Back To The Land: 2Land2Furious

Hopefully you are aware that one of my big projects is the Métis In Space podcast where I, and my co-host Molly Swain, drink a bottle of wine and, from a tipsy, decolonial perspective, review a sci-fi movie or television episode featuring Indigenous peoples, tropes and themes. We do not just critique, we also engage in a significant amount of world-building, engaging in what I call “Métis Futurisms”, allowing us to resist apocalypse, and imagine ourselves into the near and far future.

This world-building begins as a theoretical exercise, a fairly simple question: “if we had all the resources we needed at our disposal, what would our decolonial future look like?” The ideas we come up with become the goals to work towards. We are slowly expanding beyond podcasts alone, forming Indiginerd relationships across the globe and expressing our ideas in different formats! For example, the final chapter of the graphic novel, This Place: 150 Years Retold, titled “kitaskînaw 2050”, is set in the Métis in Space futureverse. Molly and I are also working on an expanded graphic novel with Portage & Main Press! Super exciting stuff!

Métis in Space is also part of the Land Relationships Super Collective, along with:

• Segorea Te’ Land Trust, Oakland California
• The Underground Center, Saugerties New York
• The Black/Land Project, Amherst Massachusetts
• Ogimaa Mikana, Toronto Ontario

Each of these land collectives has a specific approach to land, and land relationships. So far, the Métis in Space land collective has been, well … LANDLESS. And that needs to change.

Inspired by projects such as Nimkii Aazhibikong, a year-round Ojibway Art, Culture, and Language Revitalization Camp, built by community, for community, and without government or corporate funding, Métis in Space is launching our Back to the Land: 2Land2Furious Landraiser.

Yes, I said landraiser. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (the folks who put together the Land Relationships Super Collective) wrote back in 2012, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor! Decolonization requires ensuring that Indigenous peoples have access to LAND, so that we can form and maintain relationships with one another, and our non-human kin.

We are landless Métis, who want to build a feminist Indigenous compound, on the land, to ensure that our Indigenous LGBTQ and Two-Spirit kin are centred, and have access to land, teachings, ceremony, and community. This has been a goal of ours for a very, very, very long time, but we simply do not have the means to buy a parcel of land in Lac Ste. Anne county, which is within my traditional territory.

Thus, the Back To the Land: 2Land2Furious LandRaiser! We are reaching out to settlers in particular to help us secure a piece of land; fee simple, not borrowed or leased. We need to ensure that we will continue to have access to this land for generations to come. We want to be able to buy a quarter section of land, 160 acres (or a bit less if someone has carved out an acreage and is selling the bulk of the land off). A house on the land would be a bonus, but is not at all required. Alternatively, someone with land to give, could sell it to us at a nominal fee.

We want to build communal living spaces, a cook shack, and spaces for ceremony, ensuring that these spaces are all accessible for our kin with mobility issues. We envision this as a permanent space for language and culture learning, capacity building that is, in our opinion, the only way future generations will be able to cope with the massive, deleterious climate disaster that is already upon us. Rather than building an exclusive, individualist, and xenophobic “prepper” community, we are digging deep down to create a community based on principles such as wâhkôhtowin (expanded kinship), and miyo-wîcêhtowin (living in harmony together).

There are a number of ways you can help!

1. If you have land in Lac Ste. Anne county, you can sell it to Métis in Space for a nominal fee. This would be the simplest solution!
2. Send us enough money to purchase a piece of land. This would also make things much simpler!
3. Contribute what you can to our landraiser via our PayPal pool: LAND BACK
4. Contribute what you can via e-transfer (this is the preference for large sums). To inquire about that, use the About Page.

In a way it feels ridiculous to put this call out, but the fact is, settlers gift, and endow institutions with all sorts of land ALL THE TIME. I spend a lot of time speaking to settlers about Indigenous issues, and one thing I have stressed again and again is that the best way you can be an ally is, when we tell you what we need, GIVE IT TO US. Constantly having to rent land for language and culture camps is draining, and prevents us from building capacity. We should absolutely NOT be landless in our own territories!

So if you have land, or know someone who has land, or if you can contribute to this landraiser, and make our land collective a reality, please let us know!!!!