Statement (Short): Elegy for a Stolen Land
Forced by food shortages to emigrate, six generations ago my Scottish ancestors settled in Southern Ontario, a rich, natural environment that for millennia, and until not long before, had been homeland to successive waves of First Peoples.
When moving home after years in cities to raise a seventh generation in that same place I’d been raised, the sheer rapaciousness of human activity in Ontario’s countryside – the naked erasures of heritage, and our diminishing capacity for a secure local food supply– got me thinking about changes in the meaning of land.
How does one document shifting occupation? What is the distance from “earth mother” to “real estate”, and what evidence remains of aboriginal cosmologies or European animistic traditions, and colonial history? What are the implications for power over the cultural interpretation of land-human relationships imposed by such terms as “land use”? Which ways of thinking and being in relation to land are most suitable to sustaining life?
comments
One Response to “Statement (Short): Elegy for a Stolen Land”
Leave a Reply
-
Web Site: http://petersibbald.com
-
Find It
Focus
A fermentation (a.k.a. Compost) of media, technology, social justice, art and the environment as experienced on the ground through the eye of one Canadian photo documentarian, intended to help fertilize the zeitgeist and yield a mixed crop of new ideas surrounding civic engagement.
Origins
Out on the land seeking moments and light, I’m often reminded of the similarity between the life and livelihood of a visual journalist/artist and that of the farmer.
To Wit
“Well Ed, the Fishers had their auction last Saturday morning. I watched as the neighbourhood descended on the place and picked it clean. After it was over, and the Fishers had driven off to their new house in town, the auctioneer walked over the property with me. His name’s Freddy. Interesting chap, friendly and outgoing. Runs a beef and dairy herd on the farm next door, plants corn, grain, potatoes, turnips, does auction sales some blacksmithing, small auto repairs and real estate. What I believe is called mixed farming.”
Letters from Wingfield Farm, ©1989 Douglas Beattie. (Act 1) Wingfield Farm
Ongoing Investigations
• The Meaning of Land
• Rurality
• The Nexus of Technology,
Implimentation and Power in
Visual Communication
• Legacies of Colonialism
• Sustainability vs. Resilience in
Socio-Ecological Systems
Great! Thank you very much!
I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Of course, I will add backlink?
Regards, Timur Alhimenkov