For this fifteenth SDUK issue, we return to an adapted version of the Local Useful Knowledge section first shared in issues 1–6. These profiles connect select contributions within this issue with their local contexts. Here, the local format expands beyond the GTHA to share compelling organizations and initiatives internationally.
An earlier initiative of the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory led by Dr. Elspeth Brown (see The Pussy Palace Oral History Project), the Queer Peel Oral History Project gathers queer and trans experiences growing up, living, and building community in the suburbs. Noting the lack of local LGBTQ2S+ representation and visibility beyond Toronto’s Gay Village, Dr. Brown and her undergraduate students at the University of Toronto Mississauga interviewed twenty-five queer and/or trans community members in Peel Region. Launched in 2020, the project focuses on queer organizations including Gay-Straight Alliances in secondary schools, Pride and Positive Space committees, and UTM student organizing. Queer Peel Oral History Project can be found online (https://omeka.utm.utoronto.ca/s/queerpeel/); the website includes archival images, articles, and video and audio interviews. Like Brown’s current history of Toronto’s Pussy Palace, she outlines the importance of methodology and format in sharing under-represented perspectives: “Oral histories are critical for something that has been relatively undocumented until now. […] Telling these stories helps to add voices to our collective history, and puts the experiences of queer folk in suburbia on the record.”
Writing Komqwejwi’kasikl poetry and learning the Mi’kmaq language are ways that Michelle Sylliboy asserts her voice and connects with her ancestral worldview. The Bear River Language Retreat is engaged in similar efforts, an all-ages Mi’kmaq language revitalization initiative administered by Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK; the Mi’kmaq Education Authority). Facilitated by Beverly Jeddore, a Mi’kmaw Language Technician with the support of two Elders, the annual day-long retreat takes place near Bear River First Nation and approaches language pedagogy through land-based learning and participatory cultural activities. The day opens with ceremony, followed by music and dance lessons, which include teachings about significant percussion instruments in Mi’kmaq culture. Later, participants take an Elder-led nature walk to learn about medicinal plants, and are taught how to use animate and inanimate words—Nemi’k, Nemitu, Nutaq, Nutm—to express “I see” and “I hear” and describe their encounters and surroundings. Throughout the program, contemporary language-learning games and traditional games are taught and played including waltes, a pre-Columbian Mi’kmaw dice game. This retreat engages in an integrated cultural approach to language learning and is one of the many community-based projects that contribute to the strengthening of Indigenous cultural identity as well as the preservation of the Mi’kmaw language.
While Indonesian state authorities tightly control political activism and resist political dissent, artists like Performance RAR and youth-led environmental actions continue to surface. Since 2022, The Pandawara Group has been working to reduce garbage from the waterways in their hometown of Bandung. The five members (who are also roommates) were compelled to respond to water pollution when their house became flooded by urban waste clogging a nearby river. Every day, the group spends five hours picking up trash while documenting their excursions on TikTok. Without the intention of doing so, the group’s social media account (@pandawaragroup) has garnered mass public praise from 6 million followers, earning them the name “Garbage Warriors.” Through their influence, The Pandawara Group has recruited several hundreds of volunteers to join them in cleaning local bodies of water, and has inspired others to conduct local clean-ups.
In line with quori theodor’s experimental practice with cuisine and cultures of dining (see Meal of Choices), FIG is a group of food workers in New York City committed to transforming the food system. Founded in 2014 as “Food Issues Group,” FIG works in partnership with community organizations and local food businesses to stage a range of programs including farm visits, workshops, catering, and meal deliveries. In 2020, FIG’s emergency relief food program delivered over 70,000 meals. Since then, they have deepened relationships with trans- and sex worker-led organizations with the broader ethos to progress from food access, to security, to sovereignty. To do so, FIG aims to move from the immediacy of meeting community members’ needs to fostering long-term food security by growing the local food economy, and building infrastructure for sustained food distribution. Their ultimate goal—food sovereignty—envisions a thriving environment for marginalized groups centred in culturally relevant, healthful, and ecologically restorative foods. FIG’s conception of food sovereignty also includes equitable wealth distribution of profits from their food businesses, and broad access to healthcare—tying food cultures to an expansive vision of social change.
Amid widespread gender-motivated killings in Mexico, organizers and activists are making visible the extent of loss caused by the feminicide crisis. While the Museo Arte Contemporáneo Ecatepec (MArCE) empowers community members to reflect on their collective grief through public art projects in their hometown (see In Search of Lost Confidence), Yo te nombro: El Mapa de los Feminicidios en México tracks deaths nationwide to address the gaps in official data. Spearheaded by human rights activist and geographer María Salguero since 2016, this digital map has become “the largest publicly accessible dataset of feminicide in Mexico.”11Catherine D’Ignazio, ed., Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2022), Introduction, https://mitpressonpubpub.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/cf-intro. Rooted in feminist data practices, the unofficial database records information based on findings from news reports, government websites, and crowdsourced tips, such as the victims’ names, ages, relationships to the offender, mode and location of death, judicial case status, as well as connections to organized crime. Used by academics, journalists, and non-profits, Salguero’s interactive map is hosted on Google Maps and available on a dedicated website (feminicidiosmx.crowdmap.com) where the public may also submit a case or receive alerts. As bias and underreporting impairs government data on gender violence and feminicide in Mexico, Salguero’s “I name you” project challenges the data by documenting stories that would otherwise go untold. 22Ibid. “In 2019, [Salguero] logged 2,900 feminicides, an average of eight killings per day. Meanwhile, the Mexican government logged 1,006.”
“As we partner, I am reminded of the beauty and complexity of human interactions, of the infinite potential that exists within each of us to build relationships grounded in trust and compassion,” writes dancer, choreographer, and scholar Ilya Vidrin (see Thresholds of Resistance). As director of the Boston-based applied research platform Partnering Lab, Vidrin and his team forefront how being in partnership is fertile ground to advance an embodied ethics of interaction. Combining technology, public heath, design, and dance, the Lab’s projects investigate movement and sensory-based methods designed for professional development of empathy, social responsibility, and cultural competence across disciplines. Vidrin also applies these strategies as lead on the Reciprocity Collaborative, an interdisciplinary network of creators invested in practice-based research, performance, and community engagement. Through workshops, seminars, and private coaching, as well as site-specific choreographic interventions, the Reciprocity Collaborative supports the wide implementation of embodied processes for collaboration.