K̓ata Mashkiki - "To Write Medicine" BIPOC Creative Writing Workshop

K̓ata Mashkiki — To write Medicine (Kwak̓wala & Anishinaabemowin)

**DISCLAIMER - Any abusive or racist behaviour and language will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal from these Workshops**

What does Re-Indigenizing our language mean? What does it mean to write to our Ancestors while journeying deeper within our own spirit(s)?

Join us for a 10 session, Bi-Weekly Creative Writing Workshop, from 6:30-8:30 pm, starting Tuesday, February 13th 2024, at The Grove Café in Kitchener; Hosted by Hope Engel (Indigenous Creatives United) and Sarah Siembida (Inaugural Poet Laureate).

This Creative Writing workshop is a safe space for BIPOC community members and allies to come and connect with your Ancestors and each other, through the power of Language. We will gather in community to inspire each other through teachings of Medicine Wheels of the world, conversations, creative prompts, visual arts, spoken word, poetry, creative writing, and most importantly...FOOD!

This workshop uses global medicine wheels as a framework for engaging in critical conversations about: race, class, gender, sexuality, identities & community belonging, well-being, ability, place, healing, family, trauma, violence, imagination. We will use the power of writing as resistance, and "re-membering" voice through journaling; Writing exercises engaging with a broad cross-section of indigenous and marginalized thinkers, creating multimedia medicine wheels, & a sharing circle for bipoc community diaspora. While Looking at relational intersectionalities and re-indigenzing consciousness, remembering resisting reclaiming, reconnecting and recreating “his-stories” as indigenous and racialized peoples, and engaging in an inquiry about collaborative transformative action in and between our communities.

Hope Engel, Dbiki Anung, Indigenous Poets Society Admin, community Wholistic Education & Care, Turtle Clan, Oklahoma Chachta, Chickasaw, Cherokee family of Civil Rights activist teachers & father went to Convent School. “Indigenous femme-inist”, multiple disabilities & white privilege, in liminal between worlds, I’m passionate about inter-connectedness between all relations and maintaining indigenous worldviews. An “auntie” standing for love, healing, connection and caring communities. My Life as Ceremony is maintaining culture, IndigArts storytelling & relational worldviews and "whole-istic" (spiritual, mental, emotional, physical) community well-being.

See indigenouspoets.com

Sarah Siembida is a Two-Spirit person and the Inaugural Poet Laureate (Smart Waterloo Region), born and raised in the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral (AKA Kitchener, ON, Canada). They are born from English, Finnish, Kānaka Maoli, Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw, and Polish descent; Belonging to the ‘Na̱mg̱is, ‘Nakwaxda’xw, dłu Kwagu’ł Tribes in the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw Territories of Northern Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. Passionate about preserving Culture and Ancestral Territories, Sarah spends much of their free time on the land and by the waters learning from the Ancestors as well as current land and water caretakers/defenders. They hope by telling their story of the Urban Indigenous Experience, it breaks down the stigmas of marginalized groups as a whole and encourages all to walk in their truth.