The National Gallery of Canada’s Qillaniq brings together more than seventy contemporary artists from the circumpolar Arctic. Its title is an Inuktitut word describing light shimmering on water. I like that image because the exhibition uses brightness rather than darkness as a way to speak about resilience. Indigenous contemporary art is too often framed primarily through loss or historical damage. Joy, humour, imagination and continuity can be equally political. Survival is not only the preservation of what existed before. It is also the freedom to keep inventing what comes next.