‍Living Text is a perpetual project that seeks to edit, add to, rethink and renovate a land acknowledgment for the Treaty 7 region: to acknowledge the land on which The Bows exists in a way that is nuanced, multi-valent, tender, complex, cross-generational, multi-disciplinary, and ultimately: collaborative. The project is built around conversations with members of the nations who signed Treaty 7, including the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprising the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations), as well as members of the Métis Nation of Alberta, and other Indigenous people from across these lands who now call this land, Mohkinstsis, home. Discussions are hosted around the central question of: what does this land mean to you? And, how do you acknowledge it? Living Text is a choir of voices, and as the title suggests, is a document that grows and changes as discussions occur. It spans languages, generations, geographies, and histories; it queries the very idea of talking through treaties, and will be made available as an open source document for anyone seeking to start the process of acknowledging. Commitment is required to have the conversations necessary to acknowledge the complex histories of colonialism, and Indigenous perseverance and resurgence in this context; Living Text is an effort to do this work.

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The Bows acknowledges The Government of Alberta for its financial contribution to this project.