To start with, as one model of the Haudenosaunee creation story has it, there was solely water and sky. In accordance with oral custom, when the Sky Girl grew to become pregnant, she dropped by means of a gap within the clouds. Whereas many animals guided her descent as she fell, she finally discovered a spot on the turtle’s again. They labored collectively, with the help of different water creatures, to elevate the land from the depths of those primordial waters to create what we now know as our earth.
The brand new immersive expertise, “Ne:Kahwistará:ken Kanónhsa’kówa í:se Onkwehonwe,” is a vivid retelling of this creation story by multimedia artist Jackson 2bears, also called Tékeniyáhsen Ohkwá:ri (Kanien’kehà:ka), the 2022–24 Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence on the MIT Heart for Artwork, Science and Expertise. “A number of what drives my work is discovering new methods to maintain Haudenosaunee teachings and tales alive in our communities, discovering new methods to inform them, but additionally serving to with the transmission and transformation of these tales as they’re for us, a dwelling a part of our cultural observe,” he says.
