Netukulimk
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Netukulimk
Poetry International Festival 2024 was blessed with the presence of poets from diverse backgrounds settled in various parts of the world. What connects several of them is their and their peoples' histories of displacement and oppression and subsequent loss of language, culture and identity. While many of them experience writer’s block in the face of past and current atrocities that blur the (time)lines of suffering, their poetry shows how they work through generational and collective trauma by connecting to the land that has been touched, shaped and too often scarred by history. Nature as the home of the spirits of ancestors and base of ancient indigenous knowledge serves as a place for healing and learning. Simultaneously restoring the cycle of giving and taking between humans and nature, regaining and preserving language, culture and identity.
With the loss of a person, especially a parent or elder, it seems that knowledge and language can be lost and with this also the connection to one’s ancestors. However, Victoria Chang notices in her poem My Mother’s Teeth that after her mother’s death her words stick around attaching to different meanings. Similarly, Asmaa Azaizeh and Felix Chow draw attention to the significance of names as bearers of meaning and values, that are passed from one generation to the next, creating a connection to ancestors while also reflecting histories of, at times, migration and displacement and intertwining individual and collective history. Not only loss of or estrangement from a language but also from a land that is a home can lead to a loss of identity and knowledge. The selected poems by Kéchi Nne Nomu, Gary Geddes and Samira Negrouche deal with the wounds created by this estrangement and throw open questions that do not always have clear, healing answers. Toni Giselle Stuart finds healing in connecting to nature and thereby accessing ancestral knowledge which can be used as a tool for preserving language and culture. She and Sigbjørn Skåden emphasize the importance of finding the balance between taking from and giving back to the land, taking care of it as it takes care of us. Toni Giselle Stuart puts it like this:
an endless cycle of give and take
one we keep breaking
but have the power to repair
-from: Ocean Home
Thus, connecting to nature and with that to ancestral knowledge and language is integral to rebuilding and preserving a cultural identity in a sustainable way that ensures the prosperity of generations to come. This is the meaning of the title of this archive tour: Netukulimk. A word of the Mi’kmaq, a First Nations people of Eastern Canada.
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