This knotation emerges from a feeling, a gathering, a fire and a google docs file where a group of women with a strong sense of home in the Pacific Ocean found transient refuge in Covid times. Because many of us experiment with textiles in our practices we call our collective texts knotations inspired by Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña’s proposition of knotations as notations. Writing as Weaving. We share them as knots that bring us together, our bodies, our memories and our ancestral connection to salt and fresh waters.
Last Thursday 18th of June a group of four women got together around a fire in Blak Dot Gallery, Naarm, Wurundjeri country, settler Australia. While we are all living in Naarm the memory of our bodies connect us all to the Pacific Ocean.
Sarita and Pamela arrived as uninvited guests to Naarm from the West coast of the Pacific in Lima, Perú and Coquimbo, Chile. Veisinia grew up as part of the Tongan diaspora in Australia. And Gina comes from Aotearoa. We were accompanied at the distance by Patricia Messier in Punta Arenas, Chile.
We are the Pacific - Vei said.
I want to sing you with the caja chayera to begin our yarn - Sarita said - as the tum tum of the drum animated her raw voice to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and welcome each comadre into their gathering.
And Pamela was so excited about the caja coming too - Maybe the Caja is another comadre hey! - We all agreed.
This cajita was brought to Naarm by Liliana one of our compañeras from la Colectiva de Abya Yala (a Latin American feminist collective in Naarm). It is made from a cactus and has skin on both sides. The caja chayera is found in the North East of Argentina and in the North of Chile, among other places, and it’s been there since long before colonisation.
The caja chayera is a vital companion to singing coplas, bagualas, vidalas and also in the ceremony of the Bailes Chinos in Chile alongside the flautón chino.
All these sound expressions have dissonance in common - Sarita said - known as sonido rajao or torn sound. A sound that’s not very appreciated by Western ears.
Yes, in our ancient songs “la voz se quiebra” - said Pamela.
Pamela takes the caja chayera and echoes a song that Máxima Acuña shared with her in a residency in the Andes. Máxima’s song tells the story of her children supplicating her not to go to Lima.
In ours too! - Vei said - our songs sound like wailing, cry...very raw… they get into your soul.
As we delved into sound we were getting more and more animated, as if sound was already sounding us into a timespace passage...through water, chanting...breaking sound, tearing memories...
The sea I know is a profound sea, a cold sea of currents coming from la Patagonia. Also a brava sea. My mother used to tell me “be very careful, it will pull you!” If that strong voice didn’t lead me to have respect, it led me to panic the unfathomable, that force that attracts and absorbs you.
A deep sea, sprinkled with islands under the low mist.
And together we share a piece of Patricia’s writing in Kawésqar and Spanish that she sent us from Punta Arenas. (Below is Patricia’s text in Spanish/English).
Jeksor Cams (Mirar el Mar)
Jéksor čams es recordar la memoria de mis antepasados (jála-kawésqar=antepasados), yo Patricia Messier nieta de Margarita Canales mi abuela que solo conocí a través de una foto muy hermosa y famosa en los libros a nivel mundial (adjunto foto) mi abuela tiene en brazo a mi padre que tenía alrededor de 3 o 4 años, que están al interior de una canoa (jekstáslájep= flor hermosa), seudónimo que me dio mi padre Carlos Messier Canales Q.E.P.D. antes de partir a la otra vida que ellos tienen, que sus espíritus vuelven a navegar por los canales; es un dicho que tienen nuestros mayores cuando fallece un miembro de la familia kawésqar.
Jéksor čams is to remember my ancestors (jála-kawésqar=ancestors). I’m Patricia Messier, granddaughter of Margarita Canales, my grandmother I only met through a beautiful photo that travelled around the world. Inside a canoe my grandmother holds my father in her arms, he was 3 or 4 years old. Jekstáslájep means beautiful flower, the name my father Carlos Messier Canales RIP gave me before he passed away, before his spirit went back to navigate through the channels; it’s a saying our elders have when someone from the kawésqar family passed away.
I believe that the invisible, not palpable exists in the most infinite of our souls, the day I hear for the first time that the deceased return to sail in their canoes through the beautiful channels, islands, fjords and beautiful places in the vastness of Chilean Patagonia to the end of the world. At that moment I felt a very deep vibration and connection as I was sailing with them, I visualized very shocking images in my soul.
Las mujeres kawésqares, enseñan a las niñas la técnica del tejido tradicional y el canasto calado este último tiene conexión con el mar, porque eran las mujeres que buceaban en las profundidades del mar; en busca del alimento marino para subsistir en las frías mañanas y cobijar con sus manos el exquisito almuerzo para disfrutar en familia; en el calor del fuego con una amena conversación familiar.
Kawésqar women teach girls the technique of traditional weaving and the openwork basket, the latter has connection with the sea, because they were women who dived in the depths of the sea; in search of marine food to subsist on the cold mornings and shelter with their hands the exquisite lunch to enjoy with the family; in the heat of the fire with a pleasant family conversation.
La forma de vida de nuestros antepasados como la navegación en canoa, los alimentos, el entorno que nos rodea la naturaleza, el viento, el sol, la luna, los cerros, fiordos, canales, glaciares, son parte de la vida diaria que respetamos por generaciones es lo más hermoso que podemos disfrutar y cuidar el legado que nos dejaron nuestros antepasados; somos los guardianes de la naturaleza en su mejor expresión.
The way of life of our ancestors such as canoeing, food, the environment that surrounds us, nature, wind, sun, moon, hills, fjords, channels, glaciers, are part of daily life that we respect for generations it is the most beautiful thing that we can enjoy and care for the legacy that our ancestors left us; we are the guardians of nature at its best.
Jekstáslájep flor hermosa (yo), me inspiro cada día en ellos mis antepasados, con reverencia, respeto, y principalmente con dignidad por la historia pasada, presente y el futuro que es una meta muy alta. En resumen, el čams (el mar) es la sensibilidad de navegación histórica del kawésqar, que da tranquilidad, seguridad y se crea una sensación espiritual sin palabras en mi ser más profundo.
Jekstáslájep beautiful flower (me), I am inspired every day by my ancestors, with reverence, respect, and mainly with dignity for the past, present and future history which is a very high goal.
In short, čams (the sea) is the historical navigational sensitivity of kawésqar, which gives tranquility, security and creates a spiritual feeling without words in my deepest being.
That’s similar to us in Tonga, our ancestors also go back to the Ocean - Vei said.
And to us in Aotearoa. Our ancestors go up North and then they dive into the meeting of the Pacific with the Tasman sea deep down to the underwater world - Gina added.
In the north of Chile where I grew up they say the ancestors go to live up in the top of the Mountains, in the Apus. But I grew up in a Catholic family so all my ancestors either go to Heaven...or Hell! - Sarita said.
My indigeneity is not spoken, because Chile still today attempts to invisibilise our Indigenous, African and Arabic heritage. So my family identifies as mestizx (mixed blood, mixed cultures), but only has knowledge and pride of our European heritage, Basque, and Andaluz from Spain. Nonetheless I feel our connection to indigenous cultures through the practices of the women in my family, their relationship to plants, their healing tradition, their relationship to the sea and to fire. But those practices were not passed to me...I was thinking about that when I was writing to you…
My mum told me that her uncles used to mariscar and they will go to the beach
And the whole family cook in the beach and share the mussels and crustaceans that the uncles caught
None of my cousins can catch mussels along the coast anymore,
That knowledge was not passed down, but also there are not mussels to catch anymore.
The ocean does not sustain us as it did
La mar sufre. La mar has suffered the extractive practices
La pesca de arrastre, la contaminación.
The colonial apparatus of capitalism and greed.
In Chile the sea has been privatised…can the Ocean be privatised?
This conversation was so empowering, a remembering and a recognition of the waters of life, the Moana, that flows and has always flowed between and in us! - Vei
As Sari sang accompanied by the caja chayera I had a spiritual reaction, the hairs on my body stood on its ends. The power in the song and the dissonance in the song took me back home, a genetic memory. It was resonant of our ancient chants! Songs and chants that speak directly to your soul. The word song doesn’t do it justice, it is a full-bodied wail from the depths of your being. A song designed to reverberate over the ocean and across mountains.
A dissonant sound that is ancient and not yet sanitized by western melody.
Like the Maori Karanga, I said. Gina says they are songs designed to reach the dead. Such power in dissonance. We all shouted, “ We need to decolonize singing!”
Epeli Hau’ofa, a Tongan writer and scholar says in his essay ‘Our Sea of Islands’
“When those who hail from continents, or islands adjacent to continents-and the vast majority of human beings live in these regions-when they see a Polynesian or Micronesian island they naturally pronounce it small or tiny. Their calculation is based entirely on the extent of the land surfaces they see. But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, and the cosmologies of the peoples of Oceania, it becomes evident that they did not conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions. Their universe comprised not only land surfaces, but the surrounding ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-controlling and earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens above with their hierarchies of powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people could count on to guide their ways across the seas.”
We are the guardians of the Pacific - Vei said.
But if they actually do this bottom trawling fishing they are actually messing up with our spiritual space! - Gina said.
I love this turn of the conversation, I was hoping for us to find a common intention. Why did our ancestors bring us together? When we are together I feel I’m not from a land country. I feel more fluid, like I’m from the Pacific country…we are citizens of the Pacific... And saltwater custodianship is vital.
At this point, I felt very intensely our coming together, a feeling of meeting again and resonating as we always did. Were we meeting for the first time?
