Who Are We Becoming?
The Great Work of Our Time Needs All of Us
Céad Míle Fáilte
In my ancestral language of Gaeilge (Irish), a hundred thousand welcomes.
You have come upon a place of invitation and inquiry.
This space is a living collaboration and exploration, an ever-expanding community sharing narratives of decolonial healing with and within
the places we call home.
As a white woman living in Indigenous Lands, and as a soulful human existing in this time of ecological, social, and spiritual crises, I co-create this place of possibility with those I am learning from and working alongside, and with you.
Welcome.
Greetings Friends,
I'm Aleyah!
I am dedicated to co-creating knowledge that fosters practical and spiritual regeneration between humans and the more-than-human world. I work through a decolonizing and trauma-informed lens, and I seek to amplify the voices of BIPOC and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people.
My work with and for Indigenous communities deeply informs my evolving sense of identity, belonging, and relational accountability. Remembering and reclaiming my own Celtic ancestral wisdom, our language, and our storylines has gifted me with an unfolding critical spirituality that serves both my art and activism.
As a Word Witch & Research Coach, I help academics, coaches, and content creators with all facets of creative communication, comprehensive editing, and knowledge strategy.
Acknowledging the Land, its People,
and My Relational Responsibilities
Currently, I live in Kitigan Zibi, the territory of the Omamiwininiwag, Algonquin Nation. As an uninvited guest in this place, I understand that it is upon me to know, respect, and embody the responsibilities of my treaty relationships. I honour the Algonquin and Anishinaabeg nations in whose Lands I have lived my entire life and I recognize the inherent rights of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples across their homelands. This Land is not my own, and yet it is the only home I have ever known. My ancestors came from Ireland two and four generations ago, fleeing genocide, colonial abuse, and enforced poverty only to become complicit in the same violence here in Turtle Island. Today, I am choosing a different way of relating here. I am committed to dismantling systems of oppression - to listening, learning, and taking accountable action towards building relationships of respect, peace, and friendship with and within the places I call home.
In 2016, in partnership with Indigenous Elders, knowledge holders, and friends, I embarked on an intricate learning journey to find out what might happen if settlers such as myself began to "Remember our Original Instructions" What has emerged is a weaving of poetry, story-sharing, and diverse cultural narratives into a landscape of questions concerning our sense of identity and belonging and our responsibilities to our relationships with Self, Others, and Land. This work has been my prayerful offering and my embodied spiritual practice. It is a basket of stories, reflections, continuing spirals of conversations, and deep engagement with several fields of thought including settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, critical whiteness, sustainability studies, trauma psychology, transformational education, and Celtic studies. The response to this work has been truly incredible. I am humbled and profoundly grateful to everyone who has supported this ongoing learning journey and to all of you who have so enthusiastically encouraged me to turn this writing into a book for wider audiences.
“We all must become healers in a wounded space."
Marie Battiste
Mi'kmaw Educator and Author, Decolonizing Conference, 2018
Recently, I had the opportunity to be a guest on The Deeper Pulse podcast. It was such a treat to sit down with Candice Schutter for a conversation about the complexities and nourishing possibilities of decolonizing identity work.
"I believe decolonization to be a profoundly spiritual endeavour;
it involves courage, surrender, uncertainty, trust, grief,
the transmutation of deeply embedded shame and denial,
as well as radical imagination, hope, and love.
In essence, to decolonize is to heal."
