Genealogy of Self and Place

Charlottesville, VA

This walking tour includes landmarks in the place I call home, Charlottesville. Each landmark has a special place in my heart, whether it conjures up memories from my childhood or functions as a source of stress relief. I have included a detailed description explaining my connection to each place, along with its Indigenous cultural histories. Because it's difficult sometimes to put what we feel into words, especially in the colonizer's language, in the case of Indigenous people. So I ask to see emotions and lived, embodied experiences as a valid form of knowledge in this tour. This multimodal tour requires your full attention as you will be experiencing this tour through video, sound, and images.

The central focus of this tour is to show through storytelling how land is more than just property or a natural element but calls upon the concepts of territory, place, and home. It emphasizes relationality with the land.

"While priority is given to claiming and protecting material land, we also need to emphasize and reclaim the connection between people and land. Land has stood in place while it's our relationship with the land that has been affected." --- Mishuana Goeman