When unearthing the footnotes
Another day in the archives, to remember ourselves through archival processes, to situate ourselves within a lineage. Once more with our hands in newspapers, national documents, online digitizations, and more newspapers, some ads, posters or letters.jpg or Poor screenshots amongst other documents — looking for a name, then looking for ourselves. In the hegemony's mysticism, bodies shapeshifts into
, humble bodies are recorded in a log of criminality.
And then, after a day in court trial documents, public commissions, federal warrants, my hands feel dirty, for the least dusty; and my head foggy from ripples of collateral winds blown from battles they waged onto somewhere East. I hit the same streets again heading home — on street names I recognized from an earlier session in the archive, bitterly amused.
✿✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ . ˚ ❀❀ ❀ , ❀❀❀❀꧂ ✿❀ ❀ . .❀ ✿ ✿ ❀ ❀.❀꧂
When living in the footnotes
In the empire of Death, a new threat is always being declared.
Tomorrow, they say, the Mounted Knights will ride through our streets, ready to register more people. Today again, we are targeted — gazed at by a dark force, armed with gun, batons and policies disguised as spells for the Nation's safety. Demonized, pursued under definitions of
, we are accused of practicing so-called magic. E-pidermalized across conversions, our material bodies rendered into online replicas remain weaponized. Can’t escape. Across networks are intergenerational hauntings — from my family, to my people, to each new iteration of the web. Our experience repeats with such precision that it feels karmic — a tale as old as the system that manufactured it. In renewed hysteria, streamed across public space; from Parliament Hill to the Wild West Web, we bear no weight under such proclamations. Yet, in the footnotes, we are not contained; we protest and we agitate.
In the imperialist fiction that reconstructs our lives, the
search for oneself in the footnotes. In the garden where we nurture our own records, we carry the story of a collective lineage of witches who survived their historical hunts — a perpetual tragedy of perpetrated
. From centuries of humiliation to the live-streamed, ongoing genocides of Indigenous peoples for land extraction, we carry lives as humble as our means.
So again I am logging off.
And until they shut the portals where weChat™, diligently expect my greetings to your morning.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ . ˚ ❀❀ ❀ , ❀ ✿❀ ❀ . .❀ ✿ ✿ ❀ ❀.❀꧂
When drafting the footnotes
Call me sensitive — for I’ve grown used to those critics of my mother’s.
From being labeled a threat to national security to her concerns for my own sanity — in truth, there’s barely a difference. Caught between emotional affect or turning into another piece of sensitive information, we operate under affective law when the legal system fails its duty to deliver justice. I’m not coping, I am simply commited to justice in a devotion matched to reciprocate that of the Empire’s obsession with repression.
For you, comrade au Poste! With a dream of Tomorrow, I'll await you in the reformed spaces. Even in the in-between when I seek refuge in romanticism — diligently, expect my fire beacon Signals™.
Until liberation,
꧁❀ . ✿ ❀ ˚ ✿ ✿ . ✿✿ ✿꧂ . ✿ ❀ , .❀ ✿✿ . ❀ .❀ ✿ ❀ . ✿
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Wawa's footnotes :
- Many of the reflections emerge from my research-assistance work in producing archival material for the podcast Nous Sommes Toujours Là alongside my comrade and supervisor, as well as from conversations with elder activists in the communities I am engaged with. These thoughts are undissociably situated within the midst of the Second Palestinian Intifada, which continues to lead the way toward collective liberation. By the many forms of guidance and comradeship that have carried me — their knowledge, their steadfastness, and their care have I been changed.
Updated: July 2025