Spotlight On JP Longboat

Dec 4, 2025

Meet JP Longboat, an Ottawa-based multi-disciplinary Artist, Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk), Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River in Southern Ontario, founder and Artistic Director of Circadia Indigena, and co-founder of the LodgePole Arts Alliance.

He says of the 2010-founded Circadia Indigena, that it was created 'to bring into being gathering spaces where Indigenous artists can remember identity and (re)create images that restore oral traditions, language, performance aesthetics, music, and the visual arts.'

As a Land-based multidisciplinary artist he works immersively in the visual artist, live instillation, orator and performance to tell First Nations stories of place throughout the Dish with One Spoon territories. JP received his BFA through combined studied at the University of Michigan and Ontario College of Art. He has trained, performed, and collaborated with many professional theatre and contemporary dance companies across Canada, and served as Program Officer in Dance at the Canada Council for the Arts and on the faculty of Aboriginal Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Sep, 2025 - Spirit Canoes installation at the Royal Botanical Gardens, created by JP Longboat

In 2021, he co-founded LodgePole Arts Alliance, a not-for-profit/charitable organization with a mandate is to build an Indigenous owned, operated, and programmed land-based creative centre on the eastern edge of the Dish with One Spoon territories (Frontenac Biosphere, Wolf Island, Kingston). This First Nations lead place/space will centre itself on a holistic format and be the first of its kind in Canada on non-First Nation’s treaty or territorial lands.

We consider ourselves very lucky to have JP onside to help inspire and guide PAL Ottawa's hand in conceiving of PAL Place as a safe, inclusive, attractive places for Indigenous creatives in our community, and understanding and honouring the land on which it is being built.