Join artist Valerie Salez in the messy, beautiful process of grief tending.
In the Shadow of your Own Dust is a somatic material movement workshop that will use charcoal, ash, wax, ink and collage, plus other methods, to safely and creatively move through grief.
Watch your unique grief imprint reveal itself before your eyes.
email [email protected] for more information and registration.
Sunday May 24
1 to 4 pm
Little Gladstone Studio in Fernwood
$15 to $35 sliding scale
About Valerie Salez can be found at
This workshop is part of @ministryofcasualliving current exhibition 'Good Grief'
Attending the annual @_treeoflife Kinship gathering (2026) in the Wawadit'la (big house), hosted by the Awi'nakola Foundation and Bradley Dick was hopeful. 🤲🏾
Empowering.💪🏽
Stories were told...
The cedar box that held the infinite cosmos💫
A pod of lost and found whales gleeful reunion song floated through the big house while we sat with our eyes closed and felt like we were underwater with them. Hych'ka siem @orcalabbc which Chief @rande_cook_art
gifted them one of his carved maskes in acknowledgment of the years of important work they have been doing stewarding the North Island orcas.
Alex @hadzaxstala.mama.na doing what he does best, spitting rhymes of truth with his big potlatch voice....YO! CHU! 😂
A fancy Vancouver lawyer changed the trajectory of his practice, to dedicate to representing First Nations LANDBACK initiatives, after his daughter was arrested, jailed and went to trial for being a land defender at Fairy Creek.✊🏾
Quiet spoken elder Carl Olsen (Wasanec Nation) explains what motivated him to step up and campaign against the proposed SELEKTEL (Goldstream) expansion. This is where many of us Island folks flock to witness the salmon adults return and lay their eggs in the shallow river among the stones. The highway expansion would require up to 700 giant elder trees to be cut down. This would result in no wind or sun protection for the river. Changing its physical composition and heating up the river which would directly result in the Salmons ability to swim up river and for salmon fry to be born in the heated waters.🌲
Tiffany Joseph @tiffanyrevitalist who laid a woman's coat on the dirt floor of the big house then placed a stool on top of the coat as a visual to show how colonization and destruction of mother earth keeps women suppressed, oppressed, abused and ignored. The ongoing intergenerational struggle it takes for women to gain the strength to get out from under the heavy stool and stand strong.👏🏾
I am grateful to witness all the incredible (difficult) work First Nations, scientists, lawyers, educators, activists and artists are doing to steward and save the natural world...our mother....to save us.🙌🏾
10am. in the middle of desert. 4 day/night Danza de Luna ceremony (can't take pictures of). But I can take pictures of the DIY shade structures. Even then u can't sleep in yr tent past 10am (after dancing for 8 hours under the moon all night). No drug use needed for this ceremony. Just OG song, dance, 8 temezcals/sweats, drums, rattles, constant copal smoke....and the heat..... induce the wildest deliuerum fuel visions. OMETEOTL🫠 (but we all here for it and would not want to be anywhere else😅)
Excited to announce two important presentations for March, 2026.
Here is the one for March 7th 2026
@valeriesalez and @matilditadelmar will be presenting at the 11th Latin America Research Group Workshop to be held at the @universityofvictoria in Victoria B.C., Canada.
Our presentation title is “Relational Wisdom and Climate Action: Centring Indigenous Elders’ and Older Adults’ Voices from Canada and Mexico”
Looking forward to it
Some of us are not from here, or from there. The displaced find themselves everywhere, over and over again. Quietly, consciously, respectfully treading on other territories. Listening to the stories and songs and sorrows of those from here. Listening to the wisdom of the rocks, water, wind, and creatures. The message is always the same......we are all connected. We share the same pain, the same joy, the same dreams.
Simply keeping it simple in increasingly complex times. Sun sets. Sun rises. The moon is always there. Wind and water break down stone making sand. Hiking high in the Sierra where old coral and colossal shells are scattered everywhere reminding that everything changes. Nothing remains the same. We are only stardust. A flash in the cosmic pan. 💫
Played @rosalia.vt new album LUX out loud while walking down Mt. Tolmie. At first two crows followed me. By the time I was at bottom of mountain 10 crows were following! They were so obviously worked up by Rosalias beautifully disturbing, chaotic saintly sounds. As I ascended the mountain the murder of crows was growing. This is at the top of the mountain when we all arrived.....they gathered and cawed and hopped seemingly to the music. Usually they fly away when u walk among them.
But they let me walk among them with the music blasted. Was a divine moment. Gracias Rosalia for bringing suffering and sainthood to the table...and big emotions! OLE!!
#rosalia #lux
Steeped deep in death, grief and alchemic transformation these last two weeks.....and I've never felt so alive! This is my place, my work, how I connect best with humans and non humans, with the cosmos and cycles of time. I am the witch. My wardrobe is overflowing and the lion has died. I know my purpose more than ever. I'm no longer afraid of my power. For those not ready for my medicine...they run and hide in fear. But there are many more that are ready and craving my medicine. Brave souls.
Weekend on Denman island exploring Living and Dying well. Hosted by a local who brought amazing facilitators Penny and Renata from Earth Spirit. What a lovely island community of folks facing death beautifully. I didn't know that Denman Island was the first place in Canada to create a Natural Green Burial ground....and it's so divinely beautiful 💚
Then off to spend witchy times with my curandera sister @rociograham at her beautiful and powerful @santa.rosa.arts.and.healing home. Spent one of the best Halloween's with her and her family and community in Christina Lake....wow...just wow 👻. I got to fly my freak witch flag high 🧹🪄
Then Rocio and I headed to Nelson, BC, where she curated the Remember the Dead festival held in the Nelson Graveyard (stunning place...swoon). What an inspiring, powerful, healing event put on by @polkadotdragonarts and the amazing Myra.
My work, In the Shadow of Our Own Dust, hung among the oak trees above the graves of children. Earlier in the day 10 brave women who have lost children joined my grief ceremony for children. I am so grateful to hold collective space for women who have lost their children to early. Conclusion.....these types of collective ceremonies are much needed. 🎋 So many amazing conversations in the graveyard....so many beautiful tears AND smiles and laughter. 💞
On this fall Equinox day, last daze of summer, I'm reflecting on the end of this beautiful summer. processing my dad's death, this juncture of my life, and these harrowing times on planet earth. who I'm surrounded and supported by. about boundaries and loss and gain. about how simple pleasures in life are most important to me now because I'm fact they are deeply nourishing, enriching and profound. My greatest pleasure always involves being in relation with the natural world. This is where I recognize myself. Where I'm accepted unconditionally. Where true connection lies. Where all the answers are. Where mystery reigns. Mother earth, mother moon, the sun, the microbes, mycelium, wind, root, wave, rippling light. I wanted to make a post about all the amazing buddies I adventures with.....but lost my camera mid summer and most of my photos......so u all know who u are. You make me feel loved and seen. 💞
