Faries Gray, Balraj Gill, Mary Jirmanus Saba, and Tareq Rantisi

Energy Spaces is a collaborative spatial justice art work activating Native Massachusett ceremonial landscapes (energy spaces) with intercultural song and ceremony. It is part of an ongoing collaboration among Faries Gray (Sagamore of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, historian and artist), Balraj Gill (historian and writer), Mary Jirmanus Saba (geographer and filmmaker) and Tareq Rantisi (world percussionist, composer, and researcher). Treating crosscultural ceremony as an art-making spatial justice practice, this project reactivates “energy spaces” on Massachusett territory with crosscultural music and ritual. It provides support for Faries Gray to receive and write contemporary music informed by a conversation with land, ancestors, and struggles of being Indigenous in colonized spaces. Our team will conduct research, arrange new songs, and engage in multiple rehearsals in preparation for the public events where the songs will be performed and recorded.