Indigenous Women's Speaker Series
2023
Cyanotype Workshop with Dakota Mace, MFA
Dakota Mace, MFA
March 16, 2024
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print created from nature. This workshop will introduce students to one of the earliest printing processes. We prepare the paper and fabric beforehand. They will learn how to create their cyanotypes, experimenting with the process in various ways to produce beautifully blue and unique prints exposed to the sunlight. All materials will be provided. Participants are also encouraged to bring their objects on the day or provide a digital image in advance, making it a negative to print. Advice will be provided on suitable objects and images.
Dancing Our Archive: Bringing to Life the Photography of Tsimshian Benjamin Alfred Haldane
Dr. Mique'l Icesis Dangeli & The Git Hayetsk Dancers
February 3, 2024
This lecture examines the dramaturgical process of the Git Hayetsk dancers, a First Nations dance group based in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples known by its colonial name Vancouver BC. Lead in partnership by Dr. Mique’l Dangeli (Tsimshian) and artist Mike Dangeli (Nisga’a), the members of the Git Hayetsk Dancers are from many Nations along what is now the Northern Northwest Coast of British Columbia and the Southeast Alaska. They specialize in the ancient mask dances of their people and creation of new songs and dances. Mique’l is a dancer and choreography, and Mike is carver, composer, and regalia maker. Through their collaborative process the Dangeli’s work to ensure the history that they are living now will be embodied and passed down in the way of their ancestors--through song, dance, and ceremony. The case study for this lecture is their Photographer's Dance inspired by the career of Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Alfred (B.A.) Haldane (1874-1941). Having opened a portrait studio there in 1899 in Metlakatla, Alaska, B.A. is one of the first Indigenous people to become a professional photographer in North America. Using archival, community-based research, and Indigenous research methodologies, this lecture demonstrates the complex and subversive ways in which B.A.’s photography was utilized by First Nations people in Alaska and British Columbia to resist colonial oppression of their cultural practices and how that led to the reclamation of B.A.’s photography through dance and ceremony by the Git Hayetsk Dancers and his descendants in Metlakatla, Alaska.
This lecture will be followed by a performance by the Git Hayetsk Dancers.
This lecture will be followed by a performance by the Git Hayetsk Dancers.
Stay tuned for photos of this event!
Imaging Ourselves: Portraits & Moments
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie
November 30, 2023
Portraits of ancestors, family, our communities are best imaged when the imaging comes from within, the relaxed body language, the genuine smile, unfiltered pain, emotions that provide the stories of our lives.
Of course, there are the many examples of images descending from colonial imaging. The eagerness to image build misconceptions upon objectification, and rely upon an audience who want all to be simple. When a misrepresented community intervenes, it is powerful.
What does self-determined visual documentation look like, I will present images from the Native American San Francisco Community removal of the offensive “Early Days” statue, and the collaborative project that followed the removal. “Continuous Thread” was supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the San Francisco Native American community, a photographic claiming of the plinth on which the statue rested.
Of course, there are the many examples of images descending from colonial imaging. The eagerness to image build misconceptions upon objectification, and rely upon an audience who want all to be simple. When a misrepresented community intervenes, it is powerful.
What does self-determined visual documentation look like, I will present images from the Native American San Francisco Community removal of the offensive “Early Days” statue, and the collaborative project that followed the removal. “Continuous Thread” was supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the San Francisco Native American community, a photographic claiming of the plinth on which the statue rested.
Placental Politics: Rewriting Oceanic Histories of Embodied Land Work, Radical Relationalities, and Indigenous Feminisms
Dr. Tina Taitano DeLisle
October 26, 2023
This talk traces the histories of Indigenous CHamoru women laborers under U.S. military colonialism in Guåhan in the early twentieth century and the intersections of their work with the colonial philanthropy of white American women. The talk draws on Indigenous oral histories to argue for a "placental politics" inherent in the work of Indigenous midwives and teachers. Placental politics is an Indigenous feminist theory and anticolonial practice of being and action informed by age-old ideas of self in relation to land and reciprocal kin and community obligations. The talk also explores how these histories of women employing deep knowledge and sacred practices and rituals like placental burial, as a way of safeguarding a child (into adulthood) from harm, can inform decolonization and sovereignty struggles against U.S. colonialism in Guåhan where a new generation of feminist artists enact new and persistent forms of relationalities of caretaking Indigenous peoplehood and place.
