Speaking, Weaving, Passing On: Rematriation in Practice

Sharing and passing down knowledge is a practice that has persisted in Indigenous communities across the world, despite attempts to devastate it. Women, mothers, grandmothers and aunties – all matriarchal figures – have long been stalwarts in keeping Indigenous ways of being, doing and knowing alive. The opening day of ‘Ancestral Knowledges: My Grandmother Is My School’ carried this notion forward as participants shared performances, art, language and research grounded in their respective cultures.

The morning and afternoon featured a lineup of Indigenous women from around the globe: the Mataaho Collective, Māori women from Aotearoa; Tanya Lukin Linklater, Sugpiaq from the Kodiak Archipelago of southwestern Alaska; Dr Robin R.R. Gray, Ts'msyen from Canada and Mikisew Cree from Fort Chipewyan; and Amrita Hepi, a Bundjalung and Ngāpuhi woman from Australia. The evening was rounded out with a screening of three films by Yakthung artist Subash Thebe Limbu, Uzbek filmmaker Saodat Ismailova and Colombian artist Ana Bravo-Pérez.

Rematriation, an Indigenous feminist paradigm, was the thread most prominently woven through the day, with talks and performances offering ripe ground for exploring the power of transgenerational learning to keep culture alive. Language held a powerful role throughout the day with many of the artists speaking and sharing in their own languages, especially when introducing themselves – itself an act of passing on ancestral knowledges and resistance. It was particularly heartening, despite being so far from each of our traditional homelands, to find the commonalities that lie at the foundations of Indigenous beliefs globally: reciprocity, storytelling and care for each other and our lands, waters and skies. This symposium was a space to share in the power of Indigeneity, matriarchy and what a future that centres both could be.

Opening the day, Mataaho Collective welcomed attendees into the space and set the tone with their collective weaving workshop. The artist collective of four Māori women practices a ‘four brain, eight hand approach’ under a single authorship, using traditional weaving techniques to produce immense works from both natural and industrial materials which are revered in their communities. In an introductory panel hosted by Kimberley Moulton (Yorta Yorta woman and Adjunct Curator, Indigenous Art), the collective’s Sarah Hudson and Erena Arapere-Baker shared insights into their practice and recent works.

Hudson acknowledged that their practice was not new. ‘We come from weavers… that’s always been done collectively’, she said. Moulton noted the scale of their work, which often fills an entire space with intricate designs and sometimes sprawls across the ceiling, as in their installation Takapau 2022 which informed the materials used in the workshop. The piece uses reflective straps typically used to secure loads onto trucks and is inspired by finely woven mats that are used to add mana (energy and spirit) to a space during significant events such as weddings, births and tangihanga (Māori funeral rites).

Arapere-Baker remarked on the immense scale, subverting the trope of women’s work being small and delicate, and the significance in the physical demands of installing such works. ‘We really love the physicality of our work’, said Arapere-Baker. ‘Installing it ourselves, there’s this kind of physical struggle that we often have with it, that we kind of feel that it needs to have at times’.

The workshop gave attendees the opportunity to move from being consumers of works and knowledge to active participants – sitting shoulder to shoulder, communicating, finding solutions together to recreate the woven designs. Through this, attendees experienced what has made weaving a sacred vessel for knowledge sharing and reciprocity across so many Indigenous cultures.

The notion of practice keeping knowledge and connection alive continued through Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performance piece A vessel is an atmosphere distilled, a work-in-process commission for Fisher Centre at Bard College, New York, that will premiere in 2026. The performance combined spoken poetry with dance and storytelling, and reflected on the connection Indigenous people continue to have with treasured cultural objects that were taken and placed in institutions across the world. The piece referenced specific Sugpiaq weavings taken by colonial regimes in the nineteenth century, which are now held at the Kunstkamera in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Linklater’s piece speaks not only to a longing to connect with ancestral belongings, but also to the need to come to terms with the reality that physical reconnection may never be possible, and the grief that accompanies that realisation.

The performance was punctuated by long silences accompanied by the controlled and fluid movement of fellow performer Talia Dixon, before Linklater would resume reciting another portion of her poem. Combined at times with recordings of language and the sound of traditional instruments, the piece reflected how Indigenous language and movement remain alive in practice, and how ancestral belongings, distant from community care and access, can be reconnected to their homelands – in this case, through performance.

Wearing a necklace made by her eldest daughter, Linklater also spoke to the idea of rematriation and her role in the passing-on of knowledge to her daughters as they learn and speak their languages. Her youngest daughter featured in the performance through audio recordings of her speaking the Cree language. ‘I see in my daughters the ways in which they’re taking up these lineages on both sides, and sometimes, because I don’t make in the same way as their other side did, I’m trying to figure out what is it that I’m passing on. A lot of times it’s that radical love of my aunties, my grandmother, all of these women in my family’, Linklater said.

In contrast to Linklater’s consistently patient and measured showing, Amrita Hepi’s performance RINSE 2025 felt at times urgent and dynamic, fusing dance performance and a semi-autobiographical telling of her artistic career and her experience in the industry as an Indigenous woman. Similarly though, Hepi’s performance reaches into the past, ebbing and flowing between pop culture and political references to criticism of colonial thought and paying homage to ancestral knowledge.

While Linklater and Hepi connect to the past through movement and language in the present, Dr Robin R.R. Gray’s keynote looked to return to Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing to guide our present and future.

Gray opened her speech with a story about catching up with her mother and her aunty, the late Stolo poet, author, activist, orator and educator Lee Maracle. Alongside reminiscing on childhood memories and conversing about current events, Gray shared the considerations she was grappling with in her latest repatriation research project. Taking the opportunity of being in her aunty’s presence, Gray asked her if she thought the idea of rematriation was simply semantics and was ‘limited to the realm of discourse’: ‘She assured me that rematriation is a critical ontology that people need to understand and activate because it involves a different way of orienting oneself and being in the world’. Gray continued: ‘Aunty Lee reminded me that day that rematriation is a potentially transformative concept that deserves more intellectual attention alongside community-based activations. I’m answering my Aunty Lee’s call to action to highlight the value and urgency of the rematriation imperative’.

Gray does not have a singular definition for rematriation. Instead, she has a ‘three-pronged approach to it as an Indigenous feminist paradigm, an embodied praxis of recovery and return and a socio-political mode of resurgence and refusal’. Further to this, Gray explained the scope of rematriation as: ‘the return of stolen lands (land back); return of displaced people to homelands; protection of lands, waterways and sacred sites; reclaiming Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; reactivating Indigenous laws, ethics and protocols; restoring women’s and two-spirit political roles in Indigenous governance systems; return of cultural heritage (bodies, objects and knowledges); and food sovereignty’.

Gray’s keynote was an accessible introduction to rematriation as well as a layered exploration of her research and its possible applications within future governance. Through an in-depth and nuanced deconstruction of this paradigm, she made it clear that rematriation is not a return to a ‘romanticised past’, nor just turning patriarchy on its head, but rather offering a totally different system. Rematriation is not simply a supposition, but rather looking to ways of being, doing and knowing that are inherent to our families and communities, today and into the future.

The day closed as attendees were invited to the screening of three films in the Tate’s Starr Cinema: Subash Thebe Limbu’s Ladhamba Tayem: Future Continuous 2025, Saodat Ismailova’s 18,000 Worlds 2023 and Ana Bravo-Pérez’s Mother Earth’s Inner Organs 2022-2024. Each film offered distinct visions of Indigenous futures and worldviews, confronting audiences with the ongoing threats of exploitation and land decimation – urgent reminders of why rematriation remains not just theoretical, but essential.

The opening day of ‘Ancestral Knowledges: My Grandmother Is My School’ spoke to the significance of our matrilineal teachers and knowledge holders, and how we can honour them through rematriation as we look to preserve our languages, stories and cultures for future generations.