With poet Somah Toya Haaland and rematriative land and body based practitioner, Lauren Peters, the October Kinstillatory Fire is focused on liberation, harvest, and abundance. Gather to witness as Lauren Peters moves as an Eastern Blanket Dancer, shares her expertise growing and harvesting corn, and leads a grounding practice for us all. Gather to listen, as Somah Toya Haaland shares, “To be a poet for liberation is to weave together the truths of our history with the dreams for our future. It is to unapologetically stand at this crossroads and demand justice while simultaneously fostering empathy with an open heart through the genuine sharing of one’s spirit and lived experience. To be a poet for liberation is to harbor a deep and unconditional love and respect for humanity, knowing that our survival is interdependent.”
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Somah Toya Haaland is a queer + neurodivergent artist from the Pueblo of Laguna. They earned their BA in Theatre from the University of New Mexico in 2017, where they lovingly pursued their passion for movement and storytelling that was instilled in them at a young age. They have been living as a guest on Munsee Lenape/Canarsie lands (Brooklyn, NY) since 2019. Their words have been featured in Teen Vogue, NBC News, the New Yorker, and American Theater Magazine. They have published two poems as a part of the collections found in Our Red Book and My Life: Growing Up Native in America. In 2021, she consulted and voiced the narration for the documentary film Our Story: the Indigenous-Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco. Somah currently serves on the Board of Directors for their beloved grassroots community organization, Pueblo Action Alliance. In addition to poetry, they love film, traveling, and photography, and are passionate about using art and language as a vehicle to build new worlds that protect and preserve our land, air, waters, and sacred places.
Lauren Peters Neepawus T8nupahs “Sun Turtle” is an enrolled member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and a member of the Bear Clan. She leads a corn sister circle, a traditional three sisters garden on her tribal farm, paddles canoe and teaches yoga in her community. She is a traditional Eastern Blanket Dancer and has danced her whole life. She has two young sons and recently completed her MBA in Paris. Working with her community, rematriating land and seeds and helping others is her passion and who she is at her core. She walks in both worlds with her background in corporate America living in NYC for almost 20 years, while keeping herself grounded in her traditions and always using yoga when she is away from her homelands. She has practiced yoga for 20 years and has been teaching for 3. She completed her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training with Native Strength Revolution in 2024.
ABOUT KINSTILLATORY MAPPINGS IN LIGHT AND DARK MATTER
Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter is an ongoing collaboration between choreographer, writer, and organizer Emily Johnson and scholar, artist, and writer Kai Recollet. In its eighth year, this fall season’s Kinstillatory fires organize us around extended time—with one another, with sound, provocation, action.
These kinstillatory fires centering anti-colonial Indigenous, feminist, and gender-expansive care ethics and practices are hosted, held, and lightly curated by Johnson and Recollet, along with invited guests and community partners. The fire is central and communities are invited to GATHER HERE as we articulate our collective futures, our otherwise possibilities. It is a place to bring practices, grammars, and needs forward and through the portals that fire allows. The fire itself is process, a way to bring us out of the catastrophe of now and into the kinstillatory that is care, that is necessary. A provocation, and an offering of seed, of vessel, of protection, of becomingness.