About
Our Philosophy
Arrivals Philosophical Framework
Mind
Ancestrality
Kinship & Autonomy
ANCESTRALITY
Kinship & Autonomy
Since Indigeneity is linked to water land and all living things—how do we change the language of ownership? Or our own sense of rootedness?
“…without underestimating the importance of positive contributions from the oppressors’ culture and other cultures, [we must] return to the upward paths of [our] own culture.”
― Amilcar Cabral
Body
Ancestrality
Kinship & Autonomy
ANCESTRALITY
Kinship & Autonomy
How do we remain responsive to the stories and people who have helped shape us, while still maintaining our autonomy?
“On behalf of past generations the body mediates fleshing out the shadows of ghosts soft songs lurk sometimes so soft—a silence wails and the trumpet of words brings down the Jerichoed walls of silence.”
― M. NourbeSe Philip
Voice / Breath
Ancestrality
Kinship & Autonomy
ANCESTRALITY
Kinship & Autonomy
Drawing on the spirit of our ancestors and the shared world, how do we access the values, rites, and ceremonies that ground us in our root cultural practices?
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
– Toni Morrisson
Spirit
Ancestrality
Kinship & Autonomy
ANCESTRALITY
Kinship & Autonomy
Drawing on the spirit of our ancestors and the shared world, how do we access the values, rites, and ceremonies that ground us in our root cultural practices?
"The circle of the dance is a permissive circle: it protects and permits."
– Frantz Fanon
Mind
Communality
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
COMMUNALITY
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
How do we anticipate, meet, and respond with integrity in an ever-changing environment?
“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
― Chinua Achebe
Body
Communality
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
COMMUNALITY
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
How do we come to learn, receive, and understand, through opacity, the cultures that hold us in a shared reality?
“We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. If we sell you our land, care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land and the air and the rivers for your children’s children and love it as we have loved it.”
― Paul Chaat Smith
Voice / Breath
Communality
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
COMMUNALITY
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
How do we uncover the powerful potential in collective voice and sounding? Where do I place my voice and find my breath in relation to and across traditions?
“Listen more often to things than to beings
Tis’ the ancestors’ breath
When the fire’s voice is heard
Tis’ the ancestor’s breath
In the voice of the waters”
― Sweet Honey in the Rock
Spirit
Communality
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
COMMUNALITY
Reciprocity & Reflexivity
From where do we source and/or create our own rituals? How and when are these shared?
"At certain times on certain days, [people] come together at a given place, and there, under the solemn eye of the tribe, fling themselves into a seemingly unorganized pantomime, which is in reality extremely systematic."
― Frantz Fanon
Mind
Adaptation / Affirmation
Truth & Responsibility
ADAPTATION / AFFIRMATION
Truth & Responsibility
How do we negotiate deeper truths that go beyond our mind’s telling?
“Thought draws the imaginary of the past: a knowledge becoming. One cannot stop it to assess it nor isolate it to transmit it. It is sharing one can never not retain, nor ever, in standing still, boast about.”
― Edouard Glissant
Body
Adaptation / Affirmation
Truth & Responsibility
ADAPTATION / AFFIRMATION
Truth & Responsibility
How do we hold the influence of our root culture up against our modern reality in the same hand, elbow, hip, lip, tongue…?
“From within this bright womb I can spiral out into the world again to reconceive of place. I can stretch time. I can erase the artifice of separation that divides today from yesterday and yesterday from tomorrow. In this place all time is the same time. In this place images speak reality, paint truth in believable pictures.”
― Lee Maracle
Voice / Breath
Adaptation / Affirmation
Truth & Responsibility
ADAPTATION / AFFIRMATION
Truth & Responsibility
What are processes that arise in us with respect to using our own Indigenous language and the language of the other? How do we reverse our relationship to other?
“I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue - my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Spirit
Adaptation / Affirmation
Truth & Responsibility
ADAPTATION / AFFIRMATION
Truth & Responsibility
How do we hold and carry the responsibility of silence(s) as we recover, share, and exchange our root cultural practices and ways of knowing?
“Death needs a new cosmology. If you want to live well, keep death close. Hope includes hopelessness and grieving is showing gratitude for that which has been lost. What would it be like to treat grief as power? Even our hopelessness as a form of decomposing and falling away that is sacred”
― Bayo Akomolafe
I felt it was a beautiful and perfect blending of creative process and personal, spiritual journeying. It was great to physicalize my ancestral research—take it out of my head—and see where it could intersect with my own creative processes as a physical artist. It was great to be engaged in my physicality in such a personal and meaningful way.
Diane Roberts is a profoundly dedicated teacher and guide. She is completely committed to, and passionate about, the work she has developed over the course of her 30 year practice, and like so many great leaders, has gathered an equally gifted team who, with great care, have created a shared vocabulary in their work of discovery. I celebrate their grace and courage as they support the artist's voice and open them to the possibility of never-ending story.
