In this podcast produced by Remember the Future, we learn the story of a group of actors in Maine who decided to repair historic wrongs in their own community through returning land while also working to be in meaningful, intentional relationship with Indigenous communities.
What happens when you not only recognize that you are on stolen land, but then you actually do something about it? Witness the inspiring partnership between a theater company and Indigenous folks, and how they listen, care, and build stability, moving at the speed of trust.
Guests on this episode are Rhonda Anderson of Ohketeau Cultural Center, and Carlos Uriona from Double Edge Theatre.
About Remember the Future: :Art.coop invites listeners to Remember the Future together by listening to the stories of artists and culture bearers who know that the practices of the Solidarity Economy are not some new technology, but actually are ways of being in relationship with people and planet that are as old as time. They are our ancestral practices.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
“I kind of know my way around the community and as we’re we’re creating this work, Stacy Klein of Double Edge Theater said, you know, we’ve received some funding to rehabilitate a barn and perhaps maybe we can turn that into a library so people can come and research about indigenous people of this area. And I said, Well, a library is great, but creating relationships with indigenous people and having a space where we can be and come is, is really important. So I said, Let’s create a space that’s very needed in this area. And she of course said right away, Yes, let’s do this. And so we started our, our journey then by creating a space we were very hands on and talked about what we needed as indigenous people for our culture to have a space accessibility outdoors, having a fire pit, a medicine garden, the doors in the right places. And that was really incredible and very moving to hear someone ask what we needed and follow through with creating land access and a very safe space for us to have conversations and practice our culture. It’s, it’s rare, and in some ways so easy to do.” (Rhonda Anderson)
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“We started with visits and we sat and we talk together and we listen and you know, we need to listen to people the way they are and not the way we want them to be. And that requires just time and, and work and, and then how, how do we do things together?” (Carlos Uriona)
“Absolutely. It required relationship building, it required a level of reciprocity and trust. We needed to be able to trust each other. And so it did take about two years of having these conversations and getting to know each other and learning about our cultures, which is so important in creating these relationships, understanding the roadblocks that we have as indigenous people, understanding the trauma, the historical and generational trauma that we have and how that may affect even our conversations. And that type of learning is hard. It’s never easy. It does take work. It’s not transactional.” (RA)
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“The tribal values are really drilled into me since I was born and I’m reminded of them constantly through my family and my community. And it’s having a knowledge of language sharing, sharing your resources, whatever you have. So your first hunt, small children usually like around six or seven years of age, will catch a duck. It’s an easy, easy hunt, but you give that duck to an elder that’s in need. And that is a way of showing that you are aware of your community, you have respect for others, cooperation, respect for elders, right?” (RA)
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“We need to make sure that there is an understanding of what colonization is. That it’s not historical, that it’s ongoing, that it asserts social, political, economic and spiritual domination over those that are being colonized and making sure that there’s an active unlearning and resistance to colonization. Because that’s, that’s the ultimate purpose, is to recognize and overturn the colonial structure and making sure that we honor tribal sovereignty, self-determination, um, traditional environmental knowledge. That’s what’s going to carry us through a climate disaster that we’re experiencing right now, is understanding that indigenous people around the world understand the differences, the changes that are happening to the land and the best ways to move through that.” (RA)
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“The important thing is to make a commitment to go and listen. And it needs to be not once a year, it needs to be, if possible, five times a week. The more the merrier, making that commitment and that engagement. Uh, my job I think is to, is to sit down and listen. And also the listening is not like what people think. We do exchange things when we are listening, when we go to some ceremonies that we are invited, we are exchanging things and we’re learning and is is helping us understand and work towards what do we need to do in order to at least reduce the amount of damage that is being done. It needs to be a certain humility to say, I need to do this. And also a certain detachment of what we think our life is or should be under the capitalist, you know, consumerism and change those habits.” (CU)
About Art.Coop: “Art.coop is a network of artists and groups who make the Solidarity Economy irresistible. We are working for a future in which artists closest to the pain of an extractive economy know their power and use it to dismantle the current system. We resource a community of artists committed to building the art worlds we want. Art.coop is located in the U.S. but is rooted in the international Solidarity Economy movement.”
