WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.380 align:middle line:84% I'm still-- I need to get this perfect for me so I can see 00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:07.310 align:middle line:84% the page and I'm still magnifying-- 00:00:07.310 --> 00:00:08.250 align:middle line:90% It's still working? 00:00:08.250 --> 00:00:08.980 align:middle line:90% Would that work? 00:00:08.980 --> 00:00:09.480 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:11.520 align:middle line:90% Better, better. 00:00:11.520 --> 00:00:18.560 align:middle line:84% So Ancient Light has an interesting trajectory. 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:22.940 align:middle line:84% And I could talk a lot about how it came to be. 00:00:22.940 --> 00:00:28.160 align:middle line:84% But it begins by looking at colonization 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:32.070 align:middle line:84% and all that colonization has wrought. 00:00:32.070 --> 00:00:35.930 align:middle line:84% And so I'm going to read this early poem. 00:00:35.930 --> 00:00:39.680 align:middle line:90% Poem on Disappearance. 00:00:39.680 --> 00:00:47.810 align:middle line:84% Beginning with our continent, draw 1491. 00:00:47.810 --> 00:00:53.300 align:middle line:84% Each mountain, compass point Indigenous. 00:00:53.300 --> 00:00:58.790 align:middle line:84% Trace trade routes, languages, seasonal migrations-- 00:00:58.790 --> 00:01:01.650 align:middle line:90% don't become attached. 00:01:01.650 --> 00:01:07.160 align:middle line:84% Yes, reshape by discovery, displacement. 00:01:07.160 --> 00:01:11.910 align:middle line:84% Move your pencil point quickly now, as if pursued-- 00:01:11.910 --> 00:01:18.580 align:middle line:84% a cavalry of possession that erases homelands. 00:01:18.580 --> 00:01:27.060 align:middle line:84% We shrink, shrink in time lapse of colonial barter disappear. 00:01:27.060 --> 00:01:32.560 align:middle line:84% Now, draw a brown face painted for ceremony. 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:35.970 align:middle line:90% Half a face, nothing. 00:01:35.970 --> 00:01:40.930 align:middle line:84% Draw nothing around a crumpled bird body. 00:01:40.930 --> 00:01:42.840 align:middle line:90% No wings. 00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:48.240 align:middle line:84% Draw emptiness inside desecrated burial mounds, 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:53.310 align:middle line:84% a stretch of absence where fallopian tubes once 00:01:53.310 --> 00:01:55.410 align:middle line:90% curved in hope. 00:01:55.410 --> 00:02:00.040 align:middle line:84% Sketch void across buffalo prairie. 00:02:00.040 --> 00:02:05.950 align:middle line:84% Draw the empty of elk, of passenger pigeons, 00:02:05.950 --> 00:02:09.330 align:middle line:90% of silver trout. 00:02:09.330 --> 00:02:15.900 align:middle line:84% Conjure with your hand the face of girl blooming. 00:02:15.900 --> 00:02:19.270 align:middle line:84% Curves of face, her laughing eyes. 00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:23.220 align:middle line:84% You've seen them posted and amber alerted-- 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:29.580 align:middle line:90% missing, evening newsed, gone. 00:02:29.580 --> 00:02:33.430 align:middle line:84% Draw a woman wrapped in a blanket, 00:02:33.430 --> 00:02:36.750 align:middle line:90% a child's body weighted. 00:02:36.750 --> 00:02:43.860 align:middle line:84% Draw stones sinking into every river on the map. 00:02:43.860 --> 00:02:48.040 align:middle line:90% Draw carrion blackening skies. 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:54.160 align:middle line:84% Carrion plucking vision from round brown faces. 00:02:54.160 --> 00:02:56.220 align:middle line:90% Draw missing. 00:02:56.220 --> 00:02:58.800 align:middle line:90% Draw murdered. 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:01.620 align:middle line:90% Work carefully now. 00:03:01.620 --> 00:03:06.030 align:middle line:84% Turn your hand to the new continent. 00:03:06.030 --> 00:03:10.330 align:middle line:90% Again, picture it. 00:03:10.330 --> 00:03:10.830 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:03:10.830 --> 00:03:16.470 align:middle line:90% 00:03:16.470 --> 00:03:19.190 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:19.190 --> 00:03:19.690 align:middle line:90% 00:03:19.690 --> 00:03:20.580 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:23.920 align:middle line:84% I know tough to think about all of those things, 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:27.530 align:middle line:84% but I appreciate you thinking about them with me.