Words

Land, Biodiversity & the Colony: an introduction

~ rashatayeh ~ 1 Comment

I was recently asked to fill-in on 3CR community radio station for my friend Marroushti of Salaam Radio Show (thank you Mirna for the opportunity) and thought it would be a great way to introduce some of the work I’ve been doing on Land, Biodiversity & the Colony and an important event I’m hosting on this topic, with a brilliant line-up of speakers next month.

This episode of Salaam Radio Show I prepared is dedicated to the Land, and the importance of ecological & land-based practices. During the show, I interview Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh from Bethlehem who is visiting us in Naarm next month to discuss the impacts of militarism on nature. I also commemorate Palestine’s Land Day, highlight the joint struggle of Indigenous communities in Palestine & Aboriginal Nations in so-called Australia, and plug some important events coming up at Beit e’Shai Teahouse on Land, Biodiversity & the Colony, and more.

You can listen to the recording of this episode below (produced in the studios of independent community radio station 3CR in Naarm/Melbourne):

Sonic musings curated for this show’s playlist are reflective, ambient, electronic, and sometimes classical; from some of my favourite artists including: Nicolas Jaar, Checkpoint 303, Kamilya Jubran, Khyam Allami, Oum, & Ruba Shamshoum, with releases from Al Gharib record label. 

Below are links to events, readings & campaigns referenced in this episode. They are also published on the linktree in the bio of Beit e’Shai @beiteshai Instagram page.

Resource links: 

I hope you find these knowledge shares I selected timely and informative.

Stay Tender

~ rashatayeh

When I was home last, I spent some time with Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh

Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History in occupied Bethlehem.

Always generously teaching us about the land, the trees, the waters, the skies, the birds, the bees and our rich biodiversity that is devastatingly destroyed by the brutality of Israeli military occupation.

Genocide upon ecocide.

Ecocide upon genocide.

I look to our elders and plant kin to remind me to stay tender, to keep heart, and keep hope. Faith is strong.

Prof Mazin always signs off his letters with ‘Stay Human’.

To you I want to say;

Stay Human.

Stay Tender.

On Rage

~ rashatayeh

I posted this on my facebook & instagram in November 2023… I want to share it again here. At the time I was creating a pop-up shop for my tea business while grieving family, friends and a homeland… now, still grieving, still watching a live-streamed genocide of my people. And I’m angry. And my rage is sacred.

28.11.2023: Some thoughts over this morning’s cup of tea… I’ve had some people ask me, how do you find it in you to build a shop at this time… I said, it is because of my anger needing to be channeled. And my deep belief in the fact that we can and are going to create a better world.

On Anger:

Living in the diaspora means, we as Palestinian women, will often be shamed for our rage, people want us to be ‘tamed’.

Here’s the thing, our rage is sacred. Our anger is sacred.

Our culture and our ancestors honour ALL our emotions.

Rage is an active emotion.

It’s a life force. It’s a strong and necessary thrust forward in times of stagnation.

As I grow older, I know more that under my rage, there is love.

I know more how to tap into this endless well of love.

I channel my anger in ways that show how much I love.

How much I love my people. Rather than how much I hate my oppressors.

It’s hard.

It’s life long spiritual work.

But I know that when I hear my elders speak, they remind me to Love harder.

To love harder than hate.

To take care of each other.

Even in my rage, I love.

Even in my anger, I love.

And if my emotions make you uncomfortable around me, then that’s a good thing.

I welcome your discomfort.

I encourage you to sit in it.

For as long as it takes to find your courage.

In your discomfort you will find courage to grow. You will find growth. In your discomfort, you will find transformation.

These past 50 days or so, I have seen people’s true colours. Who’s fiercely resisting the injustices we are living, and who is upholding colonial structures of oppression under the guise of their ‘good intentions’.

The road to hell is paved in good intentions.

If my rage scares you.

It is alignment.

If you are enraged by the state of the world with me.

It is alignment.

— Rasha

On Bitterness

~ rashatayeh

Last month at Elvie’s Open Mic Night at Elvie’s Studio our Beit e’Shai tea ceremony reflected on how we move through Bitterness.

Serving bitter herbs to aid digestion.

How do we even begin digesting bitter thoughts and bitter feelings…

In between performances, I shared some words, on sacred rage, feeling bitter and tasting bitterness, on sitting in bitterness, and plant wisdom that holds us, that alchemises and transmutes.

By the end of the night I realised that Bitterness is best digested in community.

There is only so much we can process alone.

I also shared a reflection on Olives.

How they’re naturally bitter.

How the process of making them digestible involve crushing or slicing them a little, washing them for weeks, then placing them into jars with brine. It is only with time, the healer of all healers, that their internal bitterness extracts into the brine. Making them edible. palatable. digestible.

Bitterness sits still in the vessel. In the brine. With the olives, but outside of them. We honour this feeling of bitterness, we acknowledge its lessons and work with it just as our olives teach us to. We sit with it in our vessel, it sits around us, rather than inside us.

When people don’t make sense, plants do. I’m grateful to the olive trees for their sacred wisdom.

Join us for tea, spoken words and poems at Elvie’s Open Mic Night, tomorrow night Friday 23rd February.

I won’t be sharing words this time, will let tea speak for itself. Tea is our poetry here at Beit e’Shai.

I look forward to hearing your words and being in community with you again.

Thank you Ella for bringing together our community of poets and dreamers in another evening of reflection.

Images from Rasha Tayeh’s ‘On Food & Memory’ solo exhibition (2016).

Vignettes: Land & Water

~ rashatayeh

At this link hosted by K(not) a major artistic project from Arts Gen, that discusses the impacts of ecological justice and climate colonisation on diasporic and first nations communities, I share a non-linear essay and an experimental soundscape of field recordings (best listened to on headphones). The work was commissioned and published in 2022.

The k(not) project reflects upon the way climate change will and has already created major public health impacts for our communities and provides a platform to undertake slowed-down and more expansive thinking in order to seek alternative strategies to our current crisis that incorporates food and land sovereignty alongside greater reflection upon the ongoing racialised violence that is inherent within climate colonisation itself.

To access the work visit this link. For a description, see below:

Rasha Tayeh, 2022

Land, 1000 words. In this non-linear essay, Rasha Tayeh shares an intimate reflection from her lived experience and draws on the parallels of settler-colonial projects, occupying Palestine and Aboriginal Nations in the continent now known as Australia.  Her words are presented in vignettes, as thoughts brewing, while making a cup of tea, or walking along the Merri Creek.

Water, 3:42 mins, experimental soundscape of field recordings of making a cup of tea merged with ambient sounds of the Merri Creek on Wurundjeri Country.

Rasha Tayeh acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which she currently lives, works and creates, Narrm; the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and neighbouring Boonwurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation.