• The performance opens with the memory of the poking, prodding and painful extraction of medical racism & ableism that has pervasively tested on people living with neurodivergent, physical, developmental, emotional disabilities and chronic illness; and Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC); queer, trans, gender non-conforming & intersex; migrant & refugee, and incarcerated/Institutionalized communities for centuries since slavery and colonization to now. In our blood, bones and memories for as far back as we can remember, we have been terrorized, observed, objectified, used and abused by colonizers and colonialist institutions seeking to prove our inferiority through our bones, dna and bloodlines

• In Psalm for the Mismeasured & Unfit, we are bearing witness to the embodiment of Black women’s pain from scientific racism being treated less than human, as subjects, objects and animals at the whim of white & ableist supremacy, ,population control, eugenic violences and slavery. The performers begin by replicating the sterilization, the needling, the forced physical & emotional interrogation, the tearing and ripping of experimentation committed on Black women for centuries while images of the archaic instruments used are overlaid visually. While some of the performers embody the pain experienced from this terror.

• Then a healer begins to conjure and move the energy and the dancers begin to transform and recover. They find each other amidst this pain and hold one another. The energy moves into resiliency as we hear the words of, “Mama, Nana/Grandmama/ Auntie we are waiting” to be seen and heard and recovered in these waiting rooms of scientific racism, ableist,homophobic, classist, abusive medical practices . The performers move into a reclamation dance of resilience & transformation as they move the energy (to a fierce soundtrack in the backdrop by DJ Petra) while we witness them moving their power as survivors, healers, witches, midwives and birth workers.

This is a prayer
A psalm
A tonic
A medicine
For our freedom from this vile history
and contemporary violence
Committed on generations, and generations
and generations to now.
We are still waiting to be seen, remembered, recovered, freed from these rooms.

Credits:

• Video edited and produced by Sergio Tupac Uzurin of Native NY Video. Sergiotupacuzurin.com
• This video is an excerpt of an original piece, written by Cara Page in 2018, entitled; “Psalm for the Mismeasured & Unfit” staged reading for Haunted Files