Indigenous Art +Performance+ Culture

Divest Invest Protect Art and Performance

Divest Invest Protect works with a multidisciplinary team consisting of performers, artists, scholars, grass-roots advocates, and lawyers to create innovative multi-layered digital social justice work and practice. Working at the intersections of music, dance, law, and global human rights the team combines techniques and practices to innovate their respective fields of thought and discourse through art, ceremony, and performance. We aim to invest in, support, sustain, center, highlight, and uplift, the historic and contemporary performing arts, ritual, ceremonial practices of Indigenous peoples, Tribal, and targetted communities throughout the world as a means of cultural survival, collective hope, and transformation. 


Garden of Eden (Maskoke Lyrics/Translations)

I found myself in the Garden of Eden 

When I walked beside the river, 

When I put my head, 

Down to the ground, 

I heard a wonderous sound. 

Oh the Angels they were all around me

Thunder beings in the sky

And the Ancestors they walked on the water, 

To protect the righteous ones

I will stand,

Stand like a mountain.

I will stand for water is life

I will stand 

Because I am the mountain 

I’ll stand for water is life. 

Vnokeckv omecicen 

(Because of love) 

Vtotkepet fulleyvres

(We’ll go around doing the work) 

Eyasketv eteroptten 

(Through being humble) 

Setemvnicakvres 

(We’ll help each other) 

Pum Vculvke nak pum onahoyvte 

(What the Ancestors told us) 

Fvccvn okakvtes 

(It is the truth) 

Vtotketv mehenwuse espunwihokvten 

(The sacred work they left unto us)

Sofvcficvraneyatvlke 

(Is what we have to fulfill) 

Michelle Lynn states, “[a]s an Indigenous person and Appalachian I am bringing these traditions and peoples together. Both populations have experienced historical oppression, and both have been harmed by extraction and both, in part, suspended in the ambers of negative racial and cultural stereotypes. Uniting our peoples will help us heal and help us protect each other and the planet. I am continuing the tradition of my great Aunt Hazel Dickens, an American folk music hero who used her music to speak on and narrate the issues that confront Appalachian people, women, and workers rights.”

“Almost five years ago to the day I took medicine from Standing Rock to the tree sit in Jefferson National Forest. I walked up the mountain, ascending to the ridge. I found the fire and placed the medicine inside it and prayed. When I began my descent back down the Mountain trail, the Mountain began to vibrate in the key of “G”. The Mountain began to ring. I could hear it, hear it humming. Then the melody and words of the song came to me like a download. “Stand like a Mountain, Stand for Water is Life.” I repeated the words, key, and melody, singing them over and over again until I reached the bottom of the climb. Our team chose to film the song at the same location where it was written and transmitted.”

“Garden of Eden” by Michelle Lynn featuring linguist Marcus-Briggs Cloud (Maskoke), Marca Cassity (Osage), and Micheal Paul-Hill (Apache), is a spiritual song collectively performed and recorded in various places in the United States/Turtle Island in 2022 and 2023 by Indigenous artists and Appalachian artists to honor Mountain Defenders and Water Protectors in Appalachia opposing to the Mountain Valley Pipeline through the Jefferson National Forest.