You’re invited to join me for We Are Ancestors, a LIVE day long Contemplative Art Retreat where we will invite the ancestors (including our More-Than-Human kin) to walk more closely with us as we unwind a bit of what interrupts us from reconnecting — and deepen our ties with ourselves, Earth, those who came before, who are here now and who will come through contemplative creative process.

We’ve dropped into a version of this class every year for the last near handful of years around this time of year, it’s always so deeply generative and potent. It's a radical thing to reclaim (or even claim at all) and reinstate ourselves in the web of All-That-Is with more and more right relationship. Many of us within the current western context have been stripped of memory, ceremony, relationship with land, Earth, our place in the web of life — and reconnecting is not as simple as appreciating nature or learning about our human ancestors who have passed. To fully reconnect takes time and effort. It’s a relationship, and one that includes generations of serious shade systemically cast that fosters that erasure and the violence that stems from that.

It’s too large to take on as an individual. To move forward, we must compost bits of it together — including our ancestors.

This has been my practice as a mixed indigenous woman. I carry both colonized and colonizer within me. My stance in this work, in this big conversation, is in-between. It’s mine to boldly (without cowardice or false humility) walk with care of ALL of those who came before me (not just the ones I want to relate to) and to share what I know of this “both, and” stance, to continue to decolonize myself, continue to learn and weave with my contemporaries who are willing and able to be in it so we can all walk each other home.

A way that I stay keen and sustainable in the shadow composting and relationship building with my ancestors is through art. Creative process activates heart, body, mind and spirit. We can summon big feels together, and then move it. We can process our own pain — and participate in the generative breakdown of the larger collective pain.

You dig? Join us for this day long Virtual Contemplative Art Approach Immersion, and let’s walk the way together.

The Deets:

• When: Saturday, May 17th from 10 - 4 (ish) pm PST

• Where: Google Meet - A link will be sent out to registered folk on Friday, May 16th.

• Cost: $120 base, $150 generosity offering.

• What’s included: 5 potent live hours (with a 1 hour lunch break) of contemplative exercises and artistic guidance as we create a piece together that can live on your altar.

• Who: You who are interested in composting a bit of the colonial poison, and you who are here for re-connection work and encountering ourselves as ancestors. Artists of all levels of experience are welcome.

Registration closes 05/09/2025

We’ll create a small mixed-media piece with acrylic mediums that holds a prayerful energy and that can live on or near your altar.

General Materials list: Acrylic paints, drawing materials, possibly you’ll want ephemera for collage (ancestrally connected material would be rad, but not necessary. Think photocopies of pictures of family members, magazine imagery of ancestral places and animals, dried flowers that are related to ancestral lands, etc) a small canvas or cradle board, sketch book/journal, and other favorite supplies.

Our focus for this particular day long immersion will be Flora, Fauna, Land and Language as Ancestor. We will lean into some ancestral lands and the More-Than-Human ancestors of those lands and create 2d altar pieces that hold the energy of PLACE, that we may expand our sense of BELONGING to include more and More-Than-Human kin. We will also play with ancestral language. Language shapes how we think. Re-membering words and phrases of our ancestors opens lines of ancestral memory, and summons the beings of land and place.

Let’s get deep and make art!