Excerpt from Doe Hoyer’s essay “Honoring these Lands and Songs” – Why ‘Sacred Lands’?

Sacred Lands is the theme because C. Onyx Li [Executive Director of Music that Makes Community] and I also live in a metropolitan area built literally on top of numerous sites held sacred to the Dakota people. We live in a place where repair with the land’s original people is both deeply needed and also beginning to happen through organizing with a Dakota-led land recovery project, Makoce Ikikcupi. In my participation with the Minnesota Repair Communities, I see that members from the dominant culture are shifting their perceptions of the land. I see that as a group we are moving into place-based awareness that will not have us negate the histories, both sacred and violent, of this land that holds us all.

We need songs that move even more of us into reverence, relationship, and repair with these sacred lands everywhere. This is why we put a call for songs out into the world, and these are the beautiful songs that have come forward, for sharing at this time.

This collection of songs might also be perceived as a web of relationships. Through this project, we have connected more deeply with song creators and Indigenous activist friends, shared songs with integrity to their origins, and met new people committed to the work of repair, reconnection with the Earth and Spirit, and decolonization. And we hope all of this will expand

further outwards, as this resource becomes available for public use.

You too – dear reader, singer, song leader – are invited into this web of relationships.

We’ve added links to some of the artists’ websites and Patreons below, or other places they ask you to direct time and funds to honor the songs they have shared. Several of the creators featured in this collection are professional song leaders who make their livelihoods from sharing their original songs. Invitations to support on Patreon or pursue links to more information are also really invitations to whole bodies of profound musical work that fits into this style of group singing. This collection is offered freely, as a gift and a resource for this movement. What will you give back in return? This, after all, is reciprocity: a gift for a gift. This is an invitation to be mindful of how regularly extractive logic appears, even in how we relate to our artists. It is an invitation to care for our artists, and to start reimagining how collectives can engage in systems of care, including those who share their gift of songs and creative expression with us.

Songs from our ‘Sacred Lands’ playlist:

• Let Us Work Together by Orion Johnstone and Nehemiah Luckett

• • • Patreon: www.patreon.com/NehemiahLuckett 

• May This Body Be A Bridge by Theresa Martin

• • • Patreon: www.patreon.com/temartin
    • Instagram: www.instagram.com/te.martin
    • Make a donation via Venmo @theresa-martin 

• Return To The Sacred by Teri Lynn Grunthaner

• • • Teri encourages donations to the Kaw Nation’s Kanza Language program. Please mail donations to the Kanza Heritage Society, in care of Pauline Sharp, 515 S. Main, No. 312, Wichita, KS 67202.

• Let the Earth Live Through Me by Moon Clemetson

• • • Make a donation via venmo for Moon-Clemetson: paypal.me/moonclemetson 
    • Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/moon-clemetson  

• Calling by Doe Hoyer

• • • Doe encourages listeners to learn more about Oak Flat, Apache Stronghold, and consider making a donation at www.apache-stronghold.com/ 

• Dear Sacred Earth by Lucy London

• • • Patreon: patreon.com/LucyLondon
    • Instagram: @lucylondonis 
    • Website: www.lucylondon.art/

• Set It Right Again by Ana Hernández

• • • Website: anahernandez.org/

• Land Acknowledgement Song by ahlay blakely

• • Please make a donation to The Ocean Clean Up. Tending to the waters, clearing them of plastic for Whales and all beings.
  • Patreon: www.patreon.com/alexandrablakely 
  • Bandcamp: ahlayblakely.bandcamp.com/album/spells-from-the-unknown
  • Website: www.ahlayblakely.earth/ 

Listen to a selection of Sacred Land songs on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/doe-752482452/sets/sacred-lands-playlist-songs?si=0375e6b40a884af1851d503a89fcc6da&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 

Access the full ‘Sacred Lands Playlist’ resource: https://dismantlediscovery.org/sacred-lands-playlist/