Words of the People’s Seeding Solidarity Tour is a talk series that discusses repair, trust and solidarity across Turtle Island. The speakers include:

𐓸𐓶𐓟𐓰𐓫͘ “Xuedoin” (Chelsea T. Hicks)

www.xuedoin.com, Founding Artist of Words of the People 

and a PhD Candidate at the University of Oklahoma 

and Claire Maracle https://clairemaracle.com/ 

the Executive Director of Words of the People 

What are we doing? 

We are touring the U.S. to find out how the word Rematriation is being understood and what it means in practice. Using technologies of dance, language, food, art, Indigenous science, and other ways of understanding the embodiment of Rematriation, we are talking and visiting.

The Rematriation Tour utilizes talk, including talking circles, visual art, deep listening, workshops and gathering to uplift and understand the reality that Indigenous people as well as forced-removed Black communities are reclaiming ancestral languages, seeds, worldviews and technologies, restoring both kinship networks and kincentricity with more-than-human kin. What is our working understanding of rematriation, in terms of our approach and also what is our why? 

The rematriation movement, happening all over the world, invites all to find their way/s into rematriation, following Indigenous leadership, especially by Indigenous women. We understand rematriation to empower and be empowered by acts of repair.

Here is a working definition that includes the why. Rematriation is defined as returning the sacred to the mother; mother refers to our first mother — land — as well as the ancestral languages, values and practices which come from ancestral land ties. These and we are all “the sacred.” While rematriation does not always entail a person permanently returning to ancestral lands and languages, rematriation does entail acts of regenerating often frayed and stressed connections to ancestral land, language and worldview through learning, grieving and reconnecting to their identity, for the purposes of radical self- and community-care as well as healing systems of radical inequity. Rematriation is presented side by side with acts of repair and reparations including LANDBACK, in order to empower and strengthen these acts of repair through care, love and healing. In the future, as systems of radical inequity may be dismantled, rematriation ensures all have access to new ways of relating to one another as persons descended of cultures and capable of protecting harms to land and bodies. 

What is our end goal in doing this tour? 

We would like to increase awareness and understanding of the word rematriation, through both talk and embodied actions. We are mapping how rematriation is being understood according to spaces, using spacial storytelling and a podcast, and we will share the idea that Rematriation goes hand in hand with Land Back and actions of repair, including reparations. 

Who is Words of the People, and what do we do? 

Words of the People is a national Indigenous-led nonprofit registered inside the Osage Nation and also at the state and national level. From our website, you can see our Rematriation retreat for learners of Indigenous languages, as well as our vision and mission of opening pathways to a world where Indigenous languages thrive. We know that in order for Indigenous languages to thrive, the public has to value them and have access to restoring Indigenous worldviews that come with these languages and reconnect people to each other and to land protection. We are doing this tour to help deepen our national network with those who care about the work of Rematriation, and to learn from one another as we continue empowering this work.