“To All Who Should Be Concerned.”
Source: Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music. Vol. 39, 1. pp. 137-44. 2021.
This letter describes basic structural changes that must be implemented by music programs in order to move toward decolonial forms of music education. The letter serves as one starting point for such change among many that must always be led by Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and other scholars / artists of colour (IBPOC) who live and work in the locations where music programs are based. Community-led change is imperative in order to avoid the replication of normative systems of music education that merely include diverse content. The letter asserts that while curricular change and hiring of IBPOC scholars constitute one part of this change, it might also be understood as a form of additive inclusion. Models of additive inclusion proceed by placing diverse content within normative, white supremacist structures of pedagogy that remain unchanged. Additive inclusion consequently maintains the power of those who choose what content to include, rather than giving over space for IBPOC leadership to determine the parameters for change, and to determine how foundational structures of music education should be dismantled and renewed.
“Speaking to Water, Singing to Stone:
Peter Morin, Rebecca Belmore and the Ontologies of Indigenous Modernity.”
Source: Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2019.
This essay calls for a new way of defining Indigenous sound studies by prioritizing what Indigenous sound and song do, how Indigenous ontologies of song are expressed, redefined, as well as act in transformative ways. To demonstrate how Indigenous song and oration do things in the world, this chapter explores sound art works by Tahltan artist Peter Morin and Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore, shared in public spaces.
“Rethinking the Practice and Performance of Indigenous Land Acknowledgement”
Muli-vocal writing including Dylan Robinson, Kanonhsyonne Janice C. Hill, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Selena Couture, and Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen.
Source: Canadian Theatre Review, Vol, 177 (Winter 2019) pp. 20-30.
An edited transcript of a plenary presentation at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research that took place on 30 May 2018. Presenters were asked to consider land acknowledgement from their various perspectives. My contribution focuses on contextualizing acknowledgements in academic and art spaces, proposing acknowledgement as a form that extends beyond the performative and beyond to the lands we gather on, to site-specific forms of return and “giving back” of space, curriculum and structures of self-determination. In this context I propose “Settler refusal” as a way for settlers within academia and artistic spaces to refuse colleagues’ continuation of ignorance and inertia to support decolonial work.
“Public Writing, Sovereign Reading: Indigenous Language Art in Public Space”
Source: Art Journal Vol. 76. No. 2 (Summer 2017) pp.85-99
This essay advocates for a closer engagement with sovereign forms of perception, and for a critical reassessment of how Indigenous works and words are ascribed sovereign effect. It considers several text-based public artworks: the iteration of Edgar Heap of Birds’s Native Hosts situated on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm / Musqueam lands at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s uronndnland (wapahta ôma iskonikan askiy) outside Morely, Alberta; and works by the collective Ogimaa Mikana, including the group’s billboard projects and heritage sign interventions in Toronto and Barrie, Ontario.
“Intergenerational Sense, Intergenerational Responsibility”
Source: Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016
This chapter examines three areas of sensory history and sensate politics related to the history of the Indian residential schools and in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission activities. I am concerned here with three ways of understanding what I call “reconciliation’s senses.” First, I will consider those sensory memories expressed by residential school survivors both in written accounts and at TRC events. Second, “reconciliation’s senses” refers to the role the senses play at TRC national events and community hearings. In this context, I am interested in the many forms of sensory interaction between survivors, intergenerational survivors, and witnesses, and the ways in which this interaction takes part in different forms of reclaiming “sensory agency”. I conclude by examining the everyday lived understanding—a “common sense,” and lack thereof—that the settler Canadian public has of residential school histories and the impact these histories have upon First Peoples today. To address this, I propose ways by which the settler Canadian public might be compelled to exert a greater degree of what I call “intergenerational responsibility.”
“Public Art in Vancouver and the civic infrastructure of redress”
Source: Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016
This chapter examines three areas of sensory history and sensate politics related to the history of the Indian residential schools and in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission activities. I am concerned here with three ways of understanding what I call “reconciliation’s senses.” First, I will consider those sensory memories expressed by residential school survivors both in written accounts and at TRC events. Second, “reconciliation’s senses” refers to the role the senses play at TRC national events and community hearings. In this context, I am interested in the many forms of sensory interaction between survivors, intergenerational survivors, and witnesses, and the ways in which this interaction takes part in different forms of reclaiming “sensory agency”. I conclude by examining the everyday lived understanding—a “common sense,” and lack thereof—that the settler Canadian public has of residential school histories and the impact these histories have upon First Peoples today. To address this, I propose ways by which the settler Canadian public might be compelled to exert a greater degree of what I call “intergenerational responsibility.”
“Distracting Music”
Source: Musicological Explorations Vol.9, Spring 2008
This essay examines distraction is an act of complication. Related to the Situationist practice of the dérive, distraction provides a method to circumvent normative structures for reception, propelling the viewer to enter into self-determined dialogic relationships. Taking as examples works by , this essay contrasts techniques of forced distraction in the work of Walter Benjamin and Berthold Brecht with viewer-centered distraction at play in the work of John Cage and R. Murray Schafer. As an early writing, this essay gives a sense of the foundation of my work on normative and creative modes of listening.