Amid the flurry of opening day at the long awaited Biennale de Venezia, Tara Chadwick, an Indigenous Belizean/ Canadian based in Broward County, Florida presented a short film honoring her lifelong artistic practice in dance and nature immersion.
Still image from "Earth • Ecology • Everglades" courtesy Adrienne Chadwick
"Earth • Ecology • Everglades" grew out of a project to provide residents and visitors with a taste of the rhythms, sights, smells and sounds found in the intersection of humans and the natural environment. Funded in part by a grant from the Florida Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Broward Cultural Division, Proyecto Papalotl has engaged communities across and beyond South Florida in interactive presentations since 2014. During the beginning of the COVID pandemic, alternate ways of connecting with community were explored including utilization of different forms of artistic expression: livestreaming, digital recording, audio, film and still images. The short film is accompanied by a National Geograhic certified intergenerational lesson plan with the same title. More about last month's Venice Experimental Performing Arts Festival can be found at https://www.itsliquid.com/review-experimental-venice-2022.html
[Image of Earth • Ecology • Everglades on view at Palazzo Bembo courtesy of Its Liquid Group]
Currently Tara Chadwick has two additional works on view in Venice, both of which expand on the theme of exploring the unfurling of our identity, purpose and responsibility as humans living in an Earth ecosystem that we are rapidly changing. #Matriarch will open at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello on Thursday, May 12 as part of "Anima Mundi CONSCIOUSNESS" and is also on view as a digital lightbox work at Spazio Tana / Tanarte, just across the canal from the Biennial's Arsenale through May 31. Limited edition prints available.
#Matriarch made her debut in Fort Myers last October, then hung as a public art billboard over 27th Avenue during Art Miami Week/ Art Basel from November through January.
Broward County residents and visitors can join Tara Chadwick for an interactive workshop in collaboration with the Miramar Community Garden on Saturday May 14th at 10 am.
Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Funding for this project is provided in part by the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council. Background mural courtesy of Valery Amor, Tara Chadwick, Mictla Chadwick, Ihiyo Chadwick, Talyn Skye Bell and Dr. Debbie Danard Wilson. Limited mobility, vision and hearing assistance available, please email wabigun@yahoo.com with detailed request one week prior to event date.
These photos were taken by Mictla Chadwick from the computer camera at the Lake Itasca Biological Field Station. It was an extremely novel tech innovation at the time in 2008 which he identified, implemented and taught us how to use. All other pics by TChadwick.
The prep materials (I still have these files available for anyone who wants to receive a copy of them!):
Mino dibikoong, Ikwaydoog:
Gaygayte wayeeba gi gah dagoshinamin owidi wayji jiwan misabe zeebing... michi zeebing...? Omah gahkawbeekong, oshkibagazeebing ayzhinidawdayg.
Thank you for registering for the Indigenous Womens Water Policy and Leadership Retreat!
Attached in this email, you will find:
A working agenda & What to bring
A series of maps to help you get there and find where we all will meet
A resource list of Water articles and activities that you can find on the internet *attached as footnote
A list of recommended readings
An extra copy of the flyer and registration form
Please go over these materials as soon as you can. If any one is interested in receiving any of the recommended readings to look over ahead of time, let me know and I will email them to you. Otherwise, we will have them available in hard copy and electronic format when we get there (I was hoping to send the whole file but it's 40 MB, too big for most email servers).
It is going to be a wonderful weekend, I am really looking forward to all of us spending time together in focus on what we will do to protect and nurture our common water.
Gigawabamin wayeeba!
Bawshkeeng Wabigun.
c. (612) 600-8272
Background work a few years earlier:
Boozhoo,
Ninduwaymawgunnidoog,
Omaw ni
kwudge itoon duh ozhibeeigay bugee ayzhi anokii duh ganawendawn nibi. Ni
kwudge itoon duh nisidotawn wah ikidoon ni nookomisun meenawah
nimishomisun. Ni migwetchiwayndawn ayzhi midewijig gizawgeein ni mama
akeeng. Mi ewe wah ni wi ikidoo noogoom. Meegwetch bizinduhwee'eg.
Bawshkeeng
Wabigun,
Wabiguneesun
ga onji odawdiseeyawn, Ginew indodaym
Neezho
mide indow.
Giganawendamin
Nibi - We must all take care of the Water
In the
Late Summer of 2005, Nugumoo Maingen (Sharon Day), Wabanew Quay (Dorene Day)
and Bawshkeeng Wabigun (Tara Chadwick) attended a manidoons (insect -
macroinvertebrate) training at the Leech Lake Water Lab. Lab director John Purcell provided a brief
introduction to macroinvertebrate sample analysis as a screening tool in water
quality monitoring and how to adapt this screening method to a multi
generational, community based audience.
A cultural training session was held at St. Paul's Como Lake with the
help of Bedawsegay (Josephine Mandahmin), lead organizer of the Mother Earth
Water Walk.
The
project is designed to build the knowledge capacity of Native American women to
test their own community waters, organize their families and communities to
address any toxic or pollution problems, and become active in holding tribal,
state and federal governments accountable to the environmental health of Native
communities, including ensuring continued access to safe, clean
water.
Collaborations
have been formed with environmental and health organizations and projects such
as the Minnesota Native American Council on Tobacco, the Chalchiutlicue
Environmental Project, the Women’s Environmental Institute and the Indigenous
Environmental Network. These developing
collaborations have provided considerable leverage to help raise awareness of
the urgent need to take action in protection of and community ownership of
water and water policy (as well as broader environmental causes and impacts) in
a variety of distinct and interrelated cultural communities in Minnesota and
internationally.
Although
organizing our own community and assessing community readiness to take on new
(ancestral) levels of commitment and communal responsibility has proven a greater
challenge than originally anticipated, the challenge has also revealed new
possibilities for creatively overcoming barriers to community
participation. The most important lesson
learned is that it is imperative to begin our organizing efforts with the people
whom we collectively already know; and to build on this constituency through
intentionally forming new relationships with people who have the potential
to develop into leaders of the movement to empower Native American women to
reclaim their ancestral responsibility as those who will ensure that clean
water will be available and accessible for their children and grandchildren
seven generations into the future.
Marie Huntley, aka Ms. Peaches is a force to be reckoned with in the Sistrunk community of Fort Lauderdale. An extremely talented singer, doer and community historian, Ms. Peaches is one of those people who is alway encouraging good stuff to happen in her neighborhood.
I've been thinking a lot about stories, storytelling, history and how we each find inspiration and encouragement to keep going in times of difficulty, and to go as far as we can in times of joy... about how we can see mirrors of our story in the histories of others... and how important our stories are, to ourselves, our families, and our communities. Together, our stories are our true history.
So often, we tell versions of history that have been learned from books, or elders, or the land and geographies that we've come through... but every once in a while, we get to reflect, and tell a little bit of the story that comes through us, from our own life experience. It is these nuggets of light, understanding, memory and insight that I find most impactful when listening to the words people share.
So, in the spirit of reclaiming our own narratives, telling our own stories, and with the encouragement of Ms. Peaches... here goes:
My story begins in the hearts of the continents we now know as America, Africa and on that island we now call the UK. My heartbeat began in the womb of a woman who survived a thousand wars, over six continents, from a seed planted by the grandson of a hunter who'd been on his island for almost a million years.
My parents remain one of the most unlikely odd couples to make it through 45 years of marriage in the most dire of social realities. One of the things they had in common was that they were both immersed in the lifestyle of 1950s anglican ministry. My mother talks about attending church sponsored after school activities every single day of the week. My father was an altar boy, though I don't ever remember his mother, my grandmother speak about church, except for christenings, weddings and funerals. But for all their early involvement in church, almost all my early memories are of being with my parents at parties, gatherings and outside on the land, either in the back yard, on a beach or near a river. I spent almost all my summers either scouring the Scarborough Bluffs or scampering up the steps of the Maya "pyramids" and sometimes, both! I didn't play video games or even board games, really, my toys were twigs, flowers and found objects. And my favorite pass time was sauterning along the edges of the water and the wilderness... in that respect, not much has changed.
My earliest memory of school is walking along the fence, picking up sticks, and using them to play the chain links like a piano, listening to the different sounds the metal would make depending on the size, length and width of each stick. I still remember a few of the songs and poems I learned in pre-school. My mother tells me that once, when I was four, we were walking in "The Guild Inn" and she couldn't find me anywhere... only to look around a large boulder to find me teaching a group of German tourists my favorite nursery school song, and they were singing it too, despite the fact that they spoke no English, nor I German. Art and teaching are in the blood. My mom and dad met teaching, I spent a year living with my Aunt while she was an art and history teacher, my sister taught art and, despite my mothers advice to the contrary, I also taught math and social studies through art for 7-12 graders. My passion now, though, is community based education. Those formal and informal learning opportunities we place in front of folks to learn something new, whether they thought they wanted to know or not. This translates well to a variety of interests, like community outreach, social media, museums, health, wellness, prevention programming and community building.
The work my mother put in to making sure that I know as fully as possible who I am propelled me to pursue a career in anthropology, archaeology, art and wellness. At the tender age of 17, I won an entrance scholarship to York University in my hometown of Toronto. Working my way through college, I spent my summers at the Government of Belize's Department of Archaeology, and winters working part time at the front desk of the Royal Ontario Museum and as a research assistant to Dr. Elizabeth Graham. I had so many wonderful women helping me learn during these adolescent years: Pauline Shirt, Deanna Sheridan, Sadie Buck, and the late Shirley Shilling & Irma Martin, just to name a few of the feminine forces that helped shape my world.
Eventually, once I finally graduated, I went back to the Belize Department of Archaeology to work as staff Museologist/ Curator as part of the Maya Area Sites Development Programme. When that grant funded project was complete, I took what I thought would be a two month break to spend time with my aging grandparents back in Toronto. That break led to an unexpected two year apprenticeship with one of Indian Country's most well known educators, Dr. Edward Benton Banaise. At the conclusion of working to help develop (and name) his most recent publication: Anishinabe Almanac, I once again thought I'd be heading home to my mother's land in Mesoamerica. This time, it was the opening of a community based school chartered specifically to teach Native American youth through an integrated arts approach that kept me grounded in the Midwest. It would be another 13 years before I finally got the call from my mother that it was time I returned to their chosen home halfway between Mesoamerica and the Great Lakes: The Greater Everglades region, right here in #OurMiramar.
So after earning my Bachelor of Arts Degree, being made Midewiwin, earning my Mexica traje, and working alongside some of the very best educators, historians, community builders and storytellers, I packed up the treehouse apartment, and headed back to the Sunshine State. That was four years ago now. I've completed all my life goals, except one: to relearn one of my ancestral Maya languages. I know words here and there, from the study of archaeology and danza, but to be able to string those together in a sequence, to speak thought into being through language, my language... that is the one thing I have yet to do on this earth... hopefully before it's time for me to return my borrowed bag of bones to the Mother Earth from whence they were constructed.
We all come to this conscious part of Earth with a gift and for a purpose. Mine is to be as fully who I am as I can. It's a journey that I'm still on, still struggling with every day, and also one in which I find great joy and satisfaction. I hope that sharing this small piece of who I am will help to encourage someone out there to pursue their passion a little further, persevere a little longer and reach a little higher, for what we aspire to is what we are here to do.
