Introduction by Iain Biggs

I have learned from Australian and North American friends engaged with indigenous cultures that we should begin any enterprise by acknowledging where we are, by placing ourselves. This act reminds us of the contexts that inform the simple fact that we are here, in this particular place at this particular time. This helps us understand, for example, the intersection of natural phenomena, the possibilities of hospitality in its widest sense, and the specific local politics of place.

For example, when meeting in Minneapolis St Paul it is important to remember that the land that city is build on is the sacred heartland of the Dakota people, a place were two rivers met, both a physical site and the enactment of Bdote – a word we might translate as ‘confluence’. But Bdote means something more inclusive than ‘confluence’ in simply a physical sense. It speaks an in-between-states place, one that gathers, that makes possible the flowing together of a multitude of different energies, of something close to what the philosopher Martin Heidegger calls the ‘worlding of the world’.

It may be that the work (verb) of what we call art is that it reminds us to pay attention to this worlding, to Bdote.