Sonia Hill
Sonia is a Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk) woman of the Haudenosaunee confederacy from Six Nations of the Grand River territory and a hand drum carrier. She was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. Sonia is currently working towards a master’s degree in sociology at McMaster University with a focus on Indigenous womxn’s water rights and Haudenosaunee relations to the waters.
WORKSHOP TITLE : Womxn Water Warriors
DESCRIPTION : The proposed discussion will weave poetry throughout a presentation on the connections between harm done to the land and harm done to Indigenous womxn1 around sites of environmental degradation. After the truth is presented, restorying will be offered as a way of working towards reconciliation.
Indigenous nations are rising up across Turtle Island in the face of pipelines, extraction, and environmental destruction and saying “no more” from Unist’ot’en to the Shubenacadie River. Until the land, our Mother the Earth, is respected toxic masculinity of the heteropatriarchy brought to Turtle Island will continue to leech into every aspect of our being placing Indigenous womxn at the front lines of the fight to protect water. As settlers on Turtle Island, I invite you to think about water and our relations with water differently, and to Onkwehonwe present, I invite you to reflect on relations with water known to your people as a way of rethinking reconciliation in a movement of restorying a new way forward.