Earth.speaks

EARTH.SPEAKS

EARTH.SPEAKS is a LAND-BASED ART PROJECT Grounded in healing & BELONGING.

EARTH.SPEAKS is a land-based art project aimed at healing through community creation of earth markers, a sustainable practice of structure building. Led by Osage interdisciplinary artist and certified California Contractor brooke smiley, its urgency is rooted in the deep need for sustained body and land based healing processes. This work centers Indigenous Identity through reconnecting with our bodies, one another, and the land. brooke guides communities including two spirits, youth, and the houseless population in building two earth markers, to uplift awareness of Indigenous history, present day visibility, and messages of the land.

EARTH.SPEAKS’ community-led process brings an awareness of the history of the land into public spaces. The emergence and building of this earth marker empowers Native individuals, centers Native individuals in community, and literally rebuilds these relationships by hand. Much of how Native American and Indigenous people are portrayed is often in the past tense. brooke believes “this is a real opportunity for the Native community to have agency in how we are portrayed and the unique gifts we have to share, centering our relationship with the earth.”

The core of this project is deep healing. It is seen, heard, felt, and touched; a celebration of memory and a return to self and community through conversation with the physical earth and one's own body. Over the course of this project, the community will experience collaborative workshops grounded in somatic education and sustainable earth building with clay and plaster. These trauma-informed workshops will center the embodied knowledge of local Native Americans, their stories, and connection to the land and its history. This project concludes with an EARTH.SPEAKS Gathering that invites the community to share in celebrating the site and their earth marker.

ABOUT BROOKE SMILEY

brooke smiley is a Wah-zha-zhe (Osage) body and earth artist. Grounded in somatic education, public earth art, and dance performance, her work engages a deepening awareness in the body, our relationships with one another, and the world to tell stories of the land and the bodies that live here. She is currently a Native Launchpad Artist with the Western Arts Alliance.

brooke is a Somatic Movement Educator (SME) from Body Mind Centering® working in the BMC® practitioner training, and therapist in Somatic Experiencing® (SE), practicing from both Western and Indigenous perspectives.  Her passion for working with the earth comes from being born into a family of builders.  She holds a California General Contractor’s License and specializes in Superadobe, as a graduate and long term apprentice of California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (CalEarth).  She has experience building earth domes for the Tarahumara women in Guachochi, Mexico, the Havasupai in Arizona, sculptural play gardens outside the Hayward Gallery in London, and the “Hollywood Dome” featured on HGTV.

brooke toured extensively in Europe and Australia creating and performing new work with Fabulous Beast Dance Theater of Ireland (now Teac Damsa), Ventura Dance Company of Zurich, and Michael Clark Company of London, with two residencies at Tate Modern.  Her choreography has premiered at Sadlers Wells Lilian Bayliss Theater, REDCAT, and Highways Performance Space, with residencies and solo shows at centre d’ art de passarelle, ritual and research, and sea and space explorations amongst others. She is awarded a Masters of Arts with Distinction from TrinityLaban in London, with a full Leverhulme Trust scholarship. brooke earned her BFA from CalArts as an arts representative to the board of directors. 

She is awarded as a United States Dance Scholar from the California State Senate, California Legislature, and United States Congress.