‘Land as Pedagogy’
- Elements as Pedagogy -
‘Land As Pedagogy‘ is a quote and practice from
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in
‘Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society’
Vol. 3, No. 3, 2014, pp. 1-25
‘Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation’.
Which she later references in her book ‘Theory Of Water’.
This is a note - form article and in process of being formed...
-----
Who or what is in the centre of a work?
Is this a teaching? From who or what?
This is a question a seeker naturally asks.
There is no ‘Guru’ within kinship models, nor any authority above each individuals own inner authority in connection with their own Ancestral spiritual guides.
When folks come in for a session, we are connecting directly to nature, to pheonoma and to Spirit, for resources. We also listen directly from the teacher, that is world, elemental energies, or land/seasons, planets.
-----
Land As Teacher;
Land as teacher: understanding Indigenous land-based education
A full understanding of the experience requires both western and Indigenous knowledge.
“You’ll feel the tree’s energy, there are chemical and electrical reactions that occur and connect us to it. We see it, and we have proven it scientifically. That’s two-eyed seeing, for me,” he says, referring to Etuaptmumk, the Mi’kmaq idea of looking at things from two different perspectives and trying to reach a common ground.
“And I think that’s a validation of both sides—that science validates Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous knowledge validates science. I believe that’s where true reconciliation occurs: when one respects the other’s knowledge. We have lots of theories that aren’t accepted yet, but it’s getting to a point where we are being asked to bring Indigenous knowledge into the public education system.”
https://en.ccunesco.ca/idealab/indigenous-land-based-education
-----
Creativity as Channelling
I have been mediating this idea of an ‘invisible artist’ within work consistently since 2016. The artist as superstar, as pedestalled, as famous, as untouchable, unattainable, is all part of the heirachical system of the colonial capitalist patriachy. The artist is not a guru and neither had sought any guru other than the Spirits.
--------
Where is the Centre?
In the centre of a work, in the centre of all ideas, all inspiration, all newness, is darkness, rhythm, chaos, Spirit, chance, instinct, magnetism. In the centre of this are the Elements of each present moment.
Within ceremony we aim to step aside and rather allow organic phenonema to pass through us; which is Land As Pedagogy, or Element as Pedagogy.
We do not assume we know more than what the raw materials have to say. We create conditions to let them speak directly to an audience and for the audience to speak directly to eachother.
With this space holding, we aim to allow through channelling. To allow what needs to come through.
To step back our ego long enough to allow the voices through which do not have mouths of their own to speak.
Seeing and how we see, is the craft. Holding and how we hold, is the craft.
This practice is an action of deprogramming our anthropocentric centrisms, our ‘monopolistic agency’ - especially as racial capitalism dismantles, which is inextricably tied into our relationship with ecology.
-----
----- How this has grown through creating participatory and multidirectional works -----
‘Imagination:Language’ (2016) I stepped out of visibility altogether taking a role as an invisible orchestrator in creating an inclusive, inviting ambience for mediating the collective subconscious.
In the Multi:pespectve Oracle (2026), I brought this way of being futher, into offering an audience direct connection with the land and organic elements to read their own Oracle from natural elements.
-----
For the ANCESTRAL RITUALS WITH HEXEN 5.0, it is not Sarah, nor Suzanne Treister’s Hexen 5.0, nor the audience’s inner experience, nor the garden of Lenbachhaus, nor the spoken words, the information exchanged, nor the sound, which is the centre of this ritual. It is all those centres and more.