The story of Skywoman’s journey is so rich and glittering it feels to me like a deep bowl of celestial blue from which I could drink again and again. It holds our beliefs, our history, our relationships. Looking into that starry bowl, I see images swirling so fluidly that the past and the present become as one. Images of Skywoman speak not just of where we came from, but also of how we can go forward.
-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass.
In 2017, Canada and Montreal were marking their anniversaries, 150 and 375 years respectively, without mentioning much of the older histories preceding these settler narratives. It seemed only appropriate to us when immersing ourselves in stories and knowledges about Indigenous notions of dwelling and home, to turn to the creation story of the Haudenosaunee nations, specifically the Kanien’kehá: ka who are the custodians of this land that Montreal- Tio’tia: ke is built upon: The Sky Woman story. Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller, Kanien’keha: ka, Bear Clan, visited our group early in 2017 and performed for us her own re-telling of Sky Woman. By doing so she grounded our inquiries in the powerful story of female strength and in Concordia’s locale on unceded, Kanien’kehá: ka traditional territory. She graciously recorded her words for us and allowed us to play it as part of Dwellings. Because we feel that this creation story of Turtle Island roots our project in the here and now of Tio’tia: ke and because we want to draw more attention to Kahente who gifted us with her version, we decided to give the Sky Woman story a more prominent place on this website. Excerpts of the tale now precede each of the performance’s sections, weaving together the creation story of Turtle Island with the short portraits of the many homes and dwellings the audiences pass through on this itinerant journey.
