The Land Fights Back

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens | July 20, 2024

This year’s 2024 symposium and public art commissions, will focus on environmental justice in urban and rural spaces and why it is critical that Black and Brown experiences and knowledge be centered. The work will unpack methods of reparative justice and challenge systems in place today. Witnessing through the lens of scholars, artists, historians and members of our community, we will honor our collective wisdom and forge new ways to be in harmony with the land known as Maine and beyond. Participants will have an opportunity to learn actionable steps that they can take to help create a better world.

Northeastern United States Indigenous citizens are the Abenaki, Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy, collectively making up the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are also known as “People of the Dawnland.” As members of a global community, we are people of the land. With the growing climate crisis and its reverberations in our societies, we bear witness to how the land fights back. Indigo Arts Alliance and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens commissioned the work of IAA’s July Artists in Residents Anna Tsouhlarakis and Shane Perley-Dutcher to envision and create a public art piece that amplifies Indigenous wisdom, artistry, and presence. This year’s 2024 symposium and public art commissions will focus on environmental justice in urban and rural spaces and why it is critical that Black and Brown experiences and knowledge be centered. The work will unpack methods of reparative justice and challenge systems in place today. Witnessing through the lens of scholars, artists, historians, and members of our community, we will honor our collective wisdom and forge new ways to be in harmony with the land known as Maine and beyond.

For our team of artists, scholars, and activists who are focused on inquiries of nourishment and repair, we will strive to address these key questions:

How do we acknowledge heretofore ignored or rejected technologies generated by African and First Nations descendant people’s existence outside of settler colonial paradigms?

How do we evolve personal, communal and institutional relationships with land ownership – including specifically with Botanical Gardens, Land Trusts and Conservancies – in ways that forge generative relationships with landscape, land use, foodways, and agricultural practices?

How do we make visible and begin to heal the deep disease that roots itself in dominant narratives and dominant cultural spaces regarding how we embody place and being?