So I do this thing now where I perform in a dress. It used to matter why the dress came into my possession.
It doesn’t anymore.
I’ve come to realize the dress was chosen for me. These items that have come to me over this life of mine have all been leading me back to the point where the mountain water meets the valley water. It isn’t about why the dress came into my personal story but how my personal story mirrors the larger historical story. It articulates this loop we are stuck in – the Industrial complex. The reality is a wedding dress is the most valuable commodity a woman has in this artificial man state. There are many threads to be pulled from this one specific type of specifically fashioned fabric. Earth, Woman and dress – all commodities to the artificial man state. Paraded through propaganda. As Mother Earth I reclaimed her. I laboured a story that came from the experiences of others. Memories demanding to be made into gestures for all time. Committing to the practices of the village meant I have to understand it all. Who am I? What does it mean to come from here? What does it mean to live as our ancestors did today? These are my burning questions that drive me to create and use ancestral implements to piece together through muscle memory important measures of governance that can only be remembered through physical experience. We have to first remember we know to do these things and then make time to do them.
And the face of knowledge will return. It does in physical form as well as embodied action
We come from strong people.
The faces are coming back as the knowledge begins to emerge again. We are our ancestors future. How we maintain our connections to pre contact village life matters. We need a village to embody these roles the faces are telling us is us. How did they maintain connection to both worlds? Working diligently to protect the land and fishing sites. We are what is left of the great chiefs who survived the first wave of genocide. Us women are still targeted. Patriarchy assists genocide by forcing progress. If we bring forward village policy, village mechanics, village governance we could bring forward that reality in a new way. That first contact where the women mattered more because they are creators. The reason we don’t shoot doe’s first governing methodology. Each family holding strong enough values to survive the transition, will we survive again? Are we hanging on to the right things to make the shift? I asked myself and thought these things when I recognized historical photographed faces as living people today. If ever I needed proof that the blood remembers there it was. Knowledge has agency and it will grow out of us as we flex the muscles, the blood remembers and sends memories in dream time.
Since time immemorial