"I believe that fashion makes people happy; it allows people to let others know about themselves by the way they look and dress. Hairstyles, makeup, fragrance, tattoos: it’s more than just clothing," says designer Delina White of IAmAnishinaabe. This lookbook—showcasing fashions and models featured in our June Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion show—celebrates designs that honor Native tradition, diversity, and nonconformity as imagined through the Anishinaabe term Niizho-Manidoog: the sacred embodiment of two genders.
From Pain Comes Strength: Families, Ballroom, and Resistance
"The ball is a focus point, but it’s the relationships and community that fuel resistance." In advance of the Walker's July 11 Vogue Night Sunset Ball Competition, Jason Jackson speaks with its host, Fatha Jazz Bordeaux about the Twin Cities ballroom scene, the FX show Pose, and the ways balls can serve LGBTQ people of color as spaces for expression, safety, and community.
Indigenous fashion has seen a surge in public interest of late, with high-profile runway shows and exhibitions popping up across North America. But with this spike in attention, inevitably, comes controversy, as Native fashion continues to be appropriated by major houses and designers, from Victoria's Secret to Jean Paul Gaultier. Can efforts to counter these trends be described as decolonization? Or should we sidestep that trending term altogether and focus on Indigenizing the industry instead? In a Soundboard edition inspired by the Walker's June 13 Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion show, we asked four voices in Native fashion to tackle these questions.
What Does It Mean to Have an Indigenous Lens in Film?
Native Americans make up only around 0.4 percent of characters in prime-time television and popular films, according to a recent study; even fewer can be found behind the camera lens. In conjunction with the INDIgenesis film series, four voices in Indigenous film—filmmakers Sky Hopinka, Adam Khalil, and Alex Lazarowich, and the Sundance Institute's Hud Oberly—consider what it means for Native people to bring their own stories and worldviews to film audiences.
A New Gaagiixiid Story: Gwaai Edenshaw on Indigenous Language and Making the First Film in Haida
"One of the things we held high was the question: who are we making the movie for? We decided that the movie we were making was for Haida people." Michael Wilson interviews Gwaai Edenshaw, co-director of Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife), the first feature film in Haida, about Indigenous language, the process of creating modern Indigenous works rooted in tradition, and the role of an entire community in bringing the film to reality.
The (Un)Covered Wagon: An Arapaho Filmmaker Unpacks the Complexities of an Early Western
Missy Whiteman has a complicated relationship to The Covered Wagon, a 1923 silent film considered one of the first westerns: it's deeply racist, yet it's a source of pride on the Wind River reservation, because many Arapaho people—including her relatives—appeared as extras. As curator of the INDIgenesis film festival, she selected the film for opening night, where it will be recontextualized through a contemporary score performed live by Michael Wilson (Anishinaabe), special guests, and a presentation of historic photos shared by her father, Ernest Whiteman. The photos offer a frame for her understanding of the legacy of her people, family history, and work as a filmmaker today. Here, she shares these images along with music, text, and audio from a recent conversation with her father about The Covered Wagon and its meaning then and now.
Giving Voice: Tanya Tagaq and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children Movement
The music of Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq is timeless, writes filmmaker Missy Whiteman, connecting centuries of Indigenous living and thought to this current moment. And with Tagaq returning to the Twin Cities for the second time, this moment couldn't be more opportune, as activism around a cause close to Tagaq's heart—the plight of murdered and missing indigenous women and children—ramps up across the region.
“A difference between learning and knowing is little more than asking questions without the entitlement of an answer, and honoring the vulnerability in saying and hearing, ‘I don’t know.’” In his Artist Op-Ed, experimental filmmaker Sky Hopinka ruminates on power, privilege, and identity—including his own—as he responds to the burden of representation and authority placed on groups of traditionally oppressed people.
Beyond the Guest Appearance: Continuity, Self-Determination, and Commitment to Contemporary Native Arts
Recent political and cultural events (such as the Walker’s own installation and subsequent dismantling of Sam Durant’s Scaffold and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests) have elicited a new wave of critical conversation about the state and future of contemporary Native arts practice. The Walker's recent panel discussion—featuring artists Nicholas Galanin, Ashley Holland, Candice Hopkins, and Steven Loft, and moderated by Dyani White Hawk—was intended to add to and extend conversations that have been happening online, among peers, and in live panels across the country.
Out of Line: Nicholas Galanin Rejects the Traditional/Contemporary Binary
While Nicholas Galanin's art often melds seemingly disparate elements—an AR-15 modified with Tlingit engraving, a mashup of Princess Leia and a 1906 photo of a Hopi-Tew woman, a bear skin rug clad in a US flag—he rejects a binary often applied to his work: the one that divides it into contemporary and traditional elements. "Like colonial national borders cutting through land and people who have lived here longer than those invented lines, these lines drawn through creative production are also an attempt to control."
How Can Contemporary Art Be More Inclusive of Native Voices?
Why is Jimmie Durham the artist—or, at least, one of very few artists—selected for a major touring retrospective? Why isn’t more art by Native Americans collected, contextualized, and presented by major institutions? And why is there so little representation—both within museum staffs and in the critical art press that covers them—of Native American, First Nations, and indigenous peoples? In a recent Skype conversation, a panel of Native artists and thinkers—Kathleen Ash-Milby, Jeffrey Gibson, Luzene Hill, Dyani White Hawk, and Candessa Tehee—address these questions.
“The Most American Thing Ever Is in Fact American Indians”
How is it that Indians are present everywhere—in place names, popular culture, advertising, sports team names, weapons systems—yet barely present in history and largely absent from the great national debates of our time? At his August 31 talk, author and curator Paul Chaat Smith examined this question through twin lenses: Americans, the new show he curated at the National Museum of the American Indian, and the controversy surrounding the identity of Jimmie Durham, an artist whose Cherokee heritage has been questioned.
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has exhibited his works at a number of venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, and many others. Since 1988, Heap of Birds has taught Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. His seminars explore issues of the contemporary artist on local, national and international levels.
Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds: Native American Artists as Agents of Social Change
In her talk, titled "Speaking Truth to Power: Native American Artists as Agents of Social Change," Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds discussed decolonization; the writings of Jean Fisher; and the work of artists including her husband, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, and Jimmie Durham.
Heap of Birds is a citizen of the Diné/Navajo Nation and a PhD candidate at Middlesex University London in the School of Art and Design. Since 2007, she has been an instructor in the Native American Studies department at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where she is affiliate faculty in the Women and Gender Studies program and the Center for Social Justice. Ketchum-Heap of Birds has lectured and written widely on contemporary issues in Native American art.
During this artist talk, Postcommodity members Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist discuss Repellent Fence, their practice of community-engaged land art, and themes in "2043: No Es Un Sueño," the newest contribution to the Walker's ongoing Artist Op-Ed series. Melding prose and poetry, the trio’s essay offers a powerful reflection on native self-determination, ethnic and national identity, and the year when whites become a minority in the Americas.
Why does the term “native” lose meaning south of the border? And why are some white people calling themselves “nativists”? In this Artist Op-Ed, the indigenous collective Postcommodity melds poetry and prose in a powerful reflection on native self-determination, identity, and the year 2043—when whites are expected to become a minority in the US.
