PART 1 – Building Relationships >> This action began at the grocery store, well actually it might have started in the spring when I planted 7 tobacco seeds, but on Wednesday after class I was ‘harvesting’ groceries, there was a sale on cheese, so I gathered plenty, stocking up and planning to stuff the extras into my freezer when a man in a yellow jacket entered the isle. I recognized him, we had met a year before at the Why I Design event at the museum of Vancouver, and this summer I took a course with his wife Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee called decolonize first, I reference that course a lot, so don’t be surprised if I bring it up and share the link to Ta7talíya’s workbook resource. Lloyd mentions that he had just performed a healing ceremony for 250 people over zoom, I’m amazed and intrigued to hear how ceremony adapts to the digital realm we all live in now. But also, it has been on my mind lately that I have grown all of this tobacco, a surprising amount, and that it might be of value to Lloyd, he is happy to receive the leaves I harvest but that I should keep some for myself. He explains briefly to make prayer bundles, but I am left to myself, and the internet to figure out how to harvest, dry, and with the question, as a white person would that not be appropriation to make a prayer bundle?
PART 2 – From Action to Reflection >> Cutting the tobacco, well it felt kinda violent, I did the immersive reflection afterwards, the stickiness of the leaves and the sound of the shears cutting through the stalk started to haunt me. Did I do this wrong, was there a protocol I was supposed to follow? What do I do now that I have all these leaves? How do you dry them? How do you cure them? How long does it take? How do you know they are ready? So much uncertainty made me think of a resource: there is a chapter in the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer called the Honourable Harvest, I hadn’t ready that far yet, but my sibling kept saying she thinks of that chapter when working with data and doing research, now was the time, the book was calling out… but then another book grabbed my attention — My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle — I had chosen the word Decolonize Design from the lexicon, who better to turn to than Lee. She had been referenced by Rita Wong and Dorothy Christian in Downstream – Reimaging Water, which I read during ACTION 1 – and she was also the first author I read after the truth and reconciliation report came out which was perhaps when I first decided I should be working towards reconciliation with my design practice. I am not sure exactly why I did this — the prompt of the assignment to get off screen, a feeling that I didn’t want to read the words on the page, but hear the words, feel them and their meaning in my body — colonization upholds the written word as the word of authority, so why not try to challenge this way of knowing and doing — I turned on the recording device and started to read the first chapter outloud, unrehearsed — 32min — I took a small break, then sat down again, this time with the honourable harvest — 1hr 21min — exhausted and a bit dehydrated I went to bed.
PART 3 – the kitten was really interested. I figure I am on the right track if Nomi is intrigued. I forgot to mention this in the first action, but I went down a how to do ASMR recording rabbit hole when I started playing with audio recordings, Nomi loves it, rustling of paper, and the sound of flax so far are her favourite. Back to the honorable harvest…. I had a chance to do things differently with the grapes, so I went out and introduced myself. I spent time walking around and observing to know if it was time and I took what seemed like a reasonable amount, not all. I have tended to this grape vine for years now, it used to get cut back every year by our land lord, now it has had a chance to grow back, it provides good shade in the summer the birds love hanging out in it. So I begin to pick, and while I pick I just spend the time thinking, and enjoying being outside with Nomi nearby and am grateful for the cider I will be able to make… perhaps this year I will try turning the wine into vinegar. With the rain coming in and a good number of grapes picked I head back inside to continue to work on my response.
Part 4 – I want to explore the voice recordings in a different way. It was so visceral and physical when I did the readings, but now I want to explore discomfort, what will happen in my body if I play them back to myself, create and internal, external, mediated dialogue with myself. I brew a batch of coffee, I set up my ipad so it can sit across the kitchen table from me and record my reactions as I listen back to the reading of Lee Maracle’s work. I sit down and I listen. I don’t fully see myself, there is a crockpot between me and the pad screen, but the camera has a good angle, so if fully captures the scene. I try to think about sitting around the kitchen table in the way Maracle described, I think back to last summer the trip Bill and I did up to Fort Vermillion to visit his grandma, the whole trip was sitting around the table drinking weak coffee. I wondered if the coffee was brewed weak on purpose because we were going to have at least 5 pots from morning to bedtime. I also found a picture of my dear friend Jenna that I took back in highschool, we spent a lot of time hanging around the kitchen table then too, our trip to Trail to see Bill’s dad, was a lot of hanging at the restaurant drinking coffee. When I had spent enough time conjuring up the feeling it was time to hit record.
I have two videos to go here, they are currently too big, so i have to set it up as a link or change the size and re-export. Open to suggestions. video1 – me listening to the recording of the Lee Maracle reading. video2 – video I shot while I was doing the reading.
Listening back, especially while recording my reactions was uncomfortable. Which is what I wanted to explore, I was fidgety, there were interruptions, it was hard to sit still for the 32 mins, it was completely different to how i felt when I was reading aloud. Then I was focused on the words and my voice, I didn’t notice if my body fidgeted or not, but when listening back I was acutely aware of every ache or discomfort, I felt less focused on the words, and less connected to my emotions. Reading, performing, listening, they all evoke different sensations in the body, and maybe I could listen differently if I practiced more. Maybe I wouldn’t fidget so much if I was better at sitting up in a chair, had better fitness or posture. I don’t know,. Maybe it was that it was hard to hear, or that it was my voice reading Lee’s words, not Lee’s own voice. Maybe it was the content of Lee’s writing that I was uncomfortable listening to. What surprised me was that I had a different reaction again when I played the recording and the video for the class during my peer review.
Part 5 – so, honourable harvest or dishonorable harvest. I have all this tobacco, and don’t know how to dry it or cure it. I looked online and found large scale commercial strategies, and websites about the cultural importance of tobacco to some First Nations, but no practical guidance on how to process tobacco on a small scale. So I will just have to try to see what works, I peg some, I use a needle and put a line through some, I hang the one I cut as a full stock on a clothes hanger. I lay some flat, I put some on top of paper, I was left with a feeling of uncertainty and a wish that someone could show me what to do. I didn’t want to mess up the harvest, or make a mistake by not processing the tobacco well. But I am committed now. So we will wait and see how it all turns out. Hmm the other thing I am noticing is that some of the actions I take are not actions that necissarily fit into our one week due dates. Instead it is a start or a portion of an action that I have to work with, that there is time and process that go beyond what our class affords.
My final note: when I presented I felt that this was an inaction over an action, i didn;t design or produce, but in listening to people’s responses maybe I did produce something. One classmate said that my voice, thoughts and emotions were the materials. When thinking about decolonization, or decolonizing design, maybe that is part of it, resisting the urge to make or produce the tangible because you are a designer or artist, but to make the intangible more real, more felt, more embodied.
