October 14, 2013
Picturing Transformation - last 24 hours for our pre-sale price!
By
Katherine Dodds
Picturing Transformation Nexw'ayantsut was a labour of love, and a long time in the making! The books are almost here, but you only have until midnight October 15 to get it for the pre-sale price! Buy the book now!
Before I formed Hello Cool World in 2001 I was a witness to a slice of history first known as the Witness Project, and later as 'Uts'am Witness.' 'Uts'am' is the Squamish word for the Coast Salish Witness ceremony that was at the centre this project.
From it's early days, and for over a decade I watched the project grow from a small 'group with no name" into a community of 10,000 people that saved a rainforest -- and a whole lot more. In 1997, when I wrote one of the first articles about the Witness Project (for the Vancouver Courier) I had no idea Witness would last so long, and turn out to be so important.
Uts'am Witness was co-founded by my dear friends artist and photographer Nancy Bleck, the late mountaineer and conservationist John Clarke, and Squamish Nation Hereditary Chief Bill Williams. I've been deeply honoured to have been entrusted by them to write this book -- Picturing Transformation, Nexw'ayantsut' -- which is about to come out next week. Working on this book project has been a four-year project, but the process of looking back has been so enlightening.
Uts'am Witness was an amazing transformational cross-cultural project that brought together members of the Squamish Nation, artists, environmentalists and the public to experience a Coast Salish Witness Ceremony, on the land, in what was at the time a contested part of the Squamish Nation Territory. It was the days of the infamous 'war in the woods'. The area was known by loggers as "tree farm license 38', by eco-activists as the "Randy Stoltmann Wilderness Area", and by participants in the Witness Camping weekends simply as - Sims Creek. Today, that area has been returned to it's ancestral name of 'Nexw'ayantsut' — place of transformation. -->
For Nancy, the book: "is about being deeply engaged in a community process, working with local First Nations people, transforming my own art-practice, becoming changed by what took place, keeping the hope that when when ideas, ceremony and actions converge, they can transform not only the relationships of settler and indigenous people to each other, they can transform the will of the people in power. And in fact we got our way -- non-violently. Sims Creek became part of Nexw’ayantsut and it won't ever be logged because it's a place that matters to the Squamish Nation, and all their friends who witnessed this, it is undertood to be a sacred place now."
The history of this project is full of depth, of ironies, of fun and also of ceremony. The project really was transformational.
As Chief Bill puts it: "Any book is a western colonial view of an event, but the beautiful pictures in our book reflect a time and place. They give a picture of what took place, what ten thousand people witnessed - a place of transformation." He points out that: "If you go back to the locations where the pictures were taken, it is not the same, everything has changed. You would never see exactly what Nancy saw and took pictures of. This type of change is natural, not like the change that would have happened if the entire area had been clear-cut back in 2000."
I've also had the great pleasure of watching Nancy's body of artwork transform over the last two decades, and I am still stunned by the power of some of her images that came out of the project. I almost feel like an entirely new genre of artwork was created through Witness, and her approach to community, collaboration and art-making. Her work did, and still does, feel important in a way that I have rarely seen.
Through this project, and especially through the writing of this book I've had the privilege to spend more time with Chief Bill. Through Witness, he opened up a door for non-indigenous people like myself to experience his culture first hand, to take part in ceremony, and in doing this was instrumental in creating a new genre of peaceful activism, a way of working together that deepened my own commitment to social justice for all First Nations people in this country, and gave me a gift of a community, one that has become a huge influence on all the creative work I do.
It's my hope that the book will continue to support this kind of understanding and thoughtful action. In these times the work is certainly not over, even if it has been completed in Nexw'ayantsut. Being a small part of this huge work has been an awakening to culture and ceremony that would never have happened otherwise. I hope this book can give people who weren't directly involved in Witness some inspiration for their own struggles, and feed their need for connection to the stories and images that can transform. KD.
Please check out our Picturing Transformation Website: www.PicturingTransformation.com
Tag(s):
Aboriginal,
Environment,
First Nations,
Hello Cool World,
Uts'am Witness
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On October 15, 2013 at 10:58 AM Marian wrote:
Well said Kat!
