Dancing Earth: Seeds Roots Plants and Foods, from Origi Nation to Re-Generation

When Dancing Earth is invited across Native country, the invitation is often not to be inside a theater or studio, but onto land.

At Noli High School on the Soboba reservation near Riverside, California, I am greeted by Cahuilla/Serrano cultural leader, ceremonial Singer and Bird Singer, and reviver of Cahuilla coyote dances Kim Marcus. He shows me a garden of cacti that serve as food, shelter, basket materials—all that is needed for life. He quietly says: at one time they didn’t need to have gardens, they could just find these things out on the land. But, the land gets reduced, the plants get endangered, and gardens are the response to those aspects of colonization, to create places to care for these plant relatives and retain the knowledge of all that they carry.

On the Pacific coast, we dance on Pomo territory now known as Sonoma County, in a backyard of tree carvings where canoe knowledge is being recovered by Pomo and Pilipino, who describe themselves as being connected by water, not separated by land.

In the Bay Area, under an oak tree, a tattooed woman named Sage shows a map, and describes how peoples could be named for their principal food sourcing: here is the line for where the acorn people end and the salmon people begin; here are the areas of the people of corn, here the people of buffalo.

At Ayaandagon art gallery on a small island up north, we canoe into a performance to embody a creation theme of “where we came ashore.”

Nearby, I learn that Anishnaabeg have Gitigaan gardens with names like “spots on a fawn’s back” (like the stars, like “your face”—freckled !). They grow from seeds randomly thrown to give the impression of looking natural, untouched by humans, to show respect for the beauty of things as they are found.

This is how I have been led to this multiyear exploration of seeds, roots, plants, and food. My annual work with Native Wellness Institute reminds me that this work, and the remembering of ancestral food cultivation and gathering practices, has immediate practical crucial application for Native youth: to inspire good health through movement, to combat health and food insecurity. Sometimes I call this “remembering the future” —my way of articulating a once prevalent Native consciousness described by quantum physics as a ‘burrito’ of time that rolls past, present and future into a continuous interactive continuum.

The rehearsal process begins where these gifts were given: outdoors, where for decades I have danced when I haven’t been able to access studio space, finding movement in collaboration with wind, rock, grass, on pavement where weeds sprout between cracks. Sometimes we are chased through parks by authorities demanding license to gather (yes, that still happens). All of this is our “land-dance” practice. I follow the practices of “foragers” in looking with multiple senses. Seeing with eyes, like knowing through thoughts and words, carries an overload of responsibility in the present era. It is often useful to allow the eyes to close and rest and discover how much can come in through other means. Closing the eyes is a deceptively simple way to learn important tools for understanding the world, and is part of many Indigenous “games.”

In our ‘land dance’ practice, we find the tactile response of feet and spine to uneven ground. We find multi-dimensional observation and listening. We find taste, which—like movement—truly brings us into the present moment. We find scent, the partner of breath, constantly transmitting information about the world around in a primal and under-recognized way. We find and follow kinetic portals to understanding, through the five senses and beyond - into the countless unacknowledged senses, some of which may fall within what is called instinct, intuition, and imagination. I acknowledge these as the “I’s” that precede the “I” of me, as the less tangible that channels into the tangible.

This is my dance making: tuning my multi-senses, remembering the future and moving myself out of the way to make room for the...