Mushkeke uhkeeng/ Hampi Wiñachiq Pacha / Pohã ñana / Where the Medicine Grows

Principal Investigators: David McIntosh, Robert Houle

Co-investigators: Dot Tuer, Alan Durston, Judith Doyle

Research Assistants: Luke Garwood, Anastasia Tarkhanova, Joaquim Almeida, Jay Cooper, Maju Tavera

Creative Consultants: Stella Bone, Delores Roulette, Marilyn Beaulieu, Sandra Beaulieu, Roberta Riglin, Kim McKay, Brendan McKay, Paul Gardner, Alberto Gomez, Chapu Toba

“Mushkeke uhkeeng / Hampi Wiñachiq Pacha / Pohã ñana / La Tierra que hace crecer los remedios / Where the Medicine Grows: (Re)Generative Translocal, Transmedia Healing Networks” is a working group of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers and creative practitioners building local and translocal, digital and material, research/creation and collaboration networks of artists and healers, on urban and traditional lands, to address legacies and current realities of indigenous peoples. The three primary indigenous cultures/locations/languages represented in this process are: Anishnabe in Manitoba and Ontario (Wasagaming/Riding Mountain, Sandy Bay, Winnipeg, Toronto); Quechua in Perú (Ayacucho, Qeros, Cusco, Lima); Guaraní in Northern Argentina (Iberá, Yahavaré, Corrientes).

This research/creation project rests on a set of ongoing conversations and creative collaborations to build understanding and sharing of histories in and across all three sites, including deep as well as recent histories of colonial rule and genocide of indigenous peoples in each society. The project engages healing based on recuperation and regeneration of language, land and plants. It is based on documentation of oral and audiovisual traditions and knowledges of plants and healing for regeneration in generative media forms to ensure ongoing enactments of traditions and knowledges. In addition to oral storying, the cultures engaged in the project maintain other forms of traditional healing knowledge retention and sharing, for example Anishnabe prescription sticks (sequences of etchings of healing plants in lengths of wood), birch bark biting and beading of plants on regalia, and Quechua and Guaraní songs and weavings referencing healing plants. These oral and representational knowledge forms, and other knowledge forms being researched, are considered in relation to contemporary generative media, digital interactive media, including AR-Augmented Reality, which maintain the contingent, adaptable and embodied power of oral traditions. Local translators ensure that land/language relations are fully maintained in exchanges across the three communities. Oral exchanges are documented and supplemented by audiovisual works including 3D imaging using LIDAR enabled devices such as Iphone 13 and Ipad. The project examines the role of oral storytelling in regenerating memory, time and place in healing processes, and, more specifically, orality as contingent, enacted, embodied, interactive and adaptive to immediate circumstances and contexts. Working in indigenous languages is key to building local teams of practitioners and networks of exchange.

Stories that locate healing relations with plants and the land are at risk of being lost. The process of experiencing, understanding and extending oral histories, and documentation and sharing of those stories, is intended to assist in enhancing community survivance.

 

This project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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Photograph of Black Spruce
Photograph of labrador tea
Photograph of southern white cedar
Text "metashape 3D imaging tutorial cover page" on a photo of forest canopy
Thursday, March 31, 2022 - 9:30am