LAND BACK
This concept is across my guts and mind and spirit at all times.
Nā Sarah Hudson, October ‘21
Kauae Raro Research Collective enacting stewardship on the whenua (35mm film, 2020)
I wrote this after attending an international earth pigment symposium in 2021. It was initially intended to address a non-indigenous audience, but I think it’s important for indigenous creatives to think extra critically when working with the land, both physically and conceptually.
Land Back is a campaign that seeks to re-establish indigenous people's political and economic control over land that has historically belonged to them prior to colonisation. The Land Back campaign is supported by members of indigenous groups across the world, but the foundations are rooted with academics, artists, and activists based in Turtle Island.
For Māori artists and researchers, there are constant barriers that restrict access to land and knowledge. The impacts of colonisation has severed many Māori from our diverse, rich customary practices. Gatekeeping is an extended form of colonial violence. Sharing is one way to combat that.
From our experience, gatekeeping can look like a lot of things:
Financial barriers to accessing knowledge via courses, degrees, conferences, workshops, and paywalls on academic texts
Often people profit from indigenous practices but do not contribute back to indigenous communities
Actual physical locked gates on ancestral lands
Lateral Māori gatekeeping (often colonially informed hierarchical and patriarchal systems)
This list of ongoing disparities for indigenous people trying to access knowledge and land goes on and on but I’m going to focus on my lived experience through working with earth pigments through Kauae Raro, for now.
The idea of selling works made with earth pigments, with LAND, is super loaded for me. Having to grapple with the commodification of land AND try to make a living as an indigenous artist is complicated.
Alongside comforting notions that my tīpuna would love the fact that I can make money to support my whānau with my atua-given talents… It’s something that 18 months on, still feels hard.
I guess one of the biggest questions I’ve wrestled with is…
Who am I to personally profit from stolen land?
Perhaps this question is applicable to your practice too? A place of peace in all of this art, research, activism has been SHARING.
There are many alternatives to financially contributing to indigenous communities:
Share skills through FREE workshops
Share resources such as tools
Pass the mic
Give indigenous artists opportunities that are offered to you
Support indigenous artists and businesses
If you own land, enable access and reconnection for the descendants of that place
Or you know, give it back
There are so many ways to meaningfully contribute. I implore artists to share resources with each other. I challenge artists to share profits with indigenous people.
Land Back is a constant mindset for many indigenous people. It manifests and communicates in many different ways. Mainly for me, it's reconnection with the land, caring for the land, learning from the land, and stealing it back, a handful at a time by gathering earth pigments.