AMONGST RELATIVES
OVER THE LEVEE, UNDER THE PLOW
an experiential curriculum
AMONGST RELATIVES
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INTRODUCTION
These cards contain a series of interactive prompts. The prompts accompany the field guide Amongst Relatives, a booklet based on conversations I had with Lakota plant caretaker Cante Suta Francis Bettelyoun and Ho-Chunk Knowledge Keeper Rhonda Funmaker. The prompts aim to invite you into an embodied present; one that is in relationship with more-than-human communities. Each of us come to these cards with different histories and affinities. The prompts are made to flex to your needs and desires.
The cards were influenced by Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe writers including Mary Sissip Geniusz, Kim Tallbear, and Nick Estes. They were written on unceded Dakota lands in so-called Minneapolis, surrounded by the homelands of the Dakota and Anishanaabe people. They were also inspired by the poet CA Conrad’s somatic rituals. Conrad’s rituals aim to create embodied presence, which serves as research fodder for their future poems.
While performing these prompts, or immediately thereafter, you may take notes. These notes may then turn into poems, lyrics, zines, videos, prints, letters, or graffiti. They may turn into motivation to engage in local organizing or incentive to start an affinity group. They may foster a reorientation to your more-than-human entanglements and relatives. We are permeable beings endeavoring to breathe in the Anthropocene.
We are perpetually affected by our changing ecosystems. In the midst of the ecocidal violence of settler colonialism and capitalism, these cards question: how do we each honor the nature-cultures of mutual aid that surround us and support us?
- Corinne Teed