Uprooting Qahr! Newsletter #6: April 2026

“I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Indigenous Writer, Scientist and Earth Advocate

Grand Rising UQ members, supporters, and friends!

As we close out Earth Month, let us honor all living beings who have/are currently fight for a healthy planet. Let their legacies inspire and ground us during these turbulent times. We have so many ancestors and current leaders to find inspiration from for this present moment! Do NOT let despair, distraction, and numbing separate you from this intergenerational medicine.

Uprooting Qahr! calls in and restores the ancestral line across time and space. We are one species on one planet – Earth. We are the Earth defending itself. Below are a few ways that our team continues to fight again oppressive systems that harm our human and more than human kin:

Rage Against the Dying of the Light: April Living Room Series!

THANK YOU to the participants who for bear witness to the birthing of Uprooting Qahr! though then Living Room series or potluck and performance where hosting in someone’s home. These more intimate gatherings alike for deeper connection, conversation, and collaboration.  Thank you to all those who have attended them since January 2026. Hearing your migration stories and how they connect with mine and each others tightens our weave, builds trust, and charts a path forward. Reclaiming our our ancestral lineage, interconnection, and collective activation.

Thank you again to Laura and Chris, our April potluck and performance hosts, for gathering treasured friends, family, coworkers, neighbors in their beautiful Boulder home. The intimate dynamic, intergenerational community is exactly where we must re-root. Thank you to our incredible production team and volunteers that made the night special including Elise, Eric, and Curtis! It takes a village!

Combatting Erasure & Restoring Ancestral Ties: Film Update

Taishya first met Dewi during the beginning of her adoption awakening. When the idea of filming Taishya’s trip to West Bank emerged in April 2025, Dewi was the first person she thought to talk about it. Prior to the trip to Nablus, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, Dewi and Jason met with Taishya to brainstorm approach, ethics, security, and safety. Little did we know that this idea would grow to become Uprooting Qahr!

Filmmaker Dewi and Taishya smiling together at a premiere of Dewi’s other film project: “MY NAME IS NOT AMY”

It was an honor to celebrate with Dewi and Jason, eight16creative, at the Her Many Voices Film Festival where their film, MY NAME IS NOT AMY, was screened. Against the backdrop of the worst wildfire in Colorado history, the film follows Dewi, a mixed-race Native Bornean filmmaker, as she examines the truth of her transracial, transnational adoption into white suburban America, triggering an awakening that challenges memory, coloniality, and the adopted name she was given.

This talented duo have been working hard on a rough cut! Our film crew – Dewi, Jason, and Taishya – have been invited to share a work sample of UPROOTING QAHR! at the Mountain Media Arts Collective (MMAC) Feedback Screening Lab on May 6th in Denver.

MMAC is a new Colorado-based organization that seeks to uplift, support and amplify BIPOC filmmakers, photographers, podcasters and other media artists while sharing their stories and experiences. This lab is open to filmmakers and media artists who can help provide these filmmakers with feedback for their next steps In post-production.  A light dinner will be served! If you are a filmmaker, please consider joining us. To RSVP, email Me@mikeshum.com.

Changing the Frequency: Expanding the Musical Team.

We are excited to welcome Eric, Selasee and Nicholas to our musical team as they share their talents and gifts with our Uprooting Qahr! community. Eric joined us for the April Living Room series with their passionate guitar planning and vocals. Started rehearsals with Selasee and Nicholas for the May public previews in Denver has been a dream come true. The original songs continue to take shape while the team tackles the intellectual property hurdles to safe guard our work. Check out the meet the musicians post for more details.

Taishya and Nicholas, musician and composer, at their first meeting to discuss the project.

Upcoming May 2026 Previews

May 12th 6:30 – 8:30 pm – Performance Preview

We are excited to share the latest monologues and music of Uprooting Qahr! Power, Privilege, and Paperwork. We will be joined by special musical guests Selasee and Nicholas Felder! Selasee, originally from Ghana, is a singer/songwriter who explores  reggae music influenced by pop and the west African highlife music genres.  Nicholas Felder is a composer and violinist who most recently was awarded the Boulder Arts Week Rising Star and received his Doctorate in Music at CU Boulder. Note that tickets are donation based.

May 19th 6:30 – 8:30 pm– Film Sneak Peak & Talk Back

We will screen a work sample of the short film and facilitate a talk back with filmmakers – Dewi, Jason, and Taishya.  We will also hear from Linda Badwan, Palestinian community leader and human rights activist. Note that tickets are donation based.

Online Community Spotlights

Our online learning community offers public, free, and paid educational and behind the scene content. Our paid members get access to extended collective-liberation focused learning, interviews, reflections, and behind the scenes. Funds raised through paid memberships support the production team: performers, filmmakers, musicians, and administrative support. This also allows us to offer free and low-cost performances to reduce financial barriers and pay professionals a living wage. Your contributions are critical as we work to complete this project by the end of 2026!! Click here to donate.

Liberatory Education Post: SPOTLIGHT 1
Earth Day 2026: Breaking the Cycle of Displace to Replace

Students planting olive trees in Nablus. Photo from An-Najah National University.

“As an act of resistance, preservation of culture and for caretaking the wellbeing of both the people and the ecology, the An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine has a campaign dedicated to communally planting olive trees in the city.”   

Reflection Post: SPOTLIGHT 2
Post (Living Room Series) Performance Reflection

“We are leaning into the relational [show experience] over the transactional!”

BTS Post: SPOTLIGHT 3
Music Updates: Can You Feel a Brand New Day

“When the idea of Uprooting Qahr! was just a seed, I knew that this garden must include music. I’ve been singing my whole life. I have had fits and starts of songwriting and learning guitar over the decades but never quite got lift off.”

Organization of the Month: People of the Sacred Land

Group photo taken during the premiere of the short film, PEOPLE of the SACRED LAND, including Rick Williams, Dewi Sungai, and Jason Houston.

Taishya was first introduced to the People of the Sacred Land during the City of Boulder’s Indigenous People’s Day event a few years ago. It was the first time Taishya heard about the Tribal, Restoration, Education Commission and the three reports that resulted from this rigorous and necessary work. Most recently, Dewi and Jason worked with Rick Williams to develop a short film about the work of the People of the Sacred Land which premiered at the Dairy Arts Center on April 29, 2026. Click here to learn more about the film and how to bring its wisdom and call to action to your community. The film explores the untold history of Colorado through Native-led research, focusing on land theft and impact on Indigenous peoples. Featuring Richard Williams (Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne), it highlights findings from the Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission (TREC) regarding illegally occupied land.

People of the Sacred Land is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit of Native leaders, elders, and concerned citizens committed to uncovering the truth about the dispossession of Native lands in Colorado. Rick Williams and many other elders, educators, historians, artists, and activists focused this effort on understand how and why genocide occurred, identify those responsible for harmful policies, treaties, and laws, and explore solutions to address past injustices.

Cover photos of the three Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission reports available for free on their website.

Read the Truth, Restoration and Education Commission’s (TREC) reports to learn more about the political and cultural history as well as historic loss. These documents explain the strategical forced removal and displacement through the near eradication of the Bison population. This effort was done as an attempt to starve the Indigenous peoples who depended on the Bison as a main food, clothing, material, and housing source.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Act accordingly.

About Uprooting Qahr! Power, Privilege, and Paperwork 

This multimedia experience that follows Taishya Adams – educator, artist, and policy maker – as she confronts colonial cancers spread from Europe to Africa to the Americas and West Asia. Weaving across personal and political  histories, we face the uneven promise of democracy and the possibilities of liberty and justice for all. Qahr (n): an Arabic word for the combined feelings of Sadness, frustration, anger caused by intergenerational displacement, dispossession and discrimination.  

Uprooting as Qahr! is a Mukuyu Collective Production in partnership with eight16creative.  The Climate Justice Hive, a 501(c)3 organization, serves as our fiscal sponsor.