with dreams of poets and the songs of seals

with the dreams of poems and the songs of seals

Totem Latamat
Return to the Earth Ceremony at The Crichton

The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,

The joyless winter-day,

Let others fear, to me more dear

Than all the pride of May….

(Robert Burns, Winter: a Dirge)

Totem Latamat’s story began long before Jun Tiburcio and the people of Cuhumatlan approached a cedar tree in the woods of Vera Cruz. For us, this story really started then with images carved out of that scented wood, images that embodied elements of Jun’s culture and carried a message from them to the rest of the world as represented by the gathering of parliaments, countries, cultures, optimism and faiths at COP26

Indigenous artwork, Totem Latamat has traveled over 9,000km from Mexico to UK for COP26. Moving up the country, the 4.5m Indigenous Mexican response to climate change is travelling to important cultural hubs across the UK including London, Coventry, Milton Keynes and Manchester drawing powerful links between Indigenous experience and local heritage. From the Border Crossings Origins Festival news about Totem Latamat. Find out more here

There is a personal account of the Totem’s travels by Graham Harvey here. Graham visited the Totem in most of its venues across the UK

At the end of COP26, at Jun’s request, Totem Latamat was to be given to the earth: a gift from the earth of Mexico to that of Scotland. With this gesture, the Totem would invite continued reflection on the connections between communities, facing challenges and processes that cross boundaries, defy politics and affect everyone and everything: human and non-human alike.

Return to the Earth

Totem Latamat, we welcome you
With air and breath,
With fire and hope,
With stone and death
With love and passion 

 (From Welcoming, 1)

This sense of earth-reaching-to-earth and a gift that is offered to all communities informed a ceremony that came from an environmental (animist) awareness of the world. Creeping Toad, Border Crossings and other friends created a ceremony that belonged to no particular religious tradition but where there was space for individuals to find their own sense of connection and prayer as they wished. The imagery used was of these islands: speaking of weather and wildlife, of music and laughter, children playing and watchful grandparents. From fungi to birds, everyone was drawn into our reception of Totem Latamat.

Michael Walling from Border Crossings setting the scene

The Totem spent a week standing in the grounds of The Crichton in Dumfries and being used as a focus for discussions and workshops. With its expanding role as a centre for community activity, The Crichton offers the Totem a resting place where it will remain a centre for discussion, challenge and inspiration.

taking the strain

Totem Latamat, we rejoice in you
with playing children
with resting birds
with rooted fungi
with burrowing grubs 

(From Reception: how will we receive Totem)

On a wind-swept Saturday morning in the middle of November, we gathered round the Totem, speaking words of welcome and words of reception. Robbie Burns’ wonderful Winter Dirge” set the scene. Reaching out from human perspectives to the wider landscape, we invited the environs of The Crichton to embrace Totem, to welcome it into this world of wind and rain, high skies and flying geese.

Totem Latamat,
With the earth of our land,
The bones of our people,
The dreams of our poets,
The songs of our seals,
We embrace you. 

(From Embracing: a wider and older landscape than us)

We recognised the invitation and acknowledged the challenge that the Totem brings: inviting us to become our own Hummingbird messengers and challenging us to be the wide-seeing eagles with strength under their wings.

Totem under snow, late November 2021

Totem Latamat, may
Our dreamers,
Our thinkers,
Our talkers,
Our singers,
Our storytellers,
Our warriors,
Our poets,
Our grandmothers,
Our grandchildren,
All our people,
Each of our people,
Totem Latamat,
May all our folk
Be inspired by you 

(from inspiration, acknowledging and accepting )


And we toppled Totem so that when the ropes were dropped, Totem lay on the ground ready for flowers to grow around the hummingbirds, an open door for the wasps we found looking for somewhere to hibernate, an adventure ground for a cuddly rabbit and a child’s inquisitive fingers. The Totem will rest there on the lawns of The Crichton as the lawns around it are planted with wildflowers. There are already plans for a seasonal cycle of visiting workshops, creating new stories of connections between people and place, hearing of people’s hummingbird moments and their eagle resolution, of the ideas and actions they have planted of the upraised arms they have offered to their family, friends and the rest of the world.

some of the ceremony team

Totem Latamat,

Here, we offer you

Our friendship,

Our laughter,

Our silence,

Our reflection.

Totem Latamat,

Here we offer you

A long slow sleep on grass,

Under sun,

Under moon,

Under our wind and rain,

Here we offer

Dissolution,

The slow dance of decay

Of becoming everything else who visits you 

(from: Reception: what do we offer)

Visitors stayed. Lingered. Stopped to touch, to talk, to wonder. We found our first new residents of the Totem with the wasp queens mentioned above: looking for somewhere to hibernate. Reciprocity and respect lie within the Totem's messages and within many indigenous understandings of our relationship with the earth and it was encouraging to watch and listen and share with people their awareness of our need to give back - to acknowledge what is given to us so freely by the world around us. Without us saying anything, people left gifts: tokens from pockets and bags. People simply touched, stroked wood, felt the curves of a hummingbird's head, the folds of a wing's feathers and went away with a token in return: a red rag, a strip of cloth to wear as a bracelet, to tie up hair, to hide ina pocket until cloth, story and resolution are shared somewhere else.

Totem Latamat might have "retired" but it is still telling stories. Its hummingbirds are still sharing messages.

You can watch a short film of the totem at the Crichton on the centre's website:   https://www.crichton.co.uk/totem-latamat-has-retired-to-the-crichton/

The full text of the ceremony will be available if anyone wants to see it, be annoyed by it, or adapt it for their own use shortly. A link for a download will be posted here

A big thank you

• to the Return to the Earth team: Michael Walling, Ian Buckley and Graham Harvey
• To Alex Alberda from Manchester Museum for deft application of ideas and scissors
• To the Open University for being there, supporting, encouraging, joining in
• To The Crichton team for their hospitality, warmth and imagination
• To the Border Crossings Origins Team for drawing all this together
• And to Jun Tiburcio, the artists, and the people of Cuhumatlan in Vera Cruz, Mexico who gave us the travelling wonder that is the Totem Latamat

Photos c/o The Crichton, Dumfries and Mike Bolam Photography

Notes

1: All these verses come from different sections of the Return to the Earth. Ceremony held at The Crichton on Saturday 20th November 2021

 

The Edge of Winter

 

When the snow comes

The first day the snow comes, the first night, the first day the roads close, is always special. Mid-week, it brings those “will I get out in the morning? When do I phone and say I can’t make it” questions. This year, the snow came on a Friday night and Saturday became a comfortable “O, well, not to worry” day. All plans dissolved. The Farmer’s Market in Bakewell. A big food shop. A drive out to walk on a hill. In busier days, weekend snow would still have woken anxiety – move the car at the first opportunity, be ready to get out for next week’s storying. But while my business is still here, the busy-ness isn’t: rebuilding is slow, so the snow comes without worries for once and offers a chance to simply pause and appreciate.

 

This first day of snow becomes a morning for small jobs, frittering things that can be interrupted in a moment by the call of the world beyond the window. It’s that transformation that enchants. A world gone monochrome. And the muffled silence the snow brings. And the emptied streets with an occasional car creeping along. A 4WD goes past boldly, too boldly, and slides round a corner. But pedestrians can stride along the road where those few car tracks make for easier progress.

 

I can’t resist that call. I have to stop and simply stand and watch. Watch nothing really. The tall larch letting the snow slide off its branches. The black snowflakes of jackdaws blowing across the sky. Next door’s garden, its edges blanketed smooth. I keep an eye on Corbar Edge rising beyond the town. Cloud gathers above the hills in a backdrop and I know that if the grey spills over, a wave breaking through the trees, swallowing that horizon, there will be more snow on the way.

 

Tidying the library. Rearranging books in their piles. Trying to trim and failing. How do I compare a 1940s guide to “Wayside and Woodland Trees” with a book about unicorns and Bob Trubshaw’s Sacred Landscapes? I don’t, of course, I just shuffle them and leave them to watch the cold gather.

 

I don’t resist for that long. The day isn’t that long. And by mid-afternoon the temperature is dropping again, the slush growing crusts, the air clearing, brittle. It is windy and the trees on the hill sway like kelp. The wind has combed them vigorously. Twigs and branches litter the ground. Deep in the woods, there have been bigger casualties. Beeches uprooted. I feel vulnerable here, watching a new fall. Just a branch but its fall is silent. No warning. There have been other people here: footprints everywhere. The parallel scores of a small sled. A single tread. Someone rode a bike through this?

 

Now, as the afternoon fades, I have the woods to myself. The woodland edge, where it opens onto a hillside field is a sledging run with attendant shouts, screams, laughter, over-excited dogs and tumbling people. But for now, the enchantment of the woods under snow is mine and I can walk into a silence that echoes through the woods and fills me with the edge of winter.

Rabbits, wolves and deer: Totem Latamat at The Crichton

Rabbits for quickness of thinking

Totem Latamat at the Crichton

Totem Latamat came the The Crichton to share a story, to offer an invitation and a challenge

The Totem’s story started in a wood on the eastern coast of Mexico with a prayer and a ceremony to a cedar tree. The story continued through a village carving its words as images, memories, hopes and fears into the wood and sailing the tall carved Totem, across the wide seas to the UK. Over the autumn, the Totem has travelled the UK, reaching Glasgow in time to stand in the Hidden Garden throughout COP26. Then, Totem Latamat arrived at The Crichton in Dumfries.

 

This isn’t the place to go into all the details of the Totem – you can explore the wonder of its travels on facebook or through its own page on the Border Crossings Origins Festival website.

 

The Totem carries figures: a rattlesnake, a skull, a person with her arms upraised, a cluster of hummingbirds. An eagle supports the whole edifice....Every figure, from plaited rope seedlings to that climbing snake, hold their own stories, their own messages to share. Here, I want to pick up the Totem’s invitation to become Hummingbirds – to become the messengers who speak, who share, who inspire; and the challenge to become Eagles. To be an Eagle is to act with strength and honour and to see the wider picture, to see the world as a whole, not as lots of individual people or towns or countries but as a wider connected world, where everything is connected to everything else, however distant.

 

Here, we will celebrate one day of the Totem’s journey: marking the responses of the children of Holywood Primary School in Dumfries. They spent the day with us on Friday at The Crichton, enjoying the grounds (best visitor shop ever, we were told. And it’s free! Triumphant pockets stuffed with pine cones, conkers and acorns), meeting the Totem: drawing it, touching it, talking about it…...…..what is the message? If they were telling this story what animals would children choose to best embody – not the action that is needed (reduce, reuse, recycle, etc) but the qualities we need to find and foster in ourselves to make those actions viable, embedded, enduring….

 

• Rabbit brings thinking quickly, acting fast, solving problems (well, you try keep in them out of your vegetables!)
• Wolves remind us that we are strongest when we work together
• Lions, likewise, need the family, need the support of their friends
• Godzilla tells us that sometimes we need to be fierce
• Mice remind us that we can always find a way into a situation
• Deer help us be strong and know when to watch, when to run
• Hedgehogs will bring cleverness, bravery and being ready to be loud
• And the Octopus will help us be intelligent, solve problems, be strong, and as an octopus you can help protect the world

There will be more Totem posts shortly, but for now, I would like to thanks:

• the artists and storytellers of Holywood Primary School, Dumfries
• To the Open University for being there, supporting, encouraging, joining in
• To The Crichton team for their hospitality, warmth and imagination
• To the Border Crossings Origins team for drawing all this together
• And to Jun Tiburcio, the artists, and the people of Cuhumatlan in Vera Cruz, Mexico who gave us the travelling wonder that is the Totem Latamat