My Name is Lily Sigie
About
Hello!
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As a creator, a woman of colour, and an immigrant, I have always been committed to promoting and installing values of equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism, anti-oppression, and reconciliation in our society through my creative work, whether through performance, educative programs, or by curating and coordinating different range of events towards those themes.
Some examples of my efforts here in Canada are embodied in the programs and events where I was part of their creation, organization, and curatorship as co-founder, president, and vice president of the SpanicArts board of directors from 2018 to 2022.
I believe and have proven that arts are a perfect tool to develop soft skills in human beings regardless of age, background or profession. I want to focus my efforts on developing art workshops with this methodology.
As a performing artist, arts educator and community builder, one of my basic principles is to transform realities through art and culture to collaborate with identity and, therefore, with a sense of belonging and existence within communities.
I am an “Arts Believer” aiming to make a social transformation through the power of the arts and culture.
My origins
Personal Land Acknowledgment
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A land acknowledgment is recognizing our origins and ancestors to acknowledge the clay with which we were created, the land from which we emerged. Recognizing strengthens our identity, knowing where we come from to understand where we are going and being grateful for our standing.
I recognize my ancestors, migrants, some from Lebanon, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, saw Mexico as a peaceful, prosperous, and culturally diverse country. Lebanese from Zgharta, in the northwest of Lebanon, near the coast and surrounded by mountains, which in Aramaic means fortress.
Other ancestors from the arid land of Huatabampo Sonora, the land of indigenous “Mayos,” which means “Willow in the water.”
I recognized the land where I was born, where there was once a lagoon, and where the Mexica people found after their god Hutizilopotztli mandate: “You must settle anywhere you find an eagle biting a snake on a cactus,” becoming the big city of “Tenochtitlan,” and after the Spanish colonization, independence, and a revolution it was finally called Mexico City.
I acknowledge the land where I grew up, Queretaro, the land of the Chichimeca indigenous people, which in “Purepecha” language means: “Ball Game” and where one of its cultural heritage is a large aqueduct that transported water from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth.
I recognize the land of my country, the “Navel of the moon,” Mexico.
I acknowledge the land that has welcomed me, the land that offered me warmth and the land that gave me to my most precious treasure, my son, so in the spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3), and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
I recognize these lands on one side are surrounded by the white and immense Rocky Mountains from which the Elbow River starts, which flows to the lands of the Tsuut’sina and ends in the Glenmore Reservoir, quenching the thirst with its crystalline water to all of us who live here.
Finally, and as a curious fact, I recognize our mother nature that no matter where we are from, she is always there somehow and part of us. I recognize that the element that has been a constant in the lands part of my identity has been surrounded by water, which means life itself for me. With this said, I recognize LIFE.