Punctuating Musical Diacritics of Water in Cross-species Context

Abstract

There is an urgency for compelling new narratives of ecological survival that draw on Indigenous and ‘othered’ millennial intelligences and agencies. With a focus on the lifegivingness and sacredness of water, this paper is a call for collective inter-cultural cross-species oral-performative, recuperative conversations for re-learning to care for our damaged finite planet. Spirit-being is ever-present in the St'at'imc multiverse. Be humble, kind, respectful and at peace the elders tell us. Our original instructions teach us how to live together in harmony and compassion with the rest of creation.

In this narrative score, musical signs, symbols spaces and terminologies gesture toward lyrical, rhythmic, somatic, sensate, collaborative performance, including pause-silence-beat. At a bend of the river, with ancestors and those to come, ubiquitous Indigenous tricksters Coyote and Raven speak on the page as dramatis personnae to encourage metamorphosizing from normalizing Euro-diacritics that extinguish and essentialize Indigenous oral expression. Joining the conversation are Sam Jim, a St'at'imc elder born in 1866, and German astrophysicists Helga and Viktor who are researching water beyond our shared earthly home, Viktor having had St'at'imc research experience in British Columbia. The text is meant to be read aloud.

Keywords: indigeneity, narrativity, cross-species interdependency, sacredness of water