Live blog 2 - Haleh Mawson

Just want to call out this altar for being extremely pretty. All of them are powerful, but this one is just very visually pleasing. I like pink. I was going to write more from my notes, but instead I'm going to talk about the song Patricia Chookenshaa just sang, because I wandered off and came back to find her singing and it was beautiful, first because the music was lovely, and second because it is a wondrous thing to see someone exist fully at the intersection of past, present, and future that such a song represents, at least to my mind. She said at the end - I'm afraid I didn't write it down - that the last verse crescendos to show how much remains after the storm of colonialism and violence, how much is still breathing and alive in this present. I think we often hear about the malaise that sits on Indigenous people in North America, the struggles they face, but there are fewer chances to see the power that resides in them still. I suppose it was simply amazing to see someone embrace that, because it is not, at least for me, an everyday occurrence. So my thanks to her.