Collaborative Ritual Performance with Barbara Bickel
Premier Online Screenings and Talkback have been postponed.
Our fundraising through Fundrazr has been paused for now. Check back soon for our updated schedule and donation support options.
With the arrival of Spring, Barbara Bickel and I began to plan anew for our “Bearing Bloodlines: Ancestral Invocations” ritual performance. In our process we have come to change the shape of our original form and are excited to share that we are now creating a video that integrates the deep work done over the past seven years as well as new components. We are entering this creative change, through ongoing conversations with our ancestors and from a place of not knowing what will emerge. In this place of not knowing, we are trusting “Bearing Bloodlines” will deepen our original intentions of integrating art, healing and the sacred, to understand causes and effects of our ancestors’ actions as colonial settlers on Turtle Island. Thus, we look forward to offering teachings from our ancestors, steeped in loving compassion, that will support and contribute to powerful, healing changes in consciousness occurring in these times. We will keep you updated on our timeline for the completion of this art-video as it unfolds.
Our Fundrazr will reopen after we update our cost of production with the most recent changes needed to complete our new art-video.
In anticipation and gratitude for your support of this creative ancestral journey,
Tannis & Barbara
Created and performed by Barbara Bickel and Tannis Hugill
Barbara Bickel and Tannis Hugill are two Caucasian elder women artists who are committed to bringing healing to the legacy of the unprocessed trauma their ancestors brought to North America. Tragically, their ancestors’ worldview, distorted by trauma, contributed to the brutal treatment of the Indigenous peoples of this continent. In this performance Bickel and Hugill answer the call to come to know and to reconcile with their European ancestral lineages. Once also Indigenous, their European ancestors were brutally forced off their lands, with their beliefs and culture erased by conquering armies, again and again. Scarred by centuries of trauma, all these forebears knew was the fear-based belief ‘dominate or be dominated’.
How can we, the children of settler-immigrants to the Americas, create peace in the world if we carry unreconciled divisions in our own blood lines and our familial dead are not at peace within us? If we do not face the traumas and resulting colonial, cultural and ecological supremacist legacy of our ancestors, we will be unable to embark on effective personal and collective ancestral healing and colonial reconciliation work.
In Bearing Bloodlines: Ancestral Invocations, we the performers, are witnessed by two large puppets, each symbolizing an ancient, caring ancestral guide. While we enter the realms of our ancestors through embodied trance, their stories are told. Inviting compassion in this way, the restorative artworking process becomes a transformative, transpersonal, and healing experience for ourselves, our ancestors, and the audience. The performance offers a vulnerable teaching and invitational opening for those disconnected from their ancestors, and the original lands of their ancestors. This teaching offers the possibility of harmonization and reconciliation between colonial settler descendants, this land, and the Indigenous peoples of this land. It offers a connection to the vibrant source of creation that unites all humans and non-humans across time and space.
The Ancestors Speak
We call to you from our ancient waiting houses.
We are the ones who tilled the land,
Who sowed the seed,
Who sang the songs.
Our fundraising through Fundrazr has been paused for now. Check back soon for our updated schedule and donation support options.
Stay tuned for updates.
