This approach to storying is one that is woven together with strands of my work as a writer and storyteller, as a healer and ceremonialist and my exploration as a scholar into the place where the three worlds overlap each other....where they can be in conversation with each other. To me, there is no separation. Separation of parts of ceremony, story, and future-building are constructs built of a Western approach to knowing the world. 

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This video is an extension of my previous literary co-storying with Mama Coca (the Coca Leaf) and the Andean territories, ceremonies and more-than-human kinships of my ancestors. This video storying project was done in collaboration with René Castellanos (videographer) through the course of two weeks with the Coca Leaf (and some of her territorial earth and plant kin) in an Artist Residency at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Carribean Coast of Colombia where Mama Coca migrated (from the Andes) about 3000 years ago and build a life of ceremony, story and relationship with the ancestral peoples of this territory. 

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I spent these weeks where river meets ocean and jungle meets mountains exploring the textures of storying in ceremony with my relatives - through dyeing fabrics, grinding paints, and writing stories in community with the land. In collaboration with René's videographic expertise and a mapping of the story I wanted to tell with Mama Coca this exploration of storying, beyond (but in collaboration) with the page was born. I share this as an introduction to a multi-sensory portal into her story, my story, our story in community with a multispecies family.