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Topic

Dance Land: Community-Based Dance, Youth, and Relationships with Land

School of Child and Youth Care

Date & location

• Friday, August 16, 2024
• 11:00 A.M.
• Cornett Building, Room B129

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Alison Gerlach, School of Child and Youth Care, ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø (Supervisor)
• Dr. Shemine Gulamhusein, School of Child and Youth Care, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Darlene Clover, Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Deborah Rutman, School of Social Work, UVic

Abstract

In 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) announced 94 Calls to Action, one of which called upon the Canada Council for the Arts to fund Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to collaborate on projects that contribute to the reconciliation process. Reconciliation is a highly contested term, and before and after this announcement, several Canadian scholars and artists recognized Indigenous land sovereignty as central to this critical discussion. This inquiry is inspired by the work of these scholars and the spirit of the TRC Call to Action 83. In collaboration with the local ‘Native Friendship Centre’ and community youth programming, this arts-based inquiry aimed to explore how youth can use expressive movement to explore their relationships with land, and how this inquiry can contribute towards relational practice in the field of Child and Youth Care (CYC). To explore these collaborative processes, I co-designed Dance Land as a method grounded in critical facilitation of community-based dance that was informed by critical land inquiry and engaged youth participants in exploring their relationships with land. This emergent process revealed that the youth participants’ creative decision-making and my critical facilitation were rooted in embodied ways of knowing. This way of knowing is highlighted by dance scholar Barbour as thinking in movement. Thinking in movement can be attributed to relationality within Dance Land’s dance making process. Findings suggest that embodied ways of knowing can help youth explore their relationships with land and may be taken up by CYC practitioners in order to deepen their understandings of relational practice. Further studies on the impact of embodied ways of knowing experienced through dance may further enhance relational CYC practices.