Barbara Bickel

Performance Description

Pulsating

opaque blood carries

memory and spirit of

ancestors deep within.

Weare two Caucasian elder women artists who are committed to bringing healing to the legacy of the unprocessed trauma their ancestors brought to North America. Tragically, their ancestors’ worldview, distorted by trauma, contributed to the brutal treatment of the Indigenous peoples of this continent. In this performance Bickel and Hugill answer the call to come to know and to reconcile with their European ancestral lineages. Once also Indigenous, their European ancestors were brutally forced off their lands, with their beliefs and culture erased by conquering armies, again and again. Scarred by centuries of trauma, all these forebears knew was the fear-based belief ‘dominate or be dominated’.

How can we, the children of settler-immigrants to the Americas, create peace in the world if we carry unreconciled divisions in our own blood lines and our familial dead are not at peace within us? If we do not face the traumas and resulting colonial, cultural and ecological supremacist legacy of our ancestors, we will be unable to embark on effective personal and collective ancestral healing and colonial reconciliation work.

In Bearing Bloodlines: Ancestral Invocations, we the performers, are witnessed by two large puppets, each symbolizing an ancient, caring ancestral guide. While we enter the realms of our ancestors through embodied trance, their stories are told. Inviting compassion in this way, the restorative artworking process becomes a transformative, transpersonal, and healing experience for ourselves, our ancestors, and the audience. The performance offers a vulnerable teaching and invitational opening for those disconnected from their ancestors, and the original lands of their ancestors. This teaching offers the possibility of harmonization and reconciliation between colonial settler descendants, this land, and the Indigenous peoples of this land. It offers a connection to the vibrant source of creation that unites all humans and non-humans across time and space.

Barbara Bickel and Tannis Hugill

Fall 2025 Update

From September 20th to the 25th, we entered a magical time-space during our actual video shoot, with master videographer Gregory Wendt and our generous support team, Diane Conrad, carol weaver, Joanie Wright, Odette Laramee, Janice Power and R. Michael Fisher. We are also grateful to Brenda Joy of the Gabriola Historical Museum who facilitated permission to work in the forest behind the museum.

Our Ancestors infused every moment. The weather was perfect and we were visited by Kingfisher, Ravens, Eagle, Seals and Stellar Seal Lions. On our Gabriola Island ferry ride home a pod of Orca’s crossed our path and Tannis saw a humpback whale on her return ferry to Vancouver. Whales are known as guides by the local Indigenous peoples. We take the whale visitations as a good omen as we now enter and are guided in the creative editing process supported by a strong foundation for the sacred, creative reconciliatory work we are doing.

Our work has been to radically trust in our hearts, minds and bodies that this magical, miraculous process is guided by our Ancestors, who in mysterious ways are demonstrating their commitment to support the crucial inter-generational healing this ritual performance video is intended to reveal.

We are now in the editing and formation part of the project and will open with a screening at the Dance Centre in Vancouver in April 2026, also in the spring we will be shown by the Gabriola Historical Museum. Then we will show it on-line to reach a wider audience.

With gratitude for the ancestral healing guidance of Sidheag MacLeod, an Ancestral Lineage Restoration and Repair Arts Practitioner, and for the Original Contact Welcome from Elder David Laxiya, a Snuneymuxw First Nations Knowledge Keeper,

To support the production of this Indy film consider contributing to our FUNDRAZR

Stay tuned for screening dates in spring 2026.