Action 1
Melanie and I met over zoom. We showed each other the view from our windows to give each other a sense of our current locations.
Home Ground Frameworks- Water
In our conversation, we not only shared details of our home ground but the different frameworks with which we choose to build the home ground narrative for ourselves to share with each other. Melanie prefers framing her home ground, location and life narratives/ trajectory from the lens of water. To her water is boundless, transcends boundaries, takes different form, liquid flowing, soft snow pack, hard ice, hot air etc. I, on the other hand, have a completely different relationship to water which stems from my lack of familiarity with it and some less positive experience when interacting with larger bodies of water. For one I don’t know how to swim.
As we began talking, I found that the way that I have been historically asked to interact with and appreciate the power of water has been one dimensional and colonial in itself. In the east coast US, Canada and now west coast Canada, water is experienced in lakes and oceans, clear, blue or even murky not with garbage or human shit, but with underwater life green, dark, taking up space. It’s experienced through the act of “swimming”, “paddling”, “rowing”, “surfing”, “wading” and “fishing”. The list can go on. I have been described so many “lake hangs”. “Garima, don’t you want to take a dip”? “C’mon, just dangle your feet in”. “How about just the toes”. I am not allowed to say no. So I taught myself how to “swim” and then did a cliff jump at lighthouse park and barely got out of the water alive. Lets, just say the whole thing turned into a bit of a rescue mission. Sigh…
In August, I was taken on a river float down the Squamish. There were sixteen of us, fifteen of whom were good swimmers, Canadian, white. We were floating on Explorer dingies, a couple of paddle boards and a few kayaks. It was beautiful, expansive and encapsulating. We rode by crooked falls! Like, when do you ever get to see crooked falls from this angle! I was taken.
I would look up to my adventure guides. I mean look up like, tilt my head up to their bodies and faces haloed from the blaring sun in the back. Predominantly white dudes on paddle boards, straight and elongated postures looking pretty damn glorious. Beautiful even. Conductors of this experience, taking over the length of this water artery. They were guiding my journey down the Squamish and suddenly, I felt a pang in belly. Should we be here? Actually, should I be here? In this way? Anyways, the end of this pretty incredible water mission somehow turned into another mini rescue mission to save me (not as bad as the “lighthouse park incident”). Ughh…not again! Really, water is not my friend!
Speaking to Melanie brought up all these well, unpleasant recollections. I didn’t like that swelling up anxiety, shame and fear that I feel about water. But I did like her provocation. Can we define our home grounds through water or other frameworks that transcend colonial structures that otherwise define our identity, geopolitical movements, notable life events that are validated through documents, accolades- symbols that mark a permission granted to practice, to be allowed in, to be.
Home Ground Frameworks- Borders
Borders: The truth is that my past experiences will forever frame the way I look at any structures, systems, stories and experiences from the lens of colonial system especially borders. I am a product of colonization. I mean, we all are. But I can’t escape it. Even when I choose to dismantle those systems or at least muffle their direct impact on my day to day that there is never a complete erasure of these structures that have already left a deep mark and continue to persist (even when I’m floating down the Squamish river- a body of water that transcends borders). Borders have always been my reality. I’ve spent the majority of my life working on acquiring documents and moving towards crossing borders, creating borders, dismantling borders, testing borders etc. I’ve been conditioned to foster my narrative around borders, boundaries, linear chronologies and other colonial constructs.
But there is power in water, as Melanie asserts. There is magic in water, as indigenous voices have spoken of time and time again. There is healing in water, that my own ancestry and people have reiterated through mythology and practice for centuries.
So perhaps, water cannot be my friend in the anthropocentric sense. I (don’t) swim, I (don’t) paddle, I (don’t) surf, I (don’t) row, I (don’t) fish. Instead, I (can try to)-appreciate/fear- the-power-of-water-in its own right. Water heals, water has magic, water is boundless. Water takes me, as it did down the Squamish.
Through my action this week, I chose to call upon the healing powers of water to dismantle the coloniality that has so far defined pretty much every aspect of my life. My mom and I went into this process of healing together. We decided to take old immigration documents, paperwork and bills, rip them apart, submerge them in water, blend them up and convert them into new paper. This process was an act of reconstructing documents, history and our collective narrative.
Action and Textures: Metaphors as Expression
This process of paper making and with that the act of ripping and submerging have become metaphors for an act of decolonization. The following verbs and adjectives came up when we were together ripping and submerging.
Ripping: Cathartic, release, destroy, break apart, deconstruct, grasp, crunch, scrunch
Submerge: cleanse, dip, drown, melt, quench, wash, awash, detoxifying (a word that Pat used in class today)
These words are actionable words or actions towards decolonization. When we think about decolonization, the word “Rethinking” is frequently used. I wonder if we can change that to an actionable way of addressing the impacts of coloniality that requires ripping (and with that, releasing, destroying, deconstructing etc) and submerging (cleansing, drowning, detoxifying) to then reconstructing.
Reconstructing: meld, combine, rebuild, reform, reshape, glue, contact, connect
In line with this metaphors of ripping, submerging and reconstructing as an expression of dismantling colonization, so is the rough texture of the the paper left behind.
Texture as expression: “The language that people often use in describing the complexities of people, things, and their relationships. We often turn to metaphors of texture to describe our sense of the moral, emotional, and organizational feelings of these relationships. A situation can be knotty and tangled; it can be handled smoothly and without ruffles. Following Lakoff and Johnson (1980), we take these “metaphors we live by” as more than poetic but imprecise means of expression.”- Sorting Things Out: Bowker & Star.
If I look at/ feel/ hear the texture of this reconstructed paper it tells a story of entagled histories, experiences, narratives that are positive, negative and everything in between. Its rough and smooth, soft, yet loud, repaired yet new, bumpy, crunchy, fragrant, enfolding. This is the framework that I choose to speak about my home ground.
Relationality and Sharing Epistemologies
For me, an important aspect of this exercise was to share our home grounds with our partners and in that sharing, incorporate and internalize each others frameworks and epistemologies to construct a third epistemology that is the product of the two.
The reconstructed paper represents this relationality, the melding of borders and water to construct a complex textural artifact that shares perhaps, aspects of many narratives.