Beaded Temporalities

Size 8 beads on a found branch, 2020.

 

This land-based piece is the creative result of an embodied exploration of visiting methodology. Centring Dylan Miner’s Methodology of Visiting and Janice Gaudet’s concept of Keeoukaywin: The Visiting Way, along with other supporting decolonizing methodologies, this piece is a visual embodiment of my relationships with my family, ancestors, and my home. It is a collaborative piece beaded using peyote stitch by my family and me during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in the Spring of 2020.

 

Returning to my childhood home to be with my family in isolation during this time brought me to think about the possibility of creating space for keeoukaywin and visiting as a source of medicine. Each bead stitched by my family and me holds the stories, knowledge and conversations that were talked about while practicing keeoukaywin. The beads are purposely positioned in a gradient of colour to signify the movement of Indigenous temporalities of time and space that move backwards and forwards simultaneously. The piece does not have a proper beginning or end. It's continuity flows back and forth through the beads acting as a symbol for the continuance of embodying visiting within our everyday lives as an act of decolonization.