What does it mean to never fully grasp a place?
Shared by SHERRI-LYNN YAZBECK, ILDIKÓ DANIS, JULIA WILSON, SARAH DIXON AND NARDA NELSON
We were trained to teach children about places in ways that feel natural to take up child-centered approaches in getting to know Haro Woods. Ways that made it easy to forget that our approach shapes what we know. That Knowledge collects us as we collect it. That, as settlers, this place is not ours to fullygrasp.
Years pass, bodies move, dialogues erupt, and something has changed. It is hard to know when dominant narratives started feeling uncomfortable. Maybe always? Maybe we were afraid to disrupt, reveal uncertainties. While walking with forest we create a culture of care in relating to this place. Haro Woods creates her own creaturely culture of care. She exposes us as colonial residents, calls into question our existence on Lekwungen lands, reminds us that as settlers never fully grasping this place we have a response-ability to cultivate something otherwise (Ferreira da Silva, 2018). What does it mean to never fully grasp a place?
References
Ferreira da Silva, D. (2018). The Colonial Resident Question. In Couture, D., Couture, S., Couture, S., and Hern, M. (authors). On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land. (pp. ix-x). [Foreward]. Fernwood Publishing.