x: where paths cross

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the ways our ongoing collaborative performance(s) of “X: where our paths cross” straddle the varied intimacies of live and virtual spaces of visiting and activate noncolonial concepts of host-guest relations that enact Indigenous sovereignties and confront the certainty of settler emplacement, while considering the responsibilities of settler guesting. This series of virtual, in-person, and hybrid performances brings together Morin’s work with Tahltan knowledge and sovereignties through embodied activations of a publication of Tahltan stories “collected” and transcribed by white anthropologist James Teit in 1919 and 1921 and Decter’s work in disturbing patterns of white settler entitlement and settler-state sovereignty, in part through interrogations of the Group of Seven’s landscape painting traditions, which date to the same period as Teit’s publications. Engaging the X where Indigenous sovereignties intersect with the necessary activation of settler responsibilities across our different ancestries, this work results from an ongoing collaborative relationship between artist-scholars Peter Morin, who is of Tahltan Nation and French Canadian ancestry, and Leah Decter, an Ashkenazi Jewish white settler. Our contribution to this issue blends writing and time-based media in the form of this text, an animated poetic version of a transcript from one of our early exchanges about the project, and video excerpts from two of the fully virtual performances.