Overview

Association for Native Development in the Performing and Visual Arts (ANDPVA) is Canada's oldest Indigenous arts service organization, providing support to Canadian First Nations, Metis and Inuit artists, Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Survivors (AEKS) in Canada.

Activities include events that support artists and facilitate healing through the arts. Our work expanded in 2019, creating projects that promote healing through the arts for Indigenous communities and focusing on supporting Survivors of gender-based violence and communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

ANDPVA was established in 1972 and incorporated as a non-profit in the Province of Ontario in 1974. At the time, the First Nations, Metis and Inuit arts community generated little activity as First Nations, Metis and Inuit people reeled from the effects of colonization. Residential boarding schools, displacement, and cultural genocide created trauma for First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples. Today, ANDPVA provides safe spaces where First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples, stories, and culture are cherished.