It’s a Friday evening as I sit down to write this post and I’ve officially been back to work for three weeks. I can’t believe how quickly that time has gone! Being on maternity leave during the pandemic has meant that for healthy and safety reasons, we’ve foregone time with family and friends we would have otherwise spent the last year with. And while I’ll probably be processing the sadness of that lost time for a little longer, I know there’s still much to be grateful for. This last year with my little family and our new baby has felt strangely insulated, but we were also able to spend a lot of time focussing on one another, and being able to focus on anything—much less something so positive—this last year feels like an absolute blessing.
Read moreNovember and All the New Projects
Hi everyone and happy November! I’m just wrapping up a short vacation and have been enjoying the chance to catch up on some of my creative projects. October was a hectic but interesting month. I travelled to California for the first time to attend the 2019 International Conference of Indigenous Libraries, Archives, and Museums, which is organized by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums. It was such a great conference and it gave me a lot of ideas for things to do and ways to move forward at my work (I work at the the Deyohahá:ge: Indigenous Knowledge Centre in my community).
Read moreCanoes and Other Thoughts
I’m drawn to stories that share the lives, adventures and experiences of women. Fiction and non-fiction. Poetry and Memoir. Quiet stories about someone’s life, or sweeping tales of their adventures. And of course, I am especially fond of science fiction and fantasy, so I love female protagonists in speculative fiction as well (Circe, The Broken Earth Trilogy, and the Their Bright Ascendency Trilogy are some recent favourites). There is courage, heartbreak and heroism across all of these different forms of stories and I’ve been inspired in different ways by each of them.
Recently, this interest has extended to wanting to hear and learn more from the female characters in Haudenosaunee legends. I’ve always been interested in our legends but now that my dissertation is done and defended, I’ve been spending my time reading through various story collections with more care and attention—an endeavour that requires its own post.
Read moreCheer Yourself On
I took a vacation this past week and it was incredible. I listened to music. I binge-watched Supergirl. I relaxed. I did some art. I did some writing. I went to see Paw Patrol Live. It was amazing. It was like I spent time just existing and it was so, so refreshing. I also went for lunch with my husband and we spoke mostly Cayuga to one another. We also spoke Cayuga at the dinner table with the girls several times through the week.
I have to say, it was pretty amazing to know that even though it’s taken a long time—it’s happening. I’m learning language. I’m using language. We’re all using it—together, as a family. We’re filling our house with Cayuga and we can do even more if we continue to work at it. I needed to recognize this simple, good progress this week. I needed to give our family an enormous burst of love and affection for how being awesome and encourage us to keep being awesome—to keep trying. We don’t do that enough. Cheer ourselves on. Encourage ourselves.
Read moreLanguage & Art & Red Rising Magazine
Over the last year and a half, I’ve done a lot of writing that has yet to find its way into the world. There are a ton of short stories and poems, blog posts and partial novel drafts sitting on my computer patiently waiting their turn to make their way into the world. And when all is said and done with my dissertation work, I intend to release most of that writing—to pair it up with the art I’ve done over the last two years and set it free into the world to find the people that it’s meant to.
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