Lindsay Delaronde

Our histories are written in the stars, before entering our earth bodies our soul must travel from the celestial world through electromagnetic radiation which emanates from the sun. The power of this starlight awakens all creation on earth- including our human sovereign nature. These teachings are embedded within Iroquois cosmological understandings of the mythology of Sky Woman and the Iroquois creation story. Sky Woman holds the philosophical worldviews of Iroquian epistemologies providing a pathway of ethics of conduct, gratitude to the natural world and upholds human beings responsibility to care for all living things on earth.

Gemini: TEHNIKHEN (Twins) is a land-based ritual performance that expresses a Haudenosaunee perspective of my birth natal chart (June, 13, 1984). A natal chart represents an astrological diagram that locates where the position of sun, moon, and other planets are the exact time of birth. Natal charts can be viewed as a map of your life’s purpose coded in the stars and planetary systems. The study of your natal chart creates a compass which can lead to a better understanding of your emotions, relationships, connections, actions, boundaries and abundance. Mapping the cosmology of your natal chart and grounding in this celestial knowledge supports deep spiritual insights of human metamorphosis.

In the Iroquois creation story Sky Woman falls from the celestial world and is caught by birds who gently place her on the back of a giant turtle. Like Sky Woman, we too fell into our existence and birthed through the womb of our mothers. Molded and shaped by our cultural knowledge systems derived from the: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual worlds in our environments, we human beings follow the patterns and constellations of our ancestors. Gemini: (TEHNIKHEN (Twins) upholds these spiritual principles and cosmological understandings of our humanness. Using clay to reference our connection to the earth and the power to create, I draw my natal chart as a symbol and marking to reclaim that I am Onkwehonwe (human being).

Our human bodies are powerful technologies and can create, destroy, reconstruct, imagine and vision. The performance is coded with gestures and cathartic actions that express conjured material unearthed in the subconscious mind and body: chopping wood, turning of the ashes, the two chairs representing the twins and the two colliding worlds of the spiritual and physical and expressed in the transformation into the mask dance, and lastly, eating the strawberries to conclude the ceremony. Unlocking a deeper sense of self and bringing the body into the presence to enact new pathways and generating the revival of kinship, intimacy,and cultural harmony between land, body, and art, while resurging ancient knowledge that include: mythology, origin stories and star knowledge. The continuum of this trajectory illuminates the beauty, courage, generosity and embodiment of Haudenosaunee values, spiritual principles and consciousness.