Thoughts

I was born and raised on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations also known as the City of Vancouver. My parents arrived on these lands when they were teens, leaving behind their own birthplaces in search of a better place to start a family and to call home. They were children of displacement, as were my grandparents who left their homes to flee the violences that pervaded their own country in the early to mid twentieth century. In some ways, I continued to carry this tradition. I lived nomadically for a time, and most recently spending time in Toronto by the edge of Lake Ontario, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

In 2022, I returned home. In my ‘homecoming' to this familiar yet unfamiliar place, I found myself contemplating the reasons I left, the reasons I came back. What connections did I develop aboard, what connections had I lost? Over the years, as part of my practice, I have been gathering stories and memories from my family. With a deeper awareness of my own shared intergenerational experience, I found a new purpose and longing for connection with land.