Digging Deeper: Offerings at Ishpadinaa
Public Space Research Intern, Mushtari Afroz, writes about her experience of Offerings at Ishpadinaa:
“For Nova Dance, I am engaging as an artistic researcher in public space, not in my usual roles as choreographer or performer. My focus is on bringing an awareness of the social, cultural, and political dynamics of public space to this artistic endeavor. While my reflections may not explicitly state this, they are also informed, at the time of writing, by the ongoing global struggle for voices to be heard amid brutal violence and genocide, including in my own homeland, Bangladesh,mirroringtheland's desiretobeacknowledged.”
Voicing the Land
Image Credits: Mushtari Afroz and Dewan Masud Karim
Can the land speak? If she could, what would she say? If systemic strategies fail to give her voice, can citizens’ tactics serve as her surrogate?
I asked myself these question as I placed my contemplative feet one in front of the other while walking north along Spadina Avenue from Dupont Street, passed Davenport Road, and climbed the Baldwin steps to arrive at the Spadina Museum. This journey was undertaken to conduct creative research for Nova Dance’s forthcoming project, ‘Offerings at Ishpadinaa’.
Before I begin reflecting on my journey—both the physical walk to, at and around the project site and my flâneur within the creative process—I want to clarify my role in this project. For Nova Dance, I am engaging as an artistic researcher in public space, not in my usual roles as choreographer or performer. My focus is on bringing an awareness of the social, cultural, and political dynamics of public space to this artistic endeavor. While my reflections may not explicitly state this, they are also informed, at the time of writing, by the ongoing global struggle for voices to be heard amid brutal violence and genocide, including in my own homeland, Bangladesh, mirroring the land's desire to be acknowledged.
Wall text on Spadina TTC Subway Station Platform Wall
Let me now begin: On my journey to the museum, the first thing that captured my attention was the wall writing inside Spadina Station, where 'Spadina'—an anglicized form of the
Indigenous word 'Ishpadinaa'—revealed its original meaning. Every source agreed that Ishpadinaa referred to a place elevated high above Lake Ontario, defined by its sloping inclines. This gesture by the city to honor the Indigenous perspective of this part of Toronto filled me with hope—though it later proved to be my naivety—believing I would learn more about the inclined land at the museum.
The museum tour briefly acknowledged the land as the traditional territory of various Indigenous nations, now home to diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. However, it predominantly focused on European settlements and the Austin Family’s wealth, with only minimal mention of the land’s topography. The Spadina Museum page on the City of Toronto’s website too reflects this emphasis, dedicating just a sentence to the land while highlighting the Austin Family’s prominence in early 20th-century Toronto.
Both the tour and the City of Toronto’s narrative made me question the neglect of the land's history, suggesting a disconnect between the land and the house, and implying that only the settlers' narrative of power and transformation on this land matters.
The system's neglect sparked a call within me, as if the land, the mother earth herself sought to be heard through her children’s voices and bodies. Embracing my walking practice as an embodied artistic and political act, I began to explore the Spadina Museum site, shifting focus from the house to the land while imagining and uncovering connections between them wherever possible.
Consequently, the act of walking became an act of thinking, questioning, discovering, and reflecting. I walked to the rocks and bricks that bear witness to the site's history, circled the large oak trees that I imagined once sheltered Indigenous people who passed this land on their way and whose leafy branches offered solace to the Austin family’s servants. I lay among their roots, envisioning their quiet resistance against settlers’ attempts to alter the land. I explored the often overlooked sloping terrain, rolling on it with my body. I wandered through the garden, chit-chatting with the gardener to discover native plants that still stand proudly among the introduced species. And finally, I continued walking north on Spadina to seek out the lost river in Nordheimer Ravine, which once flowed into the Don River. All my efforts were directed at embodying, listening to and imagining the land’s various voices before settler intervention that aimed at curating and reshaping her.
Rocks at the site, silent witnesses to the land’s history
Bricks that built Spadina House bear witness to the history
Trees at the site that I imagined provided shelter to many Indigenous people and solace to wounded souls
Ishpadinaa – The Highland on an Inclined Slope
Among the imported species, unbowed
Ishpadinaa – The Highland on an Inclined Slope
The lost creek at the Nordheimer Ravine
My embodied experience of walking through this land, coupled with photographic documentation and performers’ personal experiences of violence and oppression, now inform the creative process that project-lead Nova Bhattacharya and choreographer Neena Jayarajan are developing in rehearsals. This co-creation process is evolving through textual, auditory, and physical responses, using words from Nova Dance’s Namaskaram lexicon to express the land's voice through radical care and solidarity and will be presented at the Spadina Museum site through a multidisciplinary performance on August 29-31st.
I conclude this reflection by urging its readers to recognize that despite the darkest challenges of reforming systemic strategies, citizens' tactical approaches including those involving artistic practices engaged in public discourse will always find ways to emerge in the light and rise through the cracks of oppression
Voices silenced will rise through oppression’s cracks