Channel Migration … coming Soon!

I’m in Kitchener ON just now, getting ready to launch a lovely new project with my co-conspirators Geoff Martin and Erika Lui. on May 31sr, we will be launching CHANNEL MIGRATION - a 14km, 13-station audiowalk/urban hike through the city. Channel Migration follows Schneider Creek all the way from Willow River Park (colonial name: Victoria Park), through the city and down to Doon, where the Creek meets the O:se Kenhionhata:tie (Willow River/Grand River).

This work has been many months in the making, and I am so deeply grateful for all it has taught me (and will no doubt continue to teach me). And I’m also very thankful for the opportunity to be able to make this work with the input of colleagues and friends, including The Creek Collective. It has become increasingly clear to me over the last year (at least) that the work of making art is a vital and necessary thing in the world. I feel the imperative now more than ever to work in ways that speak to strengthening community, and to the responsibilities and capacities of humans within the interconnected web of existence.

My co-conspirator Geoff wrote in one passage of the audio walk’s narrative: “Another way of saying “no one is an island” is to say, “we’re all in the water.” We’re made of water, we drink water, we wash with water, we drain water through our bodies—all of it flows in and through us … .” This is an intimacy that those of us raised in settler-colonial culture are not taught to consider. In fact, the capitalist/colonial economics that dominate in this country (and in many other places) work to actively divorce our being from being-in-the-world : we are taught to separate ourselves from the life around us, see all that is not human as simply ‘resources’ or ‘commodities’ to be exploited, extracted, and discarded.

These thoughts - and the teachings of the Creek - apply not just in the particularity of this location, but everywhere. In the place I was born and raised (in Treaty 6 territory, overlooking the Kisiskâciwani-sîpiy/Omaka-ty (North Saskatchewan River). In the place I call home, Mtapan/Esoqatik (on the Bay of Fundy). We are all nibi/nipiy/samqwan (water), and if we are to survive as a species, we must understand this and act appropriately toward it.

For those in the K-W area, I hope to see you on May 31st, bright an early, ready to move with us along this water-story together.