Rita Wong Interview 1
Details
Rita Wong Interview 1
Metadata (MODS) |
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|---|---|
| Titles | Rita Wong Interview 1: Clip 1 |
| Name | Rita Wong |
| Name | Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Type of Resource | sound recording-nonmusical |
| Genre | Interview |
| Identifier | Interview |
| Identifier | rita wong interview clip 1 |
| Abstract | Rita Wong discusses her activist work as a water guardian and how her beliefs in reciprocity and interconnections between humans and land resources inform her activism. She speaks about the motivations behind her involvement with water preservation. |
| Extent | 2:37 |
| Form | sound recording |
| Note | Rita Wong: My name is Rita Wong, and on a good day I’m a water guardian. 0:05 Joanne Leow: I think one of the first things is I want to ask about undercurrent, to talk about the kind of work that you’re doing, not just with the text but then in the world at large. When you started writing undercurrent and that larger project, thinking about downstream, thinking about water, what was that first moment—like maybe that moment of inspiration, or maybe it was an accumulation of things—like what started out this project? 0:28 Rita Wong: Well, there’s many entry points, but one key one for me would be that back in 2007, Dorothy Christian and Denise Nadeau organized a gathering called Protect our Sacred Waters, and the vision of that gathering was to bring people together from all four directions, and people of different cultures and faith groups and whatnot together for the sake of water. And at that time I was actually living south of the border in Florida and I wasn’t able to go to that gathering, but I forwarded it to my friends, particularly in the Chinese and Asian community, and they didn’t show up (laughs). So, it was very sad. And so I felt this responsibility to take up that call in a longer, more in-depth way, and that’s sort of the genesis of the work around water, I would say. 1:24 Joanne Leow: Yeah. So really, it was born of an idea of a kind of… Rita Wong: It was a call and response. Joanne Leow: Yeah, call and response. Kind of, also—what really strikes me about your work in the book, but also your work in the world, is that you’re really thinking of practical ways in which you can think of solidarity. And that seems to be a word—I mean, just talk a little bit more of what you think that means in relation to the water and the land, like what is that word, solidarity, what does it come to mean? 1:50 Rita Wong: Oddly enough, because water is not a very solid thing in some ways, but I think for me it’s based on the sense of interdependency and interrelatedness. There’s a famous saying or—I think it’s Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist, who said, you know, “if you’ve come here to help me or to save me, then you’re wasting your time, but if you’ve come here to work with me because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let’s work together.” So, I think for me, that’s what solidarity is, right? It’s that understanding that my wellbeing depends on your wellbeing, and that we all rely on the health of the water and the land. Whether we understand that or not is another matter, but I do believe that that’s a basis of the need to work together. |
| Access Condition | Contact Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Subject Topic | High-- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | Water-- |
| Subject Topic | Solidarity-- |
| Subject Topic | Community-- |
| Subject Topic | Embodiment |
| Subject Geographic | Pacific Ocean |
| Subject Hierarchical Geographic | North America--Canada------Vancouver |
| 2010-2020 | |
| Subject Local Name | High------Water--Solidarity--Community--Pacific Ocean--2010-2020--Embodiment |