The Ontario government announced on Oct. 10 that Missy Knott, a musician and Curve Lake First Nation community member, has been appointed to the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) board of directors. Knott is the first indigenous artist from Curve Lake, or the Peterborough/Nogojiwanong area, to be represented on this council.

According to their website, the OAC is an “agency that operates at arm's length from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. The OAC's grants and services to professional, Ontario-based artists and arts organizations support arts education, Indigenous arts, community arts, crafts, dance, Francophone arts, literature, media arts, multidisciplinary arts, music, theatre, touring, and visual arts.” In 2021-22, the Ontario Arts Council gave $56.4 million in grants, to 2,665 individual artists, and 1,050 arts organizations, across 237 communities in the province.

Knott has been active in the Peterborough/Nogojiwanong arts community, and the Indigenous art community, since she was a young teenager. But she believes her career in music really started when she released her first full-length album, called For No Reason At All, at 19 years old. Then, in 2018, Knott founded Wild Rice Records, an independent record label.

Knott has previous involvement with the OAC: she has received funding through an OAC grant, and has worked as a judge on OAC application panels.

It is because of Knott’s previous OAC experience, and her deep history in the Peterborough/Nogojiwanong art community, that Peterborough MPP Dave Smith recommended Knott for the position on the OAC board of directors.

“I think my perspective is that I can really help, support, and provide them with this whole other element of, not decolonizing a western system, but strengthening Indigenous ones, and I think arts is a great place to start,” says Knott.

Listen to the story below: