chant/participatory performance
Embodied, language, community, settler, Mi’kma’ki, naming, land, place, site
2022

Should I, as a settler, share awareness of something that is not mine to share? 

Making this work, I was reflecting on settler scholar and dramaturge Melissa Poll’s words regarding working from a settler context: “What does that mean to be responsible to these [indigenous] nations and to be living off the theft of their land” (Cole and Poll 2)?

How do I create land-based work and promote education about Mi’kma’ki while not being appropriative? How do I be allied to a decolonial agenda without taking up too much space? How do I lend my voice without drowning out others? How can I bring care, tenderness, humility, and respect into my practice? I get a lot of things wrong when I try to deal with this, but that is no reason to stop trying.

For this piece, I was compelled by the integration of practicing language and trying to learn language, of being a settler trying to be aware and be present without taking up too much room. 

I’ve been working on a play where music is being used to teach astronomy concepts, and I thought that using music to help learn a language might be something we could do as a group – while walking, an embodied experience that would get some simple phrases in our bodies. I spoke with Sarah Brooks, my classmate and an incredible Mi’kmaw artist who is also working with the Mi’kmaw Place Names project (“Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas”), which is a phenomenal resource. She was supportive of the idea, but upon further reflection and thinking about the role of music and singing in Mi’kmaq culture, I was worried about being appropriative. I decided instead on a chant with simple gestures to help the class learn four words in Mi’kmaq and their meanings. I chose these words because they relate to where we were situated for this class: 

• Kjipuktuk: Great Harbour (the Halifax Harbour)
• We’kwaltijk: Ending without a river coming in (The Northwest Arm)
• Kepe’k: At the Narrows (where the McKay Bridge is located, the narrowest part of the Halifax Harbour before it opens into the Bedford Basin)
• Elpaqkwitk: Water Splashed on it by the waves (George’s Island; also ‘turned over like a pot’)

Using the recorded voice on the Place Names website, I came up with a series of representative gestures and put the four words to a beat that could be used while walking, creating a chant of sorts that was intended to be used as a teaching tool. When I was introducing the project I wanted to be clear that I was also still learning – situating myself not as an authority but as a fellow learner. I acknowledged Sarah and her contribution, giving the context of my role, and played the original voice files so we could all listen and learn from the source rather than from a settler in-between. I taught the chant and gestures to the class and then we walked in a circle while repeating them a number of times.