My storytelling meanders, retraces itself, stays in place and excavates, changing slightly with every narration. These stories trace the contours of movement, for example, migration routes or rivers. And so, I use maps to guide their telling; maps that, like ‘land,’ are formed through relations. They are mnemonic devices that direct my wandering mind. On this map, we, the Coves Collective, illustrate the land we traced with our bodies during walks and workshops and recorded with GPS apps (see the white-on-white stitches). We create images with threads stained and dyed with plants from this place. Soils with long memories nourished these plant beings. They remember the relationships that played out across their surfaces, the toxins that leached down or were born through groundwater, and the bullets and chemical tanks embedded in their depths. This island of land, nestled in the crook of a horseshoe of muddy ponds, was formed millennia ago by a meander off the river known to its Anishinaabe stewards as the Deshkan Ziibi or Antler River. 1 Settlers had yet to sever this meander from the Deshkan Ziibi when the Deshkan Ziibiing Anishinaabeg signed McKee Treaty No. 2 and London Township Treaty No. 6. 2 As deceitful as those treaties were, one thing is clear: the Deshkan Ziibiing Anishinaabeg never ceded title to the bed of the Deshkan Ziibi. 3 Following the ponds’ banks today, I have found that only one trickling finger stretches toward the Deshkan Ziibi. This is because the river inflow was blocked over a century ago by railway embankments and later, in the 1950s, by a garbage dump. Still, I understand this place, known as the Coves, as part of the watershed that the Deshkan Ziibiing Anishinaabeg nation never ceded. But what does ownership mean when we understand that this area also falls under the inherent Indigenous rights of the Minisink Lunaape (Munsee-Delaware Nation) and the Onyota’a:ka (Oneida Nation of the Thames)? The waters that wore away the banks that define and protect this place also mark it as a place where I can feel what should be palpable throughout this town, province, and country; I am on Stolen Indigenous Land.
So, who does this land belong to?
1 Later the French called it La Tranchée. Most recently, Lieutenant- Governor John Graves Simcoe called it the Thames River. 2 The Deshkan Ziibiing Anishinaabeg are commonly referred to today as the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation. 3 This is a brief and simplified interpretation of the treaty relationships in London, Ontario. For a thorough and more nuanced understanding I urge you to read "London (Ontario) Area Treaties: An Introductory Guide" (2018) by Stephen D'Arcy. It is available at: http://works.bepress.com/sdarcy/19/
michelle wilson
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
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