Gods’ Eyes
This performance and poem are designed as a means for a settler on Native land to face their own complicity in the violence against the Indigenous brown body. A body historically seen unworthy of compassion unless suffering to the colonizer’s eye. My body takes on the embodiment of Xochipilli, queer Mexica deity of flowers to unveil these words and images. Laid on soil, Earth from land that continues to suffer from the settler colonial project. My eyes through a mask make eye contact with the settler gaze as a means by which to confront the viewer in intimacy and acknowledgement. They are guided through several poems and images of brown bodies, policed by the settler state in the U.S.-Mexico border and within resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Behind the figure lies an ojo de dios, as a reminder that our ancestors are within our bodies, and they are watching with their Gods Eyes.
2018
