Photo by Meg YoshidaLindsay Dawn Dobbin is a Kanien'kehá:ka–Acadian–Irish–Scottish water protector, sound artist, drummer, whale listener, poet, educator and lifelong learner who gratefully lives and creates in Wabanaki along the Bay of Fundy. Born on the Kennebecasis River, a tributary of Wolastoq ("the beautiful river"), they were raised in a wetland estuary where freshwater flowing from the Northern Appalachia meets the saltwater of the world's highest tides. They have also spent significant time living North of the 60th parallel.
Dawn’s relational and place-responsive practice is guided by curiosity rather than form—the way of water. They are committed to creative paths that honour the ever-changing thresholds between land and sea, embracing an emergent (and submergent) ethics of improvisation rooted in kinship, living processes, deep listening, play and mutual flourishing. Their participatory art experiences invite re-membrance, shared movement and connection through the wonder of sound.
At the heart of Dawn’s practice is the drum—a vibrational instrument through which their genre-fluid, transdisciplinary work unfolds in relation to bodies, ecologies and temporalities. With music as their friend, Dawn follows tidal and cyclical rhythms as pathways to creative sovereignty—co-weaving connection, care and survival within shapeshifting worlds.
A committed collaborator, facilitator and steward of creative process, Dawn has co-created with artists, scientists, Elders, youth and the more-than-human—primarily where they live within the traditional, unceded territories of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Peskotomuhkati, as well as across Turtle Island. Attuned to aural transmission, bioacoustic forms of communication and analogue, terrestrial sound technologies, Dawn explores the often indescribable yet intimately felt resonances among sound, material and the environments from which they emerge. Guided by principles of experimental pedagogy and healing justice, Dawn approaches creative practice as a relational site of ritual, ecological inquiry, collective care, embodied knowing and playful worlding.
Their collaborative work has included improvising music with constellations of human and more-than-human beings; designing and facilitating sound art and music programs for children, including children with disabilities; creating place- and time-responsive radio transmissions; composing and recording sound for film, dance and performance; and curating interdisciplinary art projects and exhibitions rooted in land- and water-based pedagogy, including Nocturne: Atlantic Canada’s largest contemporary art festival. They are also conducting sound-based research in partnership with water scientists and traditional, place-based water knowledge holders, exploring ecological and acoustic knowledge systems. Dawn’s work has been shared nationally and internationally. They are the recipient of the Arts Nova Scotia Emerging Artist Recognition Award (2019) and the Robert Fleming Prize (2021), awarded annually by the Canada Council for the Arts to an emerging composer in Canada.
Dawn is a relationally taught creative whose musical and artistic education has unfolded through cultural and community-based transmission, collaboration and the practice of making way together. They carry deep gratitude for the sanctuaries, ecologies and lineages of beings that weave them into a vast web of love and expression. Their practice is an offering of reciprocity—a gesture of thanks for the teachings and care shared by the many human and more-than-human beings who continue to shape their life and work. This ongoing learning grounds their practice in an attentiveness to the shared beingness, resonance and resilience of meeting waters. Their work is also informed by a family history rooted in rural livelihoods and skilled trades, where craft, storytelling and intimate knowledge of the material world served as practices of care, stewardship and continuity. Growing up alongside animals-as-family, Dawn developed an early sensitivity to the interdependence of living beings and the environments they inhabit. Extending this familial lineage, Dawn’s practice tends to the relationships among humans, plants, animals, waters and the elemental, listening for the connections within the cosmic commons of sound.
Lindsay Dawn Dobbin gratefully acknowledges the support of:
