is it a prayer?

the tension of a land acknowledgement is strong in my heart and mind.

“do it right. do it well.”

how is it not hollow? how is it not just a performance of accountability?

this is an attempt (taken from my journal on June 4th) made as an introduction to my video screening at the 2021 Guelph Dance Festival live, virtual event:

I hesitate to frame this work, to limit it with words.

I’d like to let it speak,

in the way this medium affords a level of integration, abstraction, and paradox

that I think is necessary to get out of the realm of intellect,

and into sensation and embodiment,

from certainty to mystery.

I would, though, like to offer words as an imperfect acknowledgement,

of the lands, waters, peoples, Nations, histories,

of this place, now called Guelph,

through a prayer of sorts…

grant me the courage

to ask, how do cycles of violence, in the form of supremacy, domination and contempt, live within me and function in my relationships?

to continue the work of active dis-illusionment, unearthing inherited, harmful denials

to seek understanding, and perhaps transformation of, the particular flavour of shame that I experience in this body, as I inhabit these treaty 3 lands of 1792, where the MIssissaugas of the Credit and the British Loyalists attempted a covenant of co-existence

to critically and compassionately take in the legacy of my ancestors, toward healing for more beings