Hamar, Lori Jean2024-09-092024-09-092024https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20395In 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) announced 94 Calls to Action, one of which called upon the Canada Council for the Arts to fund Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to collaborate on projects that contribute to the reconciliation process. Reconciliation is a highly contested term, and before and after this announcement, several Canadian scholars and artists recognized Indigenous land sovereignty as central to this critical discussion. This inquiry is inspired by the work of these scholars and the spirit of the TRC Call to Action 83. In collaboration with a local ‘Native Friendship Centre’ and community youth programming, this arts-based inquiry aimed to explore how youth can use expressive movement to explore their relationships with land. To explore these collaborative processes, I co-designed Dance Land as a method grounded in critical facilitation of community-based dance that was informed by critical place inquiry and engaged Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth participants in exploring their relationships with land. This emergent process revealed that the youth participants’ creative decision-making and my critical facilitation were rooted in embodied ways of knowing. This way of knowing is highlighted by dance scholar Barbour as thinking in movement. Thinking in movement can be attributed to relationality within Dance Land’s dance making process. Findings suggest that embodied ways of knowing can help youth explore their relationships with land. In the final chapter, implications for CYC are discussed.enAvailable to the World Wide WebAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalarts-based researchreconciliationchild and youth caredancerelationships with landcritical place inquiryyouthcommunity-based dancecontemporary danceThesis