Feature Fellow: Words of the People
Words of the people seeks to restore Indigenous languages and worldviews by opening pathways to Indigenous language expression
The vision of Words of the People is to empower Indigenous communities to normalize Indigenous language creative production as both an artistic practice and a movement that supports rematriation—bridging art, literature, and Indigenous language preservation.
What are we working on right now?
WOTP: We started our Seeding Solidarity: Rematriation Tour on 7/9 in Chicago at Haymarket House in conversation with Dr. Kyle T. Mays, author of When We Are Kin: The History and Future of Afro-Indigenous Solidarity and Future Tend Fellow member Alonzo Waheed with Equity and Transformation (E.A.T.). Our founding artist, Xuedoin and Executive Director, Claire Maracle will be engaging in Rematriation talks around the nation at places like UCLA the Penn Museum and The Labriola National American Indian Data Center is an Indigenous-led library hub at Arizona State University (ASU), dedicated to American Indian and Indigenous scholarship. Outside of our national work, we are launching the Tulsa Solidarity Project this month in collaboration with the Terence Crutcher Foundation.
What have you learned recently about your work, your community, or the repair ecosystem?
WOTP: After our Seeding Solidarity event in Chicago we learned how wide the repair ecosystem is. The event was incredibly well attended and it was heartening to see so many folks show up eager to engage in discourse and have hard conversations. We talked about how trust is built through vulnerability and solidarity can be momentary. Alonzo noted that “Solidarity means someone can hold you accountable” The work of rematriation is deep, difficult and increasingly relevant. It means nurturing, creating, adapting, and healing, it means refusing continued dispossession and a return to Mother Earth and the ways of our ancestors.
How are you practicing repair within your organization?
WOTP: We are engaging in cross-racial solidarity work in Tulsa with the Terence Crutcher Foundation to begin to repair and connect local Black and Indigenous communities. We are all in the process of rematriation. It's a life journey to reclaim and pick up parts of our selves and generations of knowledge taken by colonization but it's also a collective liberation journey. We practice repair within our organization by decentering colonial notions of time, not using violent language, that we often don’t realize is violent i.e. deadline, execute etc. We work to nurture wellness and center joy in all that we do.
“It's a life journey to reclaim and pick up parts of our selves and generations of knowledge taken by colonization but it's also a collective liberation journey.”
— Words of the People
What future vision of repair are you seeding now?
WOTP: We are seeding a future where indigenous languages thrive, even if it takes 200 years! Where Land Back and Reparations are achieved, where children are centered, prisons are abolished and everyone has more than enough. Our Executive Director, Claire Maracle talks more about the future and Haudenosaunee democracy in this recent article.
What's coming up next for your organization?
WOTP: Our Rematriation tour will resume in September at Arizona State University and continue to UCLA as well as UCSB. We'll continue to hold our monthly New Moon Yoga and Writing workshops in Tulsa as well as the Tulsa Solidarity Project.