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Our Stories Are Ceremony: Art as Ancestral Witness
You are invited to a community gathering and living gallery that centers global Indigenous resistance to American imperialism through ritual, art, food, and collective storytelling. This evening is not only a celebration—it is ceremony: a space where memory, creativity, and care move together.
Opening the Space
We begin in circle, honoring the first caretakers of these lands. Grounding through ceremony, we prepare body and spirit. This reminds us we enter not as spectators, but as accountable participants—woven across generations of grief, survival, and love.
The Gallery as Offering
Guests step into an immersive gallery featuring works by Zina Al Shukri, Taylor Huff, Avi Crow, Astro Adri, Adrienne Thompson, and other local queer BIPoC artists. Each piece is an offering—bearing witness to ancestral lineages, acts of protection, and visions of futures free from empire. The gallery breathes with us; your reflections and presence become part of its living form.
Food, Conversation, Community
We gather around a shared meal of Three Sisters soup, a traditional Southeastern Woodland dish. Eating together is ceremony too—opening space for conversation, kinship, and care. You’re welcome to bring a traditional dish to share, if moved.
The Remembering Place
At the center of the evening: The Remembering Place. All are invited to leave offerings—words, drawings, objects, or memories. Every contribution, however small, joins a larger fabric honoring ancestors, kin beside us, and generations yet to come.
As reciprocity, each guest will receive a featured zine by Toni Garcia-Butler, Arkansas Times’ Best Poet.
Community Offerings: Beautywood Open Floor
This night extends the tradition of Beautywood Books’ “Open Floor: Poetry and More”—held every first Wednesday. For this gathering, the Open Floor arrives within ceremony, carrying forward September’s theme of Harvest.
In this harvest, we gather words, songs, dances, prayers, and stories. Some will be prepared, others spontaneous—each one a seed planted in common ground. A section of the Gathering Place will also hold real-time responses to the art and stories, so witness and offering speak back to each other.
Closing in Resonance
We conclude with a collective sound ritual led by Zina Al Shukri, carrying what has been shared into the wordless places of the soul—as blessing, as resistance.
A Gathering for All Ages
Children are welcome and encouraged. A dedicated kids’ space will hold art-making and activities to meet them in the spirit of ceremony in ways that are accessible to them.
What to Bring
Please bring an offering for the altar—something that speaks to resistance, protection, blessing, or promise. This could be:
• An object that carries meaning
• A written word or letter
• A memory, story, or photograph
• A small token symbolizing prayer or commitment
Placed alongside others, your offering becomes part of a shared ceremony—where our stories meet, witness one another, and carry power together.
Gather with us in a living gallery, where art, and story become ceremony.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
818 Garland Street, Little Rock, AR, United States, Arkansas 72201
