Greasy Grass
As Peaceful Protectors, We Eat The Bullets of Warfare
The climax of our contemporary experience is rigid with tension as transnational economic and political negotiations are made between oil and water. As conflict between Indigenous people and a corporate-driven government continues, perhaps it is in a dark irony that oil and water do not mix, as if these two opposing forces become an embodiment of each contested substance, dancing around each other in a contaminated glass of undrinkable water. As an Acadian Mi’kmaq woman, I feel strongly about the positionality of my identity and the responsibilities I have therein and as an artist. Compelled by spiritually awakening land protests against the recently approved Kinder Morgan pipeline, the Peace River protectors against the Site C dam and the Standing Rock coalition, I believe it is our position of peace that has the strongest political impact.
Inspired by an Indigenous resilience to violence, settler allies, Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant from the music group She Keeps Bees, and myself, are teaming up to collaborate on their politically driven song “Greasy Grass”, recalling The Battle of Little Bighorn. For this music video, I want to create a piece using audio, sculptural and performative elements to represent a visceral re-action of peace by eating the bullets of warfare. For the visual component, sculpted hollow, edible rifle bullets made from chocolate will be filled with black gelatin, then painted with edible gold and silver. In an effort to represent our contemporary relationship with oil consumption, as well as the warfare-driven strategies that currently act as the interface between petroleum, people and the land, I will position myself as a peaceful protector, sitting behind rows of these bullets, slowly eating each one as the black gelatin drips down onto the table, my face, hands and body. Through the gesture of ingesting bullets and oil, I explicitly address our agency to choose what to consume and how to consume it: peacefully. Working with Shannon Less, the English department head, and Tori Johnson and Kyle Ross from the Aboriginal Education Enhancement program at Britannia Secondary School, we will we will facilitate a day-long field research trip to our set for Indigenous, settler and non-Native students to come and participate as actors to complete the final shot. This shot will pan to the group of youth, where each person will be holding a clean glass of drinking water while standing behind the oil (gelatin) covered table. As a metaphoric cleansing of the body, spirit and land, and as a final gesture that honours the water, together we will wash the oil from our mouths by drinking the glass of water.
The involvement of youth is a fundamental component in the creation of this project and is a sentiment shared by all contributing collaborators. We believe it is our generation that is responsible for “waking up” to the urgent necessity to foster deep and sincere symbiotic cultural relations between people and the land and to instill this for future generations. To do this, we offer our service in the form of education and through this project, the arts. By providing a full day on a student-led film set, an opportunity to meet with successful musicians, and participate in a talking circle centered around urgent socio-political subject matter (oil & water), we believe this immersive form of education can help to nurture their young minds with expanded encouragement to realize their own potent power. What I truly want to provide is a space for Indigenous, settler and non-Native people to engage with one another in a healing and politically generative way.
I feel blessed to be collaborating and working with such an amazing group of people, including two emergent professional cinematographers, Maximilian Brey and Jimmy Wu, whose work has blown me away. I couldn't be more excited to have them creating the images that will realize this project.
We will be filming during the month of April, and I will be uploading posts during the editing process as we work towards the release date.
She Keeps Bees, live session, 2014. (Greasy Grass at 06:48)
Maximilian Brey and Jimmy Wu, demo reel, 2016
