Jake Anhanhsi McIntyre Dilley is a multi-medium artist who strongly focuses on her writing practice. Jake is Ojibwe/Algonquin from the Timiskaming First Nation, and is a member of the Beaver Clan of the Nisga’a/Tlingit through adoption in the Potlatch. Jake was given the Traditional Ojibwe name Mashkikisisipkwe, meaning Plant Medicine Duck Woman.
Jake writes to bring the oral traditions she has been gifted to life in a contemporary setting. A lifelong storyteller, Jake strives to revitalize the characters of her childhood myths and give them a place in the colonized world Indigenous people now inhabit.
Jake has been heavily involved in the arts since she was a small child. Jake apprenticed in the traditional Eastern Woodland painting style under her father, Don Ahnahnsisi McIntyre.
Jake is a two-time winner of Historic Canada’s “Our Story” competition, and her short story “The Devil in Coyote” was picked to be a representation of contemporary Indigenous literature by Ontario's ILC program, the largest online high school in Canada. At present, she is working on her first novel, a look at the survival of the Trickster spirit in colonized urban landscapes.
Jake is currently a guest on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations in Vancouver. She lives in the Downtown Eastside and wanders the alleys looking for weeds to create medicine with.
