My name is Lisa, daughter of Aimable, son of Pierre Claver, Mwene (which means “son of”) Ngwije, Mwene Karenzi, Mwene Gitondo, Mwene Karorero, Mwene Kivunangoma, Mwene Rwiru, Mwene Murahire, Mwene Nknogoli, Mwene Makara, Mwene Kiramira, Mwene Mucuzi, Mwene Nyantabana, Mwene Gahenda, Mwene Bugirande, Mwene Ngoga, Mwene Gihinira, Mwene Makara, Mwene Gahutu, Mwene Sergwega, Mwene Mututsi, and Mwene Kigwa.

These are stories of a nation, of a people. That I should be taking it upon myself to engage with these stories: who am I to do that? At the same time, for so many people these stories are obsolete, irrelevant. What do they speak of?

Rwanda’s culture is an oral culture. And so they were held in bodies. Families held pieces of these stories like knowledge keepers. They would pass them on from generation to generation. These were called Ibitekerezo, from the verb gutekereza, which means “stories to think with.” They were used in court to shed light on situations. To remember. They were transcribed from 1957 to 1961, by this colonial researcher called Jan Vansina, and they are now known as the Vansina collection. That’s how they’re held in the archive.

I was born in Rwanda, but I was raised in Germany, and then here in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal. And so the stories that I was raised with were Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Little Pigs, and all those kinds of stories. And I never knew stories that were of me or that I was of. I’m wondering what it does to engage with these stories today, in contemporary times, and to play with them creatively. What are we claiming when we’re claiming Indigeneity? Legitimacy? In the name of what are we willing to do what? So those are ways to think, with the stories and the art making.

“That’s what I’m working towards, to have many, many different hands and ears and eyes and tastes that engage with these stories.”

When I’m thinking with young Black artists, Rwandan artists, the questions become different. Do we own the stories? Do the stories own us? We don’t know. But there’s something about that idea and I'm meeting these people who are visual artists, for example. I’m a storyteller, I feel as though I just trace what I see or feel. And then you have people who bring it to a different level, that see or hear. So then all of a sudden, it imprints our senses in different ways, and these perspectives—this is what art allows, to give life in different ways. And that’s what I’m working towards, to have many, many different hands and ears and eyes and tastes that engage with these stories. My hope is that in playing, in engaging with, in bringing them back into body, back into telling, inviting other artists to play with them, to visualize something of what they are, it reaches us. And that we can reconnect to something or connect to something. And these stories have always been about connection, right? They tell the story of the origin, much later, right? So, so they weren’t all created at the same time. And so, these stories have been doing this work of connecting.

Rwanda went through a genocide in 1994. And the genocide wasn’t the first time that there was an attempt to exterminate that people. I think that when you squash the stories, and the value of everything that comes before, it’s a way of killing, of eroding a people. And so I think that is what I’m wanting to value. When I want to wake these stories, I’m valuing what is of us, and I want us to stand as one people.