What does k'inādās mean?

K'inādās is the Tahltan word for walking. This word specifically refers to the human body walking on the land.

The language of reconciliation has been circulating since the inception of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Now in its completion of collecting thousands of testimonies from Residential School Survivors, many responses have accrued within directly affected communities, inter-generationally, and pedagogically outside of lived memory. In intellectual deliberations, the political and academic vocabulary of reconciliation has flourished, and alongside we have seen growth in debates regarding land rights, territory, recognition, sovereignty, trauma, healing, Indigeneity, settler identity, and decolonization. In the k'inādās residency, we create spaces for critically constructive interrogations of reconciliation. At the same time, we hope that you feel free to render the term meaningless, or to contract the scope of its epistemic and political reach, so that it does not dictate the states of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships as they are remembered, lived forward, and move in unanticipated directions.

The K'inādās Collective was established as a response to work collaboratively through, around, and for the documentation of unexpected encounters outside of prescribed political landscapes and established relationships. The K'inādās Collective draws upon multiple ancestries, creative practices, and experimental collaborative methodologies. We are compelled by the Tahltan word k'inādās because it reminds us of our human bodies in movement. K'inādās bespeaks of the dynamic intimacies of exchanging knowledge and records the impact of bodies passing through in relation to permanence.

The K'inādās residency invites you to seek out beyond human-to-human relationships to develop a dynamic, experiential relationship with the land. Some will come for a longer period than others, some with a specific plan or collaboration in mind. Some will come without a concrete goal or expected outcome. As with the relationships that might develop between the selves, others, and the land, we are also thinking of k'inādās as a circling of ideas for a specific amount of time. One request for this residency is that you consider stepping beyond your initial intentions, beyond your circles of knowledge and acquaintanceships. In the coming weeks, we invite you to walk around, move into, move away from, act towards and beyond, and especially to consider what is produced by shifting our proximities to officially recognized histories, bodies, ancestors, and landscapes.