Tears, 2021
ceramic, brass, water, light, sound
The period from March 2020 to December 2021 has been globally challenging. For the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island it has been doubly so.
Hundreds and hundreds of children’s bodies have been unearthed, providing the physical evidence of the horrific stories they have been voicing for decades.
Colonialism kills cultures. Colonialism murders children. Colonialism reduces the land to resources to be extracted.
Colonialism commits genocide and it does so intentionally.
I am a colonial-settler. I was born on the ancestral lands of the Tongva people in 1963 and I settled on the land of the Tsu T’ina in 2013. I benefit from an extensive economic, social, and political system that thrives on the backs and lives of indigenous peoples and threatens their culture, livelihood and lives every day; creating and perpetuating massive roadblocks to their full self-expression, freedom, and relationship to the land.
I asked an indigenous friend how she handles her grief and she said something like, “I have to schedule time for it and compartmentalize it; otherwise I will grieve and cry all the time.”
I dedicate this work to my friend Miskanahk. Our liberties are bound up together.
I pray I may catch her tears and my own together. And I pray that I have the integrity to decolonize as long as I live.
Tears video, 2021
