EP 40: Co-creating transformative art from Turtle Island to Palestine with Smokii Sumac and Zaynab Mohammad
This powerful episode explores art as a practice of resistance, healing, and connection across lands and lineages. Guest hosts Kathryn Stone and Brenda Jimenez are joined by guests Smokii Sumac, a Ktunaxa Two-Spirit poet, artist, storyteller, and playwright, and Zaynab Mohammed, a storyteller, poet, playwright and artist of Lebanese, Iraqi, and Palestinian ancestry. This episode explores how colonial violence extends beyond people to target land, plants, and ancestral knowledge. In this episode, they discuss the political, cultural, and symbolic significance of olive trees in Palestine and their cultivation as a form of Indigenous resistance, survival, and storytelling. For both Smokii and Zaynab, art plays a key role in Indigenous-led resurgence and Indigenous planetary health movements. They share how they honor their ancestral teachings in a mural they created together called Our Grandmothers’ Garden. Smokii discusses their journey in finding meaningful ways to stand in solidarity with Palestine while living on Turtle Island. Zaynab offers reflections from her time in Lebanon to illustrate a beautiful portrait of her family’s relationship with the land there. Stay tuned until the end for a special surprise from Smokii and Zaynab!
Smokii Sumac and Zaynab Mohammed will be on a BC book tour throughout the month of October. They will be reading and discussing their books Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine and Are you Listening? Weaving a Tapestry From Pain into Beauty.
This podcast is created by the Archipelagos of Indigenous-led Resurgence for Planetary Health research collective. You can find out more about our research on our website: https://indigenousplanetaryhealth.ca/. We receive funding for this podcast from the Impact Chair in Transformative Governance for Planetary Health at the University of Victoria and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We receive production support from Cited Media.
