Coast Salish artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun will  receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Emily Carr University, on May 4.

Best known for his huge, vibrant, and surreal paintings, the sometime sculptor, virtual-reality, and performance artist graduated from the facility, spending the past three decades exploring issues of colonization, politics, and the environment. Yuxweluptun was featured on the cover of the Straight in 2016 for his huge 30-year retrospective, Unceded Territories, at the Museum of Anthropology.

Design innovator and sustainability advocate Terry Irwin will also receive an honorary doctorate from ECU. She's a professor and faculty head at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University.

At the same ceremony, Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations and Vancouver Island-based multidisciplinary artist-advocate Marianne Nicolson will receive the Emily Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements by alumni. The 1996 Emily Carr graduate is internationally exhibited and is an outspoken advocate for Indigenous land rights.

The honours coincide with The Show, ECU's annual celebration of graduating students, in a massive, campus-filling exhibit from May 4 to May 19, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.