My current theme of work bridges performance and activism, challenging expected norms and bringing attention to the underrepresentation of Indigenous voices in decision-making and governance. While moving through prestigious decision-making spaces and high-level meetings, I have understood the opportunity for art to become embodied performance–to communicate, educate, and evoke emotion while paired with clear climate demands to protect not only the traditions that taught creation of our regalia, but the very materials used, and the healing conversations that are held by community while creating together. In this aim, I draw on inspiration from home to create traditionally-inspired wearable pieces that I then bring into contentious political spheres–sparking conversation and reflection on inclusion and impact. In doing so, my pieces become armor to accompany me through inhospitable environments– and through my artwork my communities and my ancestors speak through me.
Battle Armor
"Endi'ina ya bach'a'ina? Where have our relatives gone?"
This piece was designed and produced for the 2022 Arctic Encounters Symposium, the largest annual Arctic policy event in the United States. The conference systematically excluded Indigenous peoples from panels and speaking highlights, audience participation, and narrative of the Arctic while positing the Arctic as a last frontier for exploitation and manipulation. Policymakers, industry leaders, and leading experts from the science, technology, maritime, and energy sectors were present, while Indigenous communities who have occupied, thrived in and governed the Arctic for millennia were grievously underrepresented. The event was sponsored by development corporations including Conoco Phillips and Donlin Gold–setting the tone for exclusion of environmental conversationists and Indigenous land stewards. This piece was worn at the evening event in participation of the Far North Fashion Show of Alaska Native artists and models.
The piece was accompanied by an excerpt that read:
“More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 have experienced sexual violence. Alaska Native women continue to suffer the highest rate of forcible sexual assault and have reported rates of domestic violence up to 10 times higher than in the rest of the United States. These rates rise in Alaska near imported labor camps that service development sites--often called "man camps" -- where Native women disappear and are violated at alarming rates. These sites also leach pollutants and toxins into the surrounding food systems and communities, causing respiratory illnesses, cancers, developmental defects, and infertility in nearby villages. Alaska oil and mineral extraction are a direct threat to the safety and health of Alaska Native women. Alaska Native bodies and lands are sacred, and are worth far more than oil or gold."
The piece was well-received by audience members, who noted that the perspective shared through the art not only had a sobering and stunning effect, but had been silenced throughout the conference. It was featured on the front page of the Alaska Daily News.
This beadwork speaks of the generations of women before who told stories through this art, it speaks for the thousands of beautiful women taken from us through violence, it speaks to the women who will come into this world, laughing loudly, honoring their fat, feeling the land, and living in love.
2018 Essay: This is for Her: Traditional Beadwork Speaks to Violence
This beadwork project began as art that speaks of our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Though statistics are purposefully obfuscated, Indigenous women across the hemisphere are being wrongfully and tragically taken from their families, often without any police investigation, persecution of their perpetrators, or recompense at all. Many are listed as having died by erroneous causes, and suspicious circumstances of death are simply ignored. More than four in five Alaska Native women will experience physical, sexual or emotional violence in their lifetimes, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Furthermore, Alaska Native women suffer domestic violence at a rate 10 times greater than women in any other state and suffer physical assault at a rate up to 12 times greater, according to the Indian Law and Order Commission. The Violence Against Women act does not extend to Alaska. We know that violence against Native women is not traditional.
This beadwork piece is situated in an ancient history of traditional art that was practiced during long winter months by women family members, to decorate and distinguish traditional regalia. This piece uses traditional Athabaskan beadwork technique, stinging five beads at a time, and using a second needle to tack each one down. Traditional patterns are primarily flower designs, passed through families to adorn mittens, mukluks, belts and vests. However, today young beaders are creating more contemporary works: common are the Seattle Seahawks logo or depictions of different Alaskan animals. This beadwork piece however is unprecedented, and I have not seen other beadwork that attempts the same style as mine does– I use the beads to paint. I want the texture and the size of the beads to be significant, I want them to interact with one another, creating new shapes and deep shadows. I use beadwork as a therapy, as an outlet, as a reminder of home, as a practice for the designs I will make my future children.
This design is an inverted triangle without a point. The triangle is known to be the strongest shape, as any added force is evenly spread through all three sides. This makes it stable, strong, and persevering under burdens. However, I inverted the triangle, and took away its point with the silhouette of a woman. For this, the shape is no longer balanced or safe. Without the woman that fills this silhouette, the reliability of the shape is shaken and disturbed. She is vital to the balance of the piece.
This woman is missing because she has been disappeared, murdered, battered and harmed. This pillar of stability in our societies has been taken unduly, through acts of violence and aggression. Without her, the shape crumbles. Without her, we are missing a laugh, a voice, a familiar hand. This specifically Indigenous woman is of a powerful matrilineal society that has always honored women as leaders, as caretakers, and as homes. The fabric of those societies is ripped apart through violence within these communities.
In the original manifestation of this piece, she was merely missing. I beaded her silhouette to show her absence: she is gone. However, as this piece grew, I added a mirror in her shape. The onlooker must acknowledge that this is not a social justice issue, it is not a regional issue, it is not single-interest. We all come from generations mothers, we all have sisters, and we all have daughters. We are women or we are made of women.
The orange beads that line the top of the triangle represent eggs. They communicate the power of the woman, the necessity of the woman to regenerate, to bring new life into this world. Through conception, pregnancy and childbirth, women are intrinsically connected to the power of life force. The create, shape and grow our communities. These mothers– be they biological, adopted, communal, or metaphorical– are in everything. This emphasizes the vicious violation of the sanctity of life that occurs when Native women are brutalized.
However, I wanted to also be sure to note that the murder of women is not the only form of brutalization enacted upon them. The large orange pieces with white through them initially reminded me of the reams of fat you see in a healthy salmon. That fat means your fish strips will be juicy and tender, it means that this fish will give you nutrients and health through cold winter months. It means that the salmon is rich. We honor fat when we see it in the meat of our fish, and yet we have been taught by others to vilify fat when we see it within ourselves. We are told to be disgusted, to be repulsed by our own fat bodies. We are taught that fat means poor health, it means poor character and poor values. This violent indoctrination has turned Native women against their own curvy, wealthy, magnificent bodies. It has made us wish our own flesh away. Instead we should honor the power of our bodies as we do in the fish that we eat. Our fat, from fish to flesh, is fuel to persevere not only through long winters, but through the disproportionate castigating and admonishing of society.
Intrinsic to the health and protection of women is the health and protection of the environment. Particularly for Indigenous women, whose culture and blood is intertwined in the natural world around them, threats to the environment further threaten the wellbeing of those who depend on it. In the beadwork, plants grow from the base of the woman. This natural life simultaneously roots her as it grows from her. It demonstrates that quality life and nature are inextricable, precious and sacred. When the earth and the environment are healthy and in harmony, they feed and care for their people. In Alaska, this is demonstrated by the Defend the Sacred Alaska Movement, which strives to “boldly uplift our sacred connection to each other, the earth, and all living beings.” This language has been enacted across the country to link environmentalist and conservation movements with the demand for protection and justice for Indigenous women. Chants call out “Our Bodies are Sacred/Our Lands are Sacred/Our Waters are Sacred.”
In this way, Indigenous people of Alaska depend on full salmon runs to feed our subsistence lifestyles and fulfill our spiritual balance with our land. Salmon are crucial not only as a food source throughout the year, but as a marker of the wealth and health of the environment. At any climate changes, be in toxins in the water, warming temperatures, pollution– the salmon are always the first to tell us. When the first salmon run of the season hits, the word goes out across the region. It is for this connection that I shaped this design into a salmon head, when turned counter-clockwise. The deep green bead and the grey teardrops shape the eye and the fins of a King Salmon at the peak of it’s run, coming home to lay its eggs in the same grounds it was born from, recalling the skeins of salmon roe in the smaller orange beads that color the top of the beadwork piece.
This piece was designed for public viewing, and deeply inspired by the murals of the Mexican revolution. The broad blocked colors and rounded shapes prominent in Diego Rivera and David Siquieros’ not only harken to the color palette and patterns of traditional Native weavings, but are perfect for beading. The tie to land and to the earth was communicated through the depiction of natural landscapes, simple living, and flowers. This period of the “flowering of ethnic art” was a moment wherein traditional and ancient arts were made contemporary and at the forefront of popular art. (Ades, 203)
The indigensimo movement drew on the plights of Indigenous Mexicans to garner support for revolutionary aims. It appropriated the peoples’ specific tie to land and agriculture to create a link between the revolutionary workers and this inherit right to place: the proletariat and Indigenous included are the true proprietors of the land of Mexico. However, instead of co-opting the suffering of Indigenous peoples for other grander messaging, I insist with this piece that Indigenous issues in and of themselves are societal and human rights issues.
The Ni Una Menos Movement in Argentina coincides with a similar movement racing across Indian Country in the United States. This movement emphasized the life and presence of women, that they will not have even one woman less alive, instead of one woman more dead. The inconceivable number of disappeared women across South America and Latin America is newly communicated through these popular protests and art expressions. These women will not be forgotten, and their survivors will not be silenced. The issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman is finally rising in public conversation within the United States and Canada after generations of stories pushed to the margins as well. Groups like the Nation Indigenous Women’s Resource Center provide resources and organize expressions of loss and grief alongside traditional celebrations. Communities are coming together to organize and lobby their legislators to increase and specify legal protections and tribal jurisdiction over persecution of abusers. This piece honors these women and speaks first and foremost to these efforts to achieve justice, safety, and truth.
Furthermore, this project honored a history of performance art as activism. This became a performance piece as I beaded in my classes. I brought my traditional practice into the classrooms of this Ivy League institution. Onlookers watched my art, grew curious, and asked questions. Each time another student asked me about my work, I was able to educate them on my home, my community, and my people. Some may have turned away uninterested, but others continued to ask questions, follow up with me, want to see pictures when I suddenly did not spread out my beadwork materials over my desk.
However, it was also a revolt in another way: I was not beading in public for the sake and education of the onlooker, I was beading for myself. Through this meditative and therapeutic practice, I was guiding my own healing when I needed it most. I was able to participate in courses, part of an institution that was never designed for me, while insisting that however unconventionally I sustain and protect myself.
In its final iteration, I centered this beadwork piece on a graduation stole. The shape is a meeting of the traditional graduation stole and the breast plate shape that is part of a traditional Athabaskan beaded hide dress. I invoked these images to represent not only the resistance of a piece that inserted its ancient culture into a young and hegemonic institution, but also as a reminder that the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women is everywhere– unavoidable and undeniable. This is reminiscent of the student activist movements that we examined in our course– it is often students who are at the forefront of advocacy movements, as we represent the coming-of-age and the new generation of actors and decision makers that are rising to leadership. I find solidarity with these student movements as I incorporate this activism into my University life. When I leave this institution with this stole, it will remind me and any who look on, the women that I come from and the women that I will fight to protect and serve as I move on.
Hilleary, Cecily. “Alaska Natives: Expand Violence Against Women Act.” VOA, VOA, 12 Oct. 2018, www.voanews.com/a/alaska-natives-to-congress-expand-violence-against-women-act/4609353.html.
“Indigenism and Social Realism.” Art in Latin America: the Modern Era, 1820-1980, by Dawn Ades, Yale University Press, 1989.“The Mexican Mural Movement.” Art in Latin America: the Modern Era, 1820-1980, by Dawn Ades, Yale University Press, 2006.National Indigenous Womens Resource Center. Violence Against Women Is Not Traditional. Violence Against Women Is Not Traditional, Sacred Circle National Resource Center to End Violence Against Women.Urban Indian Health Institute. Our Bodies, Our Stories: Sexual Violence Among Native Women in Seattle, WA. Our Bodies, Our Stories: Sexual Violence Among Native Women in Seattle, WA.Bibliography:
“May the Salmon Return Once Again”
dyed salmon skin, deer bone, gem, agate, coral, sea urchin spine, wire, bead
Necklace created for Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe as an offering to the 2019 Run4Salmon Prayer Journey to repatriate the native salmon to the Shasta watershed.
“Salmon, known to the Winnemem Wintu as Nur, bring essential nutrients to the waterways, forests, and lands and are considered a relative. However, since the Shasta Dam was built 75 years ago, the salmon have been unable to return to their home waters in our ancestral watershed near Mt. Shasta, California. Now, the only remaining genetic descendants of these salmon are living in New Zealand, where we have been in relationship with the Maori in creating a plan to bring them back to their home waters.
Beginning in 2016, Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk along with our tribe and the support of a collective of Indigenous women, activists, and allies have been carrying out a journey that follows the historic pathway of our salmon in efforts to lay down prayers for their return as well as to raise awareness about the policies and issues threatening water, fish, and Indigenous life ways.
This 300-mile trek on foot, bicycle, canoe, and horse spans over several weeks and travels between the Winnemem Waywaket (McCloud River) to the Bay-Delta Estuary at the Ohlone site, Sogorea Te (Glen Cove, Vallejo, Ca).
This prayerful journey raises awareness about the importance of protecting our waters, restoring our salmon runs and revitalizing our Indigenous lifeways.”
Learn more at run4salmon.org
Dentalium Crown in Conversation with Youth4Climate “Youth Driving Ambition” Pre-COP26 Event in Milan, Italy
This dentalium crown was created in the anticipation of a youth climate event, where it was soon discovered that I was the only Indigenous participant from the entire North American continent.
The visibility of this piece challenged conservation and colonial concepts of climate advocacy by bringing cultural stories and objects as well as non-human relatives into physical and semantic conversation space. This crown drew on inspiration from beautiful Tlingit lands and the nurturing and ever-giving sea, while simultaneously calling in the threat of the Tongass National Forest to logging and devastation.
Sharing from the Defend Yakutat campaign platform:
“Clear-cut logging threatens the Tlingit way of life, historic sites, and sacred places across Yakutat and the Forelands. Unsustainable and reprehensible clear-cut logging practices are causing immeasurable harm to the forest and Tlingit culture.”
Every time a new timber sale is offered on the Tongass, it threatens critical wildlife habitat, special places, and subsistence resources. The old growth trees of the Tongass National Forest are a crucial carbon sink that is crucial to slow the rate of climate change.
“New research reaffirms the global importance of Southeast Alaska’s temperate rainforest for combating the effects of climate change. That’s according to data released Tuesday by a coalition of environmentalists and tribes opposed to old growth logging in Tongass National Forest.
Oregon-based researcher Dominick DellaSala says protecting forests is key to maintaining their function as a carbon sink.
“There’s no magic wand,” DellaSala said. “We only have a big vacuum cleaner that we can [use to] just suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it safely. Forests are doing that for us.”
He and his colleagues at the Woodwell Climate Research Center analyzed carbon data and found that the Tongass National Forest holds 44% of all the carbon stored by the United States’ national forests.”
Excerpt from article “Tongass holds more than 40% of all carbon stored by national forests”
April 1, 2021 by Sage Smiley, KSTK - Wrangell, KTOO