Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures

What came to be named Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) did not emerge from a singular source, nor from human effort alone. It took shape within a field of relations and lineages, human and more-than-human, through tensions, collaborations, inheritances, and uneven forms of labor that cannot be fully traced or contained.

Within this field, different responsibilities were carried in visible and invisible ways, and not all exposures or risks were shared.

Over time, the work has moved beyond the conditions that first allowed it to take form. As it circulates, it is taken up in ways that do not always hold the density of the relations from which it emerged. This is part of how things travel. At the same time, the configuration of relations that once sustained this field no longer holds in the same way.

For this reason, the name Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) is released as a living container. What was gathered here will continue to move in other forms, without a shared center or succession.

This closing is held in collective witnessing by many who carried and were carried by this field.

We bow to the relations, human and more-than-human, and to the visible and invisible labors that made this field possible.

What remains is responsibility for how its traces are carried, for how distortions are met as they move, and for the discernment each of us brings to what comes next.

We close with gratitude.

For what was held.
For what was strained.
For what was never fully understood.

We return what does not belong to us, without claim or residue.

We release what cannot be carried further in this form.

We leave space. So that what comes next does not have to fit what has been.

This form is complete.

ASÉ.

Awo Fatokun Faniyii, Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Cash Ahenakew, Giovanna Andreotti, Rene Susa  and Dani Pigeau.

This website will remain live for the coming year, with links to resources continuing to function throughout that time.

We would like to thank more than 250 individuals and organizations that helped raise more than $50,000 to the South American Indigenous Network Emergency Fund.

Much of the work of this international collective happened in unceded Musqueam land (where the University of British Columbia is located). We would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Musqueam people for enabling us to carry out this work in this land.

We are deeply grateful for the sustained support of the Musagetes Foundation, Imaginal Seeds, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We also extend our sincere thanks to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Wend Collective and to the many other institutions and individuals who generously contributed resources to make this work possible.