Ian Cusson is a Métis and French-Canadian composer of art song, opera, and orchestral music. His work explores the Canadian Indigenous experience, including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. Cusson was the Carrefour composer in residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 2017–2019 and became the inaugural artist of the COC’s Composer-in-Residence program from 2019–2021. As part of his residency, the COC commissioned a new work entitled Fantasma, and in 2019 Cusson debuted a new aria, “Dodo, Mon Tout Petit”, commissioned by the NAC and COC, to replace the “Kuyas” aria that had previously opened the third act of Louis Riel. In 2020, it was announced that Cusson would join The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity as a co-director of opera, alongside American soprano Karen Slack and Canadian director Joel Ivany. Most recently, he was awarded SOCAN’s 2021 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award. 

Cherie Dimaline is an internationally bestselling author. Her 2017 YA novel The Marrow Thieves won the Governor General’s Award and the Kirkus Prize, and her 2019 novel Empire of Wild became an instant Canadian bestseller and was named Indigo's 2019 Best Book. Hunting By Stars was a 2022 American Indian Library Association Honor Book and her new novel VENCO debuted at #1 on Canadian bestseller lists. Other 2023 titles include Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, Anthology of Monsters and Into the Bright Open. Dimaline lives in her Georgian Bay Métis Community and writes/produces for screen and stage.

Halie Finney (she/her) is a multidisciplinary Métis artist originally from the Lesser Slave Lake area, specifically Canyon Creek, Alberta. Her creative practice includes work as a tattooist, illustrator, comic book writer, painter, and illustrator, as well as installations and video productions. Halie’s biggest influence has been her experience growing up in the bush in rural Alberta, including all of the plants and animals and people that live there, and her nostalgia for home remains an ongoing inspiration. Halie Finney has shown her work nationally and internationally and recently published her first comic, Cousin Bear Comes to Visit, with Conundrum Press.