Following in Plantain's Footsteps

Participatory performative inquiry
2017, 2018

This work takes up Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's call for settler societies to unlearn the mindset of colonization through learning from plants.

This work explores human dialogue with the plant known as ‘White Man’s Footprint’ or Common Plantain. Plantain is a non-native plant that followed early European settlers to Turtle Island. It is regarded with the special designation ‘naturalized’, reflecting its ability to co-exist with native ecology in useful and non-invasive ways.

Through reading, attention, drawing and mapping our sensory experience, we conversed with Plantain as a way to explore pathways to being in a time/place of ecological crisis and unresolved settler colonialism.

I created this work in collaboration with Plantain, herbalist Danielle Gehl and respected Mi’kmaq Anishnaabekwe Nokomis Carol Tyler.

Exhibition History
Mashkiki Gitigaan, Guelph 2017. Performed along the Eramosa River with Danielle Gehl.
Lisa Hirmer: Of Containers and Firestarts , Cambridge Galleries 2018. Performed at RARE Charitable Research Reserve with Carol Tyler.

Photos:  Chelsea Brant, Lisa Hirmer and Christina Kingsbury. Drawings by participants, with Plantain.