CONSIDERING THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE A KALEIDOSCOPE CONVERSATION

Ka’ila Farrell-Smith | Shir Ly Grisanti | Cannupa Hanska Luger

As an organization interested in critical inquiry, we aim to explore ways we can listen, learn, and grow. If you would like to continue this conversation with us, please be in touch via our website at c3initiative.org.

WHY INTRODUCE THE PRACTICE OF LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT?

• Offer recognition and respect.

• Counter the “doctrine of discovery” with the true story of the people who were already here.

• Create a broader public awareness of the history that has led to this moment.

• Begin to repair relationships with Native communities and with the land.

• Support larger truth-telling and reconciliation efforts.

• Remind people that colonization is an ongoing process, with Native lands still occupied due to deceptive and broken treaties.

• Take a cue from Indigenous protocol, opening up space with reverence and respect.

• Inspire ongoing action and relationship.

(https://usdac.us/nativeland)

COLONIALISMA system in which a people claim sovereignty over another group of people and assert social, political, economic, and spiritual dominance over the colonized. It is motivated by beliefs and values of the colonizer as superior to those of the colonized.(Michael Yellow Bird, Decolonizing the Mind)

SETTLER VS. IMMIGRANTSettlers are not immigrants. Immigrants are beholden to the Indigenous laws and epistemologies of the lands they migrate to.(Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a Metaphor )

SETTLER COLONIALISMSettlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain. This violence is not temporarily contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation.(Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a Metaphor )

DECOLONIZATIONDecolonization is an unsettling process since it involves the repatriation of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, lives, and rights; the colonized are freed from colonial control and the colonizers return to their own lands.(Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a Metaphor )

“…territorial acknowledgments tend to happen in urban institutional and activist settings[…] They also tend to be limited to those institutions and groups with leftist politics.”

“The issue of ‘whose territory are we farming/ranching/cottaging’ on becomes much more uncomfortable and immediate[…] I think rural/Indigenous alliances have the potential to be the most transformative relationships in this country, even as they remain the least likely to occur.”

“Beyond territorial acknowledgments” Posted on September 23, 2016 by âpihtawikosisân. (http://apihtawikosisan.com/2016/09/beyond-territorial-acknowledgments/#_ftn10)

Camp Colton, Oregon 2018, Video Courtesy of Dexter Gauntlett

Ka'ila Farrell-Smith is a contemporary Klamath Modoc visual artist based in Modoc Point, Oregon. The conceptual framework of her practice focuses on channeling research through a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness rooted in Indigenous aesthetics and abstract formalism. Utilizing painting and traditional Indigenous art practices, her work explores space in-between the Indigenous and western paradigms. Ka’ila displays work in the form of paintings, objects, and self-curated installations.

Ka’ila is a Co-director for Signal Fire artist residency program. Her work has been exhibited at Out of Sight, Museum of Northwest Art, Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Missoula Art Museum, MT and Medici Fortress, Cortona, Italy; and in Oregon she has work in the permanent collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Portland Art Museum. Ka’ila has recently been selected to attend artist residencies at Caldera, Djerassi, Ucross, Playa, Institute of American Indian Arts, and Crow's Shadow. Ka'ila Farrell-Smith received a BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practices Studio from Portland State University.

KA'ILA FARRELL-SMITH

Art for ActionCollaboration with Asa Wright (Modoc Klamath)Oregon, 2017

Upside Down World, 2018Oil Paint and Graphite on Wood Panel, 9x12”

Fire | Water, 2018Oil Paint and Graphite on Wood Panel, 9x12”

HItchhiker, 2018Aerosol, Graphite, Charcoal, Acrylic Paint, 12x24”

Caldera

The LookoutOregon, 2018

The LookoutOregon, 2018

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico-based, multi-disciplinary artist. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Using social collaboration and in response to timely and site-specific issues, Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and cut-paper, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st century Indigeneity. This work provokes diverse publics to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring and oftentimes presents a call to action to protect land from capitalist exploits.

Luger has exhibited internationally including venues such as Nathan Cummings Foundation, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr in Montreal, Museum of Northern Arizona, OrendaGallery in Paris, Autry Museum of the American West, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, among others. He lectures and participates in residencies around the globe and his work has been collected internationally. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and was a 2016 Native Arts & Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellow.

CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER

Mirror Shield Project, 2016Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock NDSocial collaboration, land art performance

The one who checks & the one who balances, 2018 - ongoingsite-specific performance seriesregalia: beadwork, surplus industrial felt, ceramic, riot gear, afghan

The one who checks & the one who balances, 2018 - ongoingsite-specific performance seriesregalia: beadwork, surplus industrial felt, ceramic, riot gear, afghan

Missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, queer and trans people BEAD PROJECT (EVERY ONE):composed of over 4000 individual handmade clay beads created by hundreds of communities across the so called U.S. And canada, every one re-humanizes the data of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, queer and trans community members.

Old Dominionsite specific installationunfired clay, seed, yarn, social engagementdimensions variable, 2017

We Have AgencyCeramic, fiber, steel 2016

Tethered 2018site specific land acknowledgementcannupa hanska luger in collaboration with ian kuali'iregalia: ceramic, industrial felt, mixed fiber

Tethered 2018site specific land acknowledgementcannupa hanska luger in collaboration with ian kuali'iregalia: ceramic, industrial felt, mixed fiber

HOW DO WE MOVE BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY FOR OURSELVES AND TOWARD RECIPROCITY WITH THE LAND AND ITS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE?

WHAT IS RESPONSIBLE?

WHAT IS ENOUGH?