RESEARCH
How can specific discourses concerning Indigenous bodily rights be adressed through choreography and international performing arts?
Solo performed on repatriation of human remains.
Photo by Sage Szkabarnicki Stuart, AIRY Yamanashi
Choreographer and Researcher Marit Shirin Carolasdotter has a Master’s degree in International Performing Arts at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) where her main subject is concerning bodily rights and soil-bound repatriation of culture, using international collaborations with artists and researchers to highlight bodily rights for indigenous research as well as land rights.
Along with her research, she produces solo productions, lectures and co-writing/working with scholars from Sápmi, U.S and Japan.
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MA thesis: Shifting perspectives through choreography-a study bodily rights from an Indigenous perspective
This study is exploring how choreography and dance are addressing the issue of exploitation of land and bodies, directly weaving together ideas of ancestry and indigeneity through gathered testimonies from three Indigenous choreographers. The work allows for activist ideas to shift the perspective on humans’ relationship to soil and its emancipation from coloniality by acknowledging the ancestral body as an intrinsic, lived experience within the Indigenous choreographer.
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Presentation at Dansens Hus & Royal Academy of Music, SASS Seattle.
Co-writer: Dr. Kelsey A. Fuller.
This presentation describes the process, goals, and methods of a multi-modal collaborative project entitled, “Humans & Soil.” Using music, dance, poetry, research, and education, we explore the connection and corporeality of human bodies and land rights from Indigenous Sámi (Sweden) and Ainu (Japan) perspectives. “Humans & Soil” confronts the non-repatriation of Indigenous human remains, which for centuries have been forcefully extracted from their communities, studied, and displayed as artifacts in museums and other institutions. -
Presentation at "Mountain Talks, Amanda Piña & Tanzquartier Wien
Presentation at Tanzquartier Wien as a part of “The Mountain Talks” by Amanda Piña, and “The School of Mountains and Water”:
Industrialization of the rivers and old forests is a disruption of past, present and future utopias, and a dismembering of the embodied experiences of Indigenous peoples. Earth-bound beings are co dependent on each other for a harmonious ecology of existing in this world, and by highlighting artistic practices that is built embodied Indigenous testimonies can shift the perspective toward supporting Mother Earth instead of destroying her.
Ainu - Sámi Cultural Exchange
Spring 2019 Marit Shirin was granted a 4-week residency at Izumi Sakamoto/AIRY Artist in Residence in Kofu City.
The aim was to create a solo performance based on her research on the non-repatriation of indigenous bones. She focused on helping the Ainu, the Indigenous peoples of Japan, by highlighting the disrespectful and morbid action of the Japanese government experimentation on Ainu bones. The performance solo aimed to evoke questions on the taboo of the Indigenous body, the lack of knowledge on ongoing colonisation and exploitation of Indigenous culture and to create a dialogue between Sámi and Ainu organisations on activism and art.
Collaborations:
Ainu Womens’ Association in Sapporo, CEMIPOS research Centre, Izumi Sakamoto, Hokkaido Shimbun Press, Sameradion/SVT Sápmi
The main study conducted is through the corporeality of humans’ relationship to soil, challenging the stereotypical views on the indigenous peoples’ relationship to nature by materialising the body in memorial space, examining the concrete aspects of the body despite cultural connotations. The background behind the creation of the project was to bring forth the idea of freeing oneself from formed identity by modes of power and instead show the direct consequences of how exploitation of land and resources are directly affecting living and dead bodies in indigenous communities.
In 2019, the project collaboratated with Ainu Womens’ Association, Sapporo Japan and with CEMIPOS research centre where Marit Shirin had her premiere in AIRY artist-in-residency in Kofu City April 2019, and further developed her project with a performance in Sapporo Pirka Kotan (Ainu cultural centre) in Hokkaido in May 2019.
Human Remains
(Marit Shirin): My main choreographic study on bodily rights started in Hokkaido, where a collaboration initiated together with Pr. Hiroshi Maruyama and Masumi Tanaka, on the non-repatriation of Ainu bones. By drawing parallels to the discourse within Sápmi and the significant number of human remains still kept by museums and institutions world-wide, the need for retribution was paramount to my own reflection on the body. The taboos on death, bodies as museal representations as a result of horrid experiments by these institutions, were the main catalyst to my work as a choreographer and activist.
Video by Marit Shirin, a visit to Hokkaido University, and the first international collaboration between Humans & Soil and Japan
Click for listening to the interview by Sameradion/SVT Sápmi,
or click here
Collaborating Researchers
Dr. Kelsey A. Fuller
Kelsey A. Fuller is a ethnomusicologist with her previous Ph.d attained at the University of Colorado Boulder. She recently finished her dissertation about Sami popular and contemporary music, cultural politics, and gender; Sounding Sápmi in Multimedia: gender, politics and Indigenous solidarity in contemporary Sámi music.
Kelsey is also a musician, photographer, and enjoys working in libraries and archives.
She met Marit Shirin in Ubmejen Biejvieh, Sámi week in Umeå 2020, and is an ongoing co-writer with Humans & Soil. In May 2021, they both presented their first introduction to a new series of writings named Indigenous Autonomy, Ecological Advocacy, and Creative Exploration, The Humans & Soil Project at Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, SASS Conference, Seattle
CEMiPoS research Centre
On September 4th 2021, Director Hiroshi Maruyama and researcher/artist Katarzyna Pastuszak of CEMiPoS participated in the seminar “Indigenous Bodily Rights in Choreography”, organised by Norrlandsoperan and the Re:think Festival in collaboration with Humans & Soil, led by the seminarʼs initiator and moderator Marit Shirin Carolasdotter. The seminar was held live at Norrlandsoperan Konsertsalen and online.
Together with Marit Shirin and the Sámi choreographers and dancers; Marika Renhuvud and Liv Aira, the CEMiPoS representatives discussed the potential of choreography and performing arts to address Indigenous bodily rights.