by Ella Latta Suazo and Kim Farris-Manning
Story carries. Memory is passed on through story; place is situated through story. Story is heard, story is told, story is shared, story is preserved. Story is laden and versatile, nimble and weighty. Story both creates and is created; story passes on, and is passed on. Story helps us to situate ourselves by carrying and conveying the memory of place. (Farris-Manning 2025).
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Story unfolded and carried us through three creative projects over the past four months, as part of our Sound Studies course with Dr. Ellen Waterman at Carleton University.
We each brought our own research questions as we embarked on a joint research-creation adventure:
Blue Outline is our creative grounding wherein we established:
Our process evolved iteratively, embracing both the research and creation to guide us. Ella shared two sonic memories with Kim that each became their own projects; we realized afterward that while *SPLASH!* addresses Kim's question more closely, fant(H)ôme puts Ella's into action. |
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creative grounding
“We cannot directly access or share [other people’s] personal individual, biographical, shared or ‘collective’ memories, experiences or imaginations…however, we can, by attuning our bodies, rhythms, tastes, ways of seeing and more to theirs, begin to become involved in making places that are similar to theirs and thus feel that we are similarly emplaced” (Pink 2010). |
storysharing 1
Moving "towards an affective, emergent, relational and more-than-representational approach to doing-research" (Shannon and Truman 2018, 62). |
storysharing 2
"Seremetakis [1994] suggests that 'sensory memory or the mediation on the historical substance of experience is not mere repetition but transformation that brings the past into the present as a natal event' (qtd in Pink 2009, 23). "If space is...a simultaneity of stories-so-far...then places are collections of those stories" (Doreen Massey qtd in Pink 2009). |
Indigenous Research Methodologies and Storywork
Our work with story builds on Kim's research on Indigenous Research Methodologies and Storywork from fall 2025. We are grateful to thinkers and creators such as Q’um Q’um Xiiem Jo-ann Archibald, Gabrielle Brochu, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Margaret Kovach, Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor, Timothy San Pedro, Dylan Robinson, and Sweeney Windchief for rooting us on such a solid ground.
STORY
Kim: Let's begin with story. Stories have depth and are made up of layers. Both stories and memories are constructed and continue to develop over time. Cultural theorist Roger I. Simon describes a story space as “a space that is intended to ask questions and leave questions unanswered as well as offering space for new ways of reading and interpreting documents, objects, and memories” (2006, 201).
This spaciousness aligns with Indigenous studies scholar Q’um Q’um Xiiem Jo-ann Archibald’s description of “reverence” as one of the four ethical principles of Indigenous Storywork, who says: “I think that the concept of reverence is one where we can learn about it, a little bit at a time, in order to appreciate its full meaning” (Archibald and Parent 2019, 6). A story, treated reverently, intentionally leaves things open, allowing for slow encounter and for changes in listening and in telling. Gabrielle Brochu describes the co-creation of meaning “in the context of storywork [as] not only working together as storyteller and story-listener, but also working with stories themselves. In this way, layers of knowledge embedded in stories begin to emerge, resulting in a deeper and expanded understanding of shared knowledge” (Brochu 2025, 14–15).
Just as researcher positionality influences scholarship, Indigenous studies and education scholar Margaret Kovach explains that “personal story can never be decontextualized from the teller. Knowing the storyteller [is] pivotal in gaining insight into the story being told… Story stirs memory, and in its telling, we know our home” (Kovach 2021, 158). We know, when storytelling, that stories often change; co-editors of Applying Indigenous Research Methods Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro highlight that “these stories might well be told differently when either dialogic partner - storyteller and listener - changes” (2019, x-xi). In addition to the relationship between story and storyteller, sharing story within the context of curated exhibitions and other forms of public broadcast must also take into account the “relational aspect between the storyteller and storylistener, [which is] laden with a responsibility” (my emphasis, Fast and Kovach 2019, 26). This critical awareness of the listener is imperative when navigating the ethics of retransmitting someone’s story.
Kim: Let's begin with story. Stories have depth and are made up of layers. Both stories and memories are constructed and continue to develop over time. Cultural theorist Roger I. Simon describes a story space as “a space that is intended to ask questions and leave questions unanswered as well as offering space for new ways of reading and interpreting documents, objects, and memories” (2006, 201).
This spaciousness aligns with Indigenous studies scholar Q’um Q’um Xiiem Jo-ann Archibald’s description of “reverence” as one of the four ethical principles of Indigenous Storywork, who says: “I think that the concept of reverence is one where we can learn about it, a little bit at a time, in order to appreciate its full meaning” (Archibald and Parent 2019, 6). A story, treated reverently, intentionally leaves things open, allowing for slow encounter and for changes in listening and in telling. Gabrielle Brochu describes the co-creation of meaning “in the context of storywork [as] not only working together as storyteller and story-listener, but also working with stories themselves. In this way, layers of knowledge embedded in stories begin to emerge, resulting in a deeper and expanded understanding of shared knowledge” (Brochu 2025, 14–15).
Just as researcher positionality influences scholarship, Indigenous studies and education scholar Margaret Kovach explains that “personal story can never be decontextualized from the teller. Knowing the storyteller [is] pivotal in gaining insight into the story being told… Story stirs memory, and in its telling, we know our home” (Kovach 2021, 158). We know, when storytelling, that stories often change; co-editors of Applying Indigenous Research Methods Sweeney Windchief and Timothy San Pedro highlight that “these stories might well be told differently when either dialogic partner - storyteller and listener - changes” (2019, x-xi). In addition to the relationship between story and storyteller, sharing story within the context of curated exhibitions and other forms of public broadcast must also take into account the “relational aspect between the storyteller and storylistener, [which is] laden with a responsibility” (my emphasis, Fast and Kovach 2019, 26). This critical awareness of the listener is imperative when navigating the ethics of retransmitting someone’s story.
PLACE
Kim: Artist and composer Lawrence English discusses the porous responsive frame of place - that place is a series of connections that are constantly changing and refreshing themselves (2017). Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor, a Samoan Indigenous scholar of human and cultural geography, states that the difference between space and place lies in an intimate attachment – place entails a personal relational element (2020).
If a place is not fixed, a place is relations, a place is memory, a place is always connected. Plant ecologist, botanist and Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer states that :
Kim: Artist and composer Lawrence English discusses the porous responsive frame of place - that place is a series of connections that are constantly changing and refreshing themselves (2017). Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor, a Samoan Indigenous scholar of human and cultural geography, states that the difference between space and place lies in an intimate attachment – place entails a personal relational element (2020).
If a place is not fixed, a place is relations, a place is memory, a place is always connected. Plant ecologist, botanist and Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer states that :
a bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the [Ojibwe] verb wiikwegamaa - to be a bay - releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise - become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too (2013, 55).
To recognize a place, we must recognize the more-than-human, and relational ways of being. Perhaps if a place is actively being, it is most honestly expressed through a medium which is also always alive; through story, a place cannot be fixed in archive. Story keeps place in relation. Story carries.
Appropriately, one of the stories we'd like to share with you is also about a bay...
Appropriately, one of the stories we'd like to share with you is also about a bay...