Chelsea T. Hicks’ work broadly engages the concept of rematriation—or in other words—reconnection to one’s matrilineal culture/s. She is currently at work on a poetry collection in her ancestral language of Wazhazhe ie called WALEZE / MARKINGS. This project is supported by a LIFT Award from the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation (NACF); excerpted poems were shown in the 2021-2022 Bookshelf Residency curated by Gato Negro and Phoneme Media at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and on the cover of the September/October 2023 issue of World Literature Today as well as in the magazine. She organized a November 2022 Indigenous language creative writing gathering called Words of the People with support from the Institute of American Indian Arts, NACF and an Interchange grant from the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Questions around cultural loss, reconnection, representation, stereotypes, gender, toxicity, healing, intergenerational trauma, ongoing colonization, land protection and language revitalization inform her literary writing.