oral traditions, and mentoring youth through community-led public art. According to the Huron Citizen, “to call Bilyea’s film an artist biography hardly feels sufficient…The Creation Story is…also a meditation on the very nature of creativity [and] at times, a striking, simple, one-on-one art class, unlike any other.”

This screening is included with regular admission to the museum (FREE with a Huron County Library card or museum membership). Seating in the theatre limited, so please RSVP below  to save your seat.

About the Artist: Michael “CY” Cywink, was an Internationally recognized artist/author/curator/muralist and band member of the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island. He
was also an alumnus of the Museum Studies Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Michael was an independent curator. Previously he was the arts  coordinator for the Wiikwemikoong Art Gallery, and curator for the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M’Chigeeng, Manitoulin Island, as well as a First Nation’s cultural consultant with Walt Disney Imagineering / Disney’s America theme park project in Glendale, California. He interned at the Canadian Museum of Civilization of Man, Hull, Quebec (now the Canadian Museum of History), the National Museum of American Indian, Smithsonian, Washington, DC, the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM, and Walt Disney Imagineering, Glendale, CA. Throughout the 1980s he was a counselor /contract street worker (at risk youth) in Toronto. He began exhibiting his work in 1979.

About the Filmmaker: Cory Bilyea is an award-winning Onyota’a:ká: journalist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker dedicated to deconstructing colonial state frameworks and archiving contemporary oral histories. A prominent voice in regional and national Canadian media, she is a former CJF-CBC Indigenous Journalism Fellow whose impactful reporting has consistently kindled the public conscience on issues of systemic failure, institutional trauma, and off-reserve cultural reclamation. Bilyea’s work is uniquely informed by her lived experience as a Sixties Scoop survivor and former unhoused youth. Rather than allowing these structural traps to define her, she utilized the sharp observational and environmental-assessment skills honed on the pavement to become an elite investigative truth-teller. Her journalism has earned widespread professional acclaim, recognized for its raw emotional honesty, rigorous investigative depth, and unwavering commitment to community advocacy. Beyond the press room, Bilyea is an accomplished multi-disciplinary visual storyteller. She spent seven years writing, directing, and producing the powerful documentary The Creation Story of Michael “Cy” Cywink, a project exploring Indigenous artistic philosophy, resilience, and healing. Her subsequent fellowship work has focused heavily on the vital, ongoing battle for language revitalization across Canada.

Treaties & Huron County

Treaties & Huron County

by | Nov 6, 2017 | For Teachers and Students, Investigating Huron County History

What is now Huron County includes parts of the traditional territories of multiple Anishinaabe communities. Liz Duern is  a current University Student, and worked as a Museum Assistant at the Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol during the summer of 2017.  In this guest blog post for Treaties Recognition Week, Liz shares what she learned during her initial research into the treaty history of this area.

What is a Treaty? How were they created? Treaties  are agreements between First Nations and the British Crown. While the Crown used treaties to gain access to land for settlement and mining, First Nations understood treaties as building nation-to-nation relationships and protecting their continued stewardship of the land. The Crown often promised to protect First Nations’ rights and to set aside tracts of land for the exclusive use of the First Nations and their members. Today, the elders of many indigenous communities hold a great amount of knowledge regarding the intent of the treaties passed down through oral history.

Detail from https://files.ontario.ca/firstnationsandtreaties.pdf

Treaty 29: Following earlier provisional agreements, the Huron Tract (1827) The Huron Tract Treaty was signed by eighteen Anishinaabek chiefs in 1827 in Amherstburg; in addition to what is now Lambton County and part of Wellington under settler municipal boundaries, the Huron Tract included most of what would become the Huron District-most of Huron County and parts of Perth & Middlesex.  This treaty ceded 99% of the communities’ remaining lands to the British Crown, and designated four reserves: one along the south of St. Clair Township, one at Sarnia, and two on Lake Huron (Kettle and Stony Point). 

Treaty 45 ½: The Saugeen Treaty (1836) Treaty 45 ½, signed on August 9, 1836, dealt with part of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation’s traditional territory. The British promised the Saugeen Ojibway Nation that they would protect the Indigenous peoples who resided on the Saugeen Peninsula and that the Saugeen Peninsula would be protected for their use. Not long after this, the British claimed that the Saugeen Peninsula could not be protected against settlers unless another treaty was negotiated. This treaty was Treaty 72, which  ceded about 500,000 acres of the Saugeen Peninsula to the British Crown.

Huron Signal, 1852-09-16, page 4
via https://www.huroncountymuseum.ca/digitized-newspapers/

Treaties are not just historical documents, but outline ongoing rights and responsibilities that are protected by the Constitution Act, 1982. These rights and the spirit of the original agreements have often been violated “by colonial policies designed to exploit, assimilate and eradicate” First Nations communities and their cultures.  Access teaching resources to better understand what it means to live on Treaty Land.