Hi everyone, thank you for being here. My name is Ed Worshaw and my family is Ganim Gyahaga Mohawk from Ganawagi in New Montreal and French and Indian also from New Montreal. I was born in the States but that's where my people are from. I'm really excited to host this and really excited that you're all here. We have a full room and that we have the HowlRound family listening and remotely. We want to start as we always should by recognizing that we're on other people's ancestral land here. And as you heard this morning really well said and I won't be able to say in the same way but I'll attempt. We are on the lands of the We also recognize the Alabama, Biloxi, Kwasati and Opho people who were pushed into these lands as a lot of our people were by the colonizers and found themselves here in what is now Louisiana. From their ancestral lands. Thank you for being here. We'll talk a little bit about land acknowledgement when we get to that. It's not as simple as that. And I googled last night to find out more and it's very, very complex. Like in a lot of places, it's a very complex history here. Lots of peoples and it's best for them to tell their stories. I think we're really blessed that we had that opening session this morning and I'll leave it at that. We're here to talk about advancing indigenous performance and we're going to do this thing where I switch over here and be my own stage manager while the panel here and there's an extra seat if anyone needs an extra seat and as long as it works for HowlRound we'll just do it this way. In the sessions that we do with Western Arts Alliance and when we go to APAP and other conferences, we're always going to thank you more for reminding and always put the chairs in a circle. That's how we like to address each other and it's not a classroom. Although I hope you do learn a lot in this HowlRound ham. So advancing, my purpose is we invited panelists to talk about particular areas in this progression and this evolution that we're all involved in this movement that has a lot of momentum right now. I'm really excited that we hear about indigenous initiatives all over happening. We want to particularly address what's happening at Western Arts Alliance and at some other places, some of our allies like First Peoples Fund. So we're going to talk about advancing indigenous performance which is a particular program at Western Arts Alliance and how it reaches out into all of our communities. We're going to start with introductions and we're going to start with Mina. I thought he was going to say something. It sounded like that. So my name is Mina Petrager and I am one of the artistic directors and the executive director of Fengyo World Theatre in Minneapolis. So I just want to acknowledge that I come from a place where it is the first nations are the Dakota people. And so that's where Fengyo lives and works. It's very privileged to live and work in Dakota land and also the Ojibwe people came right after the Dakota people to that land. So just really privileged to live in a place where there's so many first nations in the city around us for us to make relationships with and to have relations. And Fengyo is about 25 years old. We started our first in 1995 but ever since we came to Minneapolis and the Punker is actually the artistic director. Other members of Fengyo here, the Punker, Adlin are in our staff and are in our board of directors. And so ever since we came to Seattle, Fengyo 25 years ago and even before that we actually, and I guess I just want to tell you a little story about how we started working with Indigenous folks. When we first came to Minneapolis, we were commissioned by the Advocates for Human Rights to do a piece about immigrants, about immigrant bias. That was the time of Proposition 187. And as we were creating the piece, we created the piece with 30 people from multiple immigrant communities and with multiple languages. But as we started the rehearsals and immediately we felt there was something not quite right here that we had to have Indigenous folks in the space beginning the piece. And so we approached an elder who we knew called Shardin Day, who was a medicine woman in the Twin Cities and an elder and asked her to be part of the piece and she brought her grandson. And that was the beginning of a relationship. She started drumming. The first piece was, and then the immigrants came in after that. So it was really beautiful because the Ojibwe was spoken in the space first and then we had other languages. And then we started Fengyo, we created our pieces and then in about 2000 we had, and also we did that at the American Indian Center. This piece was done at the American Indian Center. And we met with a Dakota woman called Juanita Espinosa who had her own art gallery. And so we asked Juanita, we said, you know, we really want to support people. We support, we really work with people from multiple ethnicities. I come from a place, I come from India. And as an immigrant and coming from a particular space and land, how I grew up was completely pluralistic. Having multiple languages spoken in the space, having multiple, the four words, you know, multiple, this is what I love and crave for in my life. And so I remember that I asked Juanita, we, Pankar and I went and talked to Juanita, looked at her gallery, said a little tiny gallery as big as this space, and said, so how can we, what can we do, you know, we would love to see, we would love to know a little bit more about Native playwrights. We would love to know a little bit more about directors.  And so that's how we began our relationship with Native artists and started our Indigenous Voices series that we do every single year. And it's become something that we do all year round now. We, whenever we can, we support Native artists. We have, you know, we also just finished an Indigenous Festival this year, supporting like several, many Indigenous artists. We might have a few brochures and I'll put it out over there. But that's how we really began our Indigenous Voices series and really learned by making mistakes and doing lots of, like lots of foolish things probably. And, but, you know, but really acknowledging that this was Indigenous land and that we needed to work and live on, that we needed to respect and do that work while being completely aware that we were on Indigenous land. And so our relationship with Sharon and also really like figuring out, okay, but if we're doing this work, we need to have people on our board who are Indigenous. Sharon Day, for example, is one of our board of directors right now. And then I became, I mean, it's not linear, you know, you learn as you go along, you learn lots about the community that you're part of and how important that is. And then every time, for us, how we enter into a community and how we, that is very, very important. So protocol is important as somebody who's from a different country. You know, protocol is so important. How you come into a space is so important. How you enter a space is so important. And it's really about respect. And so I have been on the NPN board for about six years. And I was also part of the partnership committee on the NPN board. One of the things that struck me immediately, I'm always looking around and saying, who's missing at the table? Like, who's not there? It's like, and who should be there at the table? And one of the things that very early on noticed that there were no hardly any Arab-Americans at the conferences and hardly any native Indigenous people at the conferences. And so we really began to search for like what, how, you know, like how can we bring more Indigenous folks to the conference, to the NPN conference, but also how can we also bring along a partner who's also Indigenous who would then commission Indigenous artists. And we made it a point that every year that once we became NPN partners that at least one commission would go to an Indigenous artist. So that they can then become part of the network. That's how NPN worked in those days. It was like, you had to become a part of the network and then you would be invited into the conference. So we would at least work with one so that then they would be invited to the conference for a year. You know, that's all we could afford at that time. And I remember very early on in the partnership process suggesting that NACD should be the All My Relations Gallery should be part of that. You know, I nominated them for that. And now they are partners of NLPS. I'm so proud. That's fantastic that they are. And we worked very closely with NACD. In fact, we did a conversation this year together for our Indigenous festival. So for us, it's how do you build the relations and how do you deepen it at every point and how do you learn from the mistakes you make and what will you do to... And how do you then go back and say, okay, this was a mistake, but then how can we repair that? And how can we make it better? Because as human beings, we're flawed creatures. We make mistakes, you know. But if you come from that basic respect, that's what's important. And ever since then, we've also had the privilege, I mean, the extraordinary privilege of hosting this thing called the National Institute of Directing and Ensemble Creation, which is every... which we started in 2012, supporting the big people of color and women directors. And it's an exchange, it's a pure exchange. And its directors were usually invited to this thing. But in 20... we worked with Kira Sullivan of NIFA and Lori Purir of First Weekly Fund, and asked them to suggest Native Artists. So we wanted to host an Indigenous gathering. It would be a small Indigenous gathering of artists prior to the big, pure exchange that we would invite all the other immigrant and people of color artists to, and women directors and so on and so forth. And what happened there was we worked with Kira and Lori, and we were on the phone with them and they kept suggesting names. And then what happened was when we started inviting people, they said, but you can't do this without this artist and you can't do that without that piece. So it became a list of 35 people. So then we kind of, I guess, understood the need. And so we said, okay, let's put off the pure exchange and do the Indigenous gathering. So we had 35 people that year for an Indigenous gathering in Penjiya and we made plenty of mistakes, believe me. Because of the way it was done and we didn't know who we were inviting, we did not invite as many local artists as we would have liked. And that was a huge mistake that we had to repair over the next few years. But that's how you learn, right? Because we initially invited two or three local artists but then it became 35 artists from outside. We couldn't... That was not okay yet. We need more local artists. We also included Sharon Day in that curating process. A local elder who's also one of our board of directors. Sharon also was part of the curating team of bringing artists in. And that's part of how we do it. We have people from that community curating. And so that's... I don't want to talk a lot, but we can talk a little more as the questions unfold. But directing institutes since then, that first, there was so much hunger. There was so much...Ed was there. And there was so much hunger. There was so much like, oh my God, this is the first time we're all getting together in a room that ever since then, prior to our institutes, we've always had a gathering of Indigenous directors who are part so that they can name, they can say, this is what's missing in the field, and we kind of say, okay, we want to open the space up, but we want to leave the room. We're open to leaving the room if you need to just be by yourself. And we'll just support from the outside. And what does that mean, right? I'm not fond of the word headline because to me it just sounds very military, but I think co-conspirator or, you know, just like... Accountants. Accountants isn't what they were. Things like that is a much better word for me. And I feel like how do you develop deep reciprocal relationship? And we've also worked with... Right now in our institute, so we've worked for 20 years, and right now... I feel like I hate... It sounds like boasting, but the truth is, this is the work that we all should be doing. Every single one of us should be doing this work. And so it's not like brave work or it's not just the work that needs to happen. When you want to bring people who are different from you in a room and also to acknowledge that you're on. And what else? I mean, I feel like the thing... The one thing I would like to say is that... I feel very proud... So right now our Indigenous program... So right now we have the institute, but we also... This last year started working with... We started two directing fellowships at Pangea. So we're working with an Indigenous artist who's a directing fellow who is Dipangris Menti. And I mean, asked Dipangris to be his mentor. So it's like a request. But who's also becoming an awesome, amazing director who's directing a complete youth program for the last eight years, but really learning the techniques of directing and also a Palestinian American director who's our mentor right now. So we have like two directing fellows who have been trained and who will attend the directing institute, have the privilege of having 35 amazing artists to work, to learn from as well. I mean, I feel like that's trying to decolonize even our ways of learning what our aesthetics are and one of the things... It's just amazing to hear Kirby who's our directing fellow say, learning this directing technique because you know, I think it's because of the power that I want to do this thing in a circle and I want to, you know, so really invoking those kinds of aesthetics that are important and deeply culturally rooted from that community. And for me that's rewarding really to hear that, you know, it comes from that base and that I'm going to do this thing. So I'm just going to stop speaking now. Well, you bring up great points and we'll circle back to some of them. Next is... Please come in. We'll make room on the floor. This happened in New York too. It was a great problem. I need a bigger room. We need a bigger room next time. So next is... Come on in. We'll make room. Next is Asia. Asia Mai. My name is Asia Freeman. I'm a long-term guest. I'm Danaina in Supia, in South Central Alaska. It's about 200 miles south of Anchorage as the pro flies on Ketchumat Bay. The Tukat New Watershed of the Danaina College. I am the artistic director of Vanell Street Art Center, which is a building shipped up from the Pacific Northwest of non-indigenous wood and erected on the shore of what the white settlers call Bishop's Beach. Its name was resurrected by Emily Johnson to our leadership at Vanell. That represents exactly this process of transformation that's been invoked by artists and is transforming the organization. It's a process of listening and responding to what artists, especially artists in Alaska need for support. When Emily comes home we're the closest space place where she can connect with her stories. The stories of the land and family stories. Although she's Yupik and her relatives are from farther north, the story of displacement is true in Alaska as it is anywhere else. At Vanell we do a few things exhibits residencies and education through artists in schools and through that of course we engage residency artists that come from all over. I think of our space because it's a 32 by 64 foot cedar and fur originally a hardware store with a boarding house upstairs. Not very large but really really great for exhibits and intimate residencies where people can workshop and develop in that kind of warm wooden space. It has good acoustics it has nice light, it's close to the beach you can go outside and yell for a few minutes and get some fresh air and run, maybe you have your dog with you, it's ideal. And then come back and zip by the stove and then go downstairs and move around and do these things that you know, we need to do when we're making work. So it's that, it's definitely more of an incubator space than that final kind of big important more spacious venue with lots of comfortable seats. But we really do draw the community in for the artists and for the community through things like potluck which always start out as a residency process and maybe some workshops along the way and sharing and more eating together that conclude that process. But very importantly land acknowledgement begins those residencies and it really happens in the answer to what artists what artists want. And I think that's something that we've learned you know, we've learned from artists to say when you come to this space and you come to this land what do you need to make your work and meaningful relationships, permission to be on that land and to connect with the people who have been the stewards of that land from time and memorial as a primary objective of every artist to your business. So gathering with the indigenous folks who are all invited, who choose to and who bring food to share and stories and experiences and invitations that get these artists out into the land and into the community is really seminal of the creation of authentic work. So fundamentally respecting those opportunities and then holding that place is what we're doing. Thank you and we'll come back to the examples exactly what they're talking about. So next is Mara Garcia. Okay. Hi. My name is Mara Garcia. I'm a dancer and a choreographer. I'm Cherokee Madame Mesquite. I'm originally from North Carolina and I grew up not in Cherokee but in Mesquite homeland but in Okanichi and Suponi homeland in the middle of North Carolina and I now live in Lawrence, Kansas and Consa or Caw homeland. Like I said, I'm a dancer and a choreographer I'm an artistic director of Mara Garcia Dance. I create a contemporary indigenous dance and a lot of my work has to do with the stories of my tribal people the stories of family stories personal stories traditions and the movement and actions that come with work and daily life and I am here today because I'm also a member of the Indigenous Roadshow Ensemble which is a new show that we are just at the beginning and we are able to create at the Bruno Artist Residency program, so at the Arts Center and we've just left not so long ago less than two weeks home from Alaska so it's very fresh in my mind and I guess I won't, I'll wait later to save my other things so, yeah. Thank you. Hi, my name is Erin Boberg-Doughton I'm one of the artistic directors of PICA, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and we are on the land of the Shinnok Multnomah Clock Miss and many other indigenous people in Portland. My family is from Norway and Sweden and settled on that land several generations ago in the Tualatin Valley and I'm, that's very close to Portland too and I reminded listening to everything you said that we at PICA and me as an individual we're really at the beginning of a process of this work and want to acknowledge and respect all of the people who have been doing this work for a long time, both the indigenous people and culture bearers our land and also all of the artists and culture workers we've met through this process so, I'll talk more later about kind of where we are as an organization and where we hope to be in the future yeah Thank you. And last, is me and I already introduced myself I'm bad if you came in late What we started off with what Minas began to effect is the question that for me and my professional career was the instigator of what we're doing together now and that was that I've known Minas and Defunker for many years since I was invited to but before that somehow part of Davos maybe, I don't know we've known each other for a long time and and Minas was on the board of NPN at that time and came back from meetings and told us this is one of the questions that the board discussed where all of the indigenous artists so that has led to there are a lot of organizations doing work at the same time and beginning to uplift for me this is what started it was really the conversation about NPN and one of those other conversations led to at Western Arts Alliance the development, the grant writing and seeking of funding and then getting the funding to start a program that was named that started last year in 2018 advancing indigenous performance the components of that just so you all know as artists there are a lot of artists here who were in a cohort of the First Peoples Fund Performing Arts Artists Co-Port that there are resources yeah raise your hand and meeting you for the first time I know a lot of your names because a lot of the indigenous artists are applying for similar things around and yet we don't know who everybody is yet it's like we're just in the beginning every time we have an application more and more people apply which is what we want and we'll be going to other regions where we're not getting a lot of we're not currently getting a lot of applications and trying to disseminate more information work with the regional arts organizations or however that happens to provide more education or more just information about the opportunities that exist for the new artists in that area so some of the these are some of the areas that that we address at Western Arts Alliance in this advancing indigenous performance program one is called the Native Launch Pad and what this is is a three year fellowship we have a couple of Native Launch Pad artists in the room Christopher was in the 2018 cohort and Mora in the current cohort and it's a significant three year investment in an artist's career and there's a monetary award there is mentorship so we seek with the artists input we seek a mentor that will really help them develop the tools that they need to truly launch into the presenting field as during artists it includes membership in WA membership in APAP travel to those conferences and many other opportunities for networking which is really the for a lot of artists that's the next thing that they need you've got a lot of the tools for your discipline some of you may need things like a music video or some kind of technical element or a really great website but for a lot of artists who are at this place it's really about how do I get into those how do I meet the right people who might want this kind of work in their organization so a lot of it's about getting in them into the networking opportunities we have a lot more applicants than we have Launch Pad places awards so each year we take about 10 folks who didn't get the Launch Pad award and make them fellows and what they get for that is the opportunity to come to the WA the Western Arts Alliance conference and begin to do that networking and also some year round we try to do year round career we try not to say professional development there's so many things you'll find in these conversations what are microaggressions for people and the terminology professional in the western artistic sense we don't think about that necessarily but we call it career development and we have an ongoing year round program for webinars and different things that conference calls we stay in touch the same thing that the first people is finding people are doing different kinds of things because there's a real power in that bond in what the cohort does together as peers we have an artist travel assistance fund grant and this is the first applications that we've taken we get a lot of applicants that don't really that don't qualify because it's a very specific grant this is not for touring this is to assist the expenses of getting to conferences where you're in the network and where you're going to meet presenters it can be a showcase opportunity or even just attending a conference that you think will be valuable for your career in the current round we have three people that are coming to the the folk alliance international folk alliance conference that's going to happen here in New Orleans there's another one called the touring fund and these are this is important for you if you tour as an indigenous artist this is a grant that matches presenter grants that are made by the regional arts organization so if you're in the west for instance and you have a presenter that wants this thinking about bringing you they would apply for a west staff grant or a NIFA grant or a south arts grant in the regional arts organization and we've asked them to all qualify to have a place where you can check out or the presenter would check off that yes we are bringing in an indigenous artist and if that's the case and you meet the qualifications and being a citizen or permanent resident what we consider in our category then we match that funding so it's an opportunity so as an artist you can let them know you can get two for one money through WA if you bring it you just apply for that grant and if it's they can only apply for so many a year but if you're one of the artists that they want to support then they can double them up to double we had so many applicants there were so many indigenous artists in arts midwest and in west staff that we weren't actually able to match dollar for dollar we had to make it about 50% because there were so many and that's really good news for us year round career development has to do with a lot of webinars we did about four or five webinars last year based on what does the co-coordinate we need to know about taxes we need to know about how to make a budget or we need to know about scenography we've done those kinds of webinars and we should and we should coordinate on how we can get all of your fellows in on those calls because it's not just open to our awardees it's open to any indigenous artist and then we're developing some of this work I brought with me from my previous job I was working in Hawaii with Vicky Takamine at the Taki Foundation some of these the Native Artist Residency idea kind of began developing there and we wrote the grant while I was still there and it's carrying over to where I am now at Western Arts Alliance and Native Artist Residencies has NEA funding in the first year they like the idea and it really was born out of conversations with Native Artists like all artists of color that go to Residencies and will be the only artist of color there sometimes often happens and they spend the whole time talking about their culture rather than doing their work and we felt that maybe we started doing some surveys through the Alliance of Artist Communities and discovered that there are a lot of Residencies out there that want to host indigenous artists really uncomfortable or feel like they're not completely prepared and so they are interested in having some help on how to do that in a good way so that's what we're trying to that Asia will talk about in a sec was the pilot for that we're filming it we're documenting, we're trying to build a case for a continuing program that will work with Native and but mostly I assume will be non-Native Residencies that want to do this work and then the indigenous roadshow we'll talk about this is sort of an example of okay we can provide tools, we can help provide tools, but what do you really want as artists? You want the opportunity, right? You want the opportunity to get out there and do the work so we pitched the idea proposed to ourselves the idea of the indigenous roadshow as an opportunity to give an opportunity to performers to devise work and put it out there and for presenters who as we said in the beginning are saying where are all the Native artists who give them something to look at and consider bringing there will be iterations as we go, so this is the pilot that we're talking about so Native artist residencies Asia is going to talk about the one that we just had but the framework for what we pitched to the NEA and what they funded for this pilot was that we can offer and this came out of the surveying that was done we've got about 40 partners residencies that are signed up that want to participate in the network to do this work for Native artists and we offer and can provide and the pilot is demonstrating cultural competency training so out of that surveying how do we get folks over that discomfort about someone mentioned protocols about that there are some things that can be really scary that seem confidential and aren't so what we offer and what we did in Alaska was to bring trainers on site before the residency begins ideally before the residency begins and to offer cultural competency training for the board and staff and partners of that organization so that everyone's kind of on the same page about the capillary and the attention and all of those things the second is what's really important in the surveying that we did is that Native artists need cultural, they need community engagement most artists don't want to go to a place and be working solo I'm sure there are some writers that just want a quiet space and they just want to do their work solo but what are the stories that you've been sharing with me it's about you guys getting together and getting into studios together making music and meeting the people in the community and sharing food so all of these things that if you don't know and you want to know what Native artists need to ask them a lot of times they're going to say we want to work with youth we want to find other collaborators in your community we want to know, we'll learn about your culture we want to share our culture we want to share food and experiences maybe spiritual practice things that can make a residency really great for Native artists and those are the things that we want to explore so we'll also talk about how we did that and then the actual residency we'll do sort of an assessment of all the partners what they can offer if you need to do welding then we need to find the right partners that can accommodate that if you need to just be outdoors in a beautiful place so those places too so we're building that network cultural competency training I'm just going to race through this indigenous direction is not the only company out there and that's not how they spell it they spell it in one word there are there are plenty of folks out there that do this work but indigenous direction is oh my goodness it's all was beautiful when I did it before forgive the formatting Larissa Fasper and Ty DeFoe are artists themselves and also do this work a company to do cultural competency training for companies that want to work with Native artists she's awesome so do you want to start talking about the residency this is the training part yeah I have to do but I like to back way after that I want to come back to that point about how like Vanell Arts is at the sort of confluence or the meeting of Sufiak and Denyna land and it's a place that was not immediately really largely populated by indigenous people and so when settlers came to this land they just sort of claimed it and erected this big hardware store which was running right up through my childhood and closed sometime in the late 80s at which point a bunch of artists came into this space started to rent it and eventually bought it instead this would be a great place to have innovative contemporary art and as that organization developed I would have to say it really was you know on a continuum of what we might call was introduced to me by Shannon Dowd former board member of NPN about six years ago a continuum of becoming an anti-racist multicultural organization it would fall in the passive range you know you might say at first there's this exclusive and then you have a passive and then on the continuum of becoming more anti-racist you have a symbolic and then in affirming finally a structurally changed and transforming and ultimately a fully transformed organization so Penel was really in a passive position which could be explained by several factors first of all the you know the silencing and the erasure of history which might have met to many people that it was not native land I mean when I knew that it was because I happened to have a mother who was flying all over Alaska collecting stories indigenous transition and change working public radio as a child so the elders in my home were indigenous Alaskans talking about amazing stories of resilience and survival that had taken place basically in the last 50 to 75 years they might be speaking from prison they might be speaking from really remote art community or even a cabin on shore Ketchumak Bay where in that kind of indigenous diaspora few people were listening and hardly anybody was gathering stories and so when I was in elementary school and high school you have this Alaska studies course which seems like it began with first contact in the 1600s with the Russian fur trade, vitus bearings conquest you know I just remember being in school and then coming home and my mom just said like bullshit but I also knew it because I even hearing and so it didn't make sense and so at first as a passive organization it was like okay if we hold this space on who might want to come and how to be you know their questions about how to be appropriate and inviting and inclusive when although we have a diverse staff we didn't have anybody of indigenous Alaskan origin on that staff and but some of the traditions that we developed I think naturally did invite some people not included growing up in that tradition and gathering and telling stories and over time because especially in the early 90s late 80s when Benel emerged a lot of indigenous artists wanted to be known as you know good artists not good native artists it was an important qualifier for somebody like Ron Simangatuk and Nuthiak Alaskan native art studies came to Homer and became one of our advisors and suggested a variety of different artists who might like to become involved and very much like Emily Johnson who had the last year with us today visual artists too presented a lot of needs and ideas about how we could support and transform so we you know as an organization that is interested in transformation which Jimmy is just like living and being relevant and being alive as an organization and it's about growing and not just reflecting but actually participating in the transformation of artists themselves and I say that as a creative person who doesn't want to just show up to an administrative job but really live and grow and change through that work we sought funding and began to think about the work of land recognition and so behind the idea and the possibility of becoming a place where residencies could happen we found a local funder you know any of those regional funders all around the country many of them supported art place in specific regions in Alaska Rappus and Foundation has been exemplary and in a grant application then last year I said Phinell wants to engage in transformational work around land acknowledgement which happens through both permanent and the Fremel installations that will take place in this land and that helped us to have funds for commissioning artists like Emily Johnson and Catalyst like the Indigenous Roadshow like visual artists who are currently exhibiting so that we from an administrative and funding standpoint ourselves can put forward funds to make these things happen so I believe that if you step up and say we want to be part of this transformational work of an organization and seek funding for land acknowledgement through ephemeral and permanent installation and I say that because some funders are thinking about capital all the time but when you remind them that some works are ephemeral and they're very important and include stories and dances and music and others will make sculptures and make installation but to remind funders too of that continuum within which artists create so that has been very helpful and that's made it possible for us to be that kind of space then that could raise our hand and say yes we'd love to host and we're a good place for artists to come we're isolated you know like if you wanted to leave here today you could get there you know tomorrow night but if you want to go and you want to work quietly or just closely with the land and that with each other that's a great that's not too far and eat fish I need a line the training we held a training with Ty Larissa wasn't able to make it but Ty did a really great training I'll say a little bit more about that you probably wanted me to so cultural competency was one of the things that we asked for support from Rasmussen Foundation and we we invited all of our community collaborators so we invited the public radio the local resilience coalition the college the arts council, the Pratt Museum representatives of local tribes to train with us in learning and practicing and thinking about and unpacking cultural competency we shared with them statistics we showed that 95 some percent of organizations that might want to have native arts residencies actually feel a little bit insecure about how to do that properly and they all said and they might have a different idea about what a native arts residency is at a public radio station or at a museum or through a health oriented resilience coalition but at least they all felt it relevant and so we found that there was additional funding by making it open to the whole community and then this is where I realized okay we're at another stage as an organization let me go back to my little book here we are not passive anymore or symbolically changing but we are engaged in structural transformation because we want to change the conversation to look at settler colonialism and address the impacts of colonization we want to change the language that we with our community partners are engaging in and inviting to be more expansive and acknowledging of indigenous names stories artists groups practices it's very interesting simple little things like in that training we discovered there's a group realization around the fact that across the street from vanilla there's a fence for a local restaurant put up a banner one of these sort of patriotic let's thank our veterans pioneers and our native people oh no I didn't say but there was no realization in the community that the word pioneers is really really charged too and Alaska is called the last frontier by a lot of people there's such an embedded mentality of that being a place where no one was just a matter of going in and taking it and developing the resources it was really really great work Ty and Marissa do amazing work and these are some of the they start with people going around the room and writing on big pieces of paper what are their reactions to these words you find that these words are often misunderstood and really highly charged for everybody so it's a really good thing to go through and then we did the second part we did community engagement and that's something that Asia can talk about it was a lot of hard work to get that to happen but we ended up flying into a little 300 person village in these four seater planes that couldn't fly any other time during the week because of wind so you know you're like and we got one sunny day and we flew in we had a gravel runway with the waves crashing from the ocean and they come in and they bank and land on one wheel and then to go around the curve and then come down it was awesome I don't want to go you have to go on it's a deal to get there and people in those little communities are stars and visitors especially visitors like them so in the framework again that we're trying to set up some of that community engagement has to do with protocol and maybe you want to talk about how that was done in Alaska oh that's an awful picture it doesn't come up very well I don't know but that's Sarah it's in the Vanell gallery which is the space that's also the rehearsal space our director Peter Rockford is here too he goes by the name of Tao he's Hawaiian and Samoan he came into the residence and said we're not going to start doing any work until we have been welcome to land we can have a deeper conversation about protocol but one of the things that you'll want to know when working with native artists is they're having 500 in some nations they all have different protocols but they generally have protocols around respecting where they're standing and he insisted we're not going to start working until we've been welcome to the space and so Asia found elders from the local tribes and it may not look like much it was us sitting in a circle and sharing gifts and songs and prayers and whatever anyone wanted to share but it was truly meaningful I don't think that had ever been the people from the local tribe had never had that respect shown to them that artists come in and just start working and it doesn't matter where they are but for native artists to come in and ask for permission is pretty powerful I appreciate the fact that these folks who are from the Nanilchik village drive were both able and willing and so spontaneous I mean in fact I initially started out with the tribe the Supriak tribe in the Nanilchik village across the bay and I reached out to them you know just months in advance during a busy time and at first probably because they were busy and then eventually because maybe it sounded like a really kind of serious project it might have been intimidating and I didn't get a response so then I tried through the tribal office the Nanilchik village tribe to get elders and they didn't feel like they had enough time to create a proper welcome so then I worked I reached out to local residents from that tribe who in a more informal fashion I had seen many times in our friends come into the vanilla and I asked if they would come and they said yes and when they got there and saw even just chairs arranged and they said well what will this be like and I said well you know people are probably going to be in some regalia and they are going to ask for permission and they'll probably give some gifts and their faces kind of went you know like wait for a moment and they're like we didn't bring anything and I just looked around the vanilla and I said well what do you want to get them and they looked around and they picked a hand drawn map and some candles and we just wrapped them up right away so having some things available and they were going to receive gifts was great and we gave it to them something I realized is that this village across the bay as much as it felt good to invite them is impoverished they can't afford to send a whole bunch of elders over on a charter plane I should have said we will bring you over right but there's a constant like we're always failing but I just had to and then I knew we were still going to go I offered them like a few days before this event I said we will get you but they were too busy but it was like okay I'm just pick myself up and try again I felt so ashamed that I hadn't thought of that the first time but in any case these gals came it was an intergenerational group it was wonderful it was a grandmother her adult daughters and her little grand children and they were so excited to be a part of this it felt very and then what happened is one of the members of our staff one of whom is Chickasaw came with her little girl and it was just really a good feeling that like this is how this is how we this is what matters to us this is how we engage this is how we meet, we'll share open our hearts the children were fantastic they were chaotic and delightful because everybody was a little bit nervous with their lay that Dow gave them and the candles they were presenting them and switching people's gifts and making it a laugh and it just felt so right because on the one hand formal yes but what that really meant was just respect taking the time and not being just stopping to laugh and just take this time and have tea and eat something together it was incredibly beautiful the sharing that the whole team the whole Indigenous Road show provided their acknowledgements everybody's introductions and their own languages and going down to the beach went down to the beach and it was incredibly cold and hardly anybody was prepared for it not even me it was just white caps were flying and the sea was just really dark and there was right at the bottom when you go down to this beach this little trail there was a vertical log of driftwoods where eagles often land on top of it but not that day although there were some eventually that kind of wheeled around over us that felt really good but everybody just huddled there standing in the small circle and sharing some things like cornmeal and soil and from different places that people came and just stopped just acknowledging the importance of this environment and this land how it felt to be there all together it felt really good and then we went back in time that's an experience that will be different wherever you are if you're in an urban environment what does that mean for a native artist to come visit and want to be able to land somehow with all things to think about protocol is a scary word and it's like ally for some people a lot of native people don't mind the militarism of that when you're fighting for survival that ally's actually not such a bad word but protocol can be scary and it sort of feels like United Nations but in a lot of ways it is nation to nation so to be aware with Pacific Island with international visitors that very often in some places I've heard recently of a gathering where they did the good work of bringing in someone from the local tribe to make a presentation they essentially did kind of a welcome to land and there was a Maori person in the audience and as soon as that just set him into protocol mode because culturally they have to respond also if you get people from the Pacific very often they are very uncomfortable about being there or starting any work without being welcomed so it's like in the Pacific Northwest there's a canoe tradition where you don't land your canoe on someone else's land shore without being sung ashore without being welcomed those things can be very serious to international guests so it's good to know if that starts happening apparently the host didn't quite know what to do you know here's this guy in regalia in the audience that starts chanting and it was not what they expected but that's what was required of those people to do with each other so just be aware of those things this is in the training we were also Sarah was the representative of the Nile Strip tribe was also there and so we wanted to do that for her with everyone else in the community to honor her and so we did the same kind of protocol and gave her gifts and see about community engagement protocol and the next thing we did is sharing so if you want to talk about menwala and I'll just show a couple pictures here of what we did in bed in this little tiny plane yeah hahahaha hahahaha one little thing that's the airport of that menwala literally 300 people in the village and you'll see the tribal chairman here in a second they were tearing down the community house that was 20 years ago served 100 people in the village and now they're 300 they only are accessible by air except they get barges in the summer so so here we're introducing ourselves a little protocol with the so this is the chief the chief in his grumpy hahahaha things are not always as they appear folks this is the community house see a lot of plywood in rural that's being torn down to make room for more people and these are awful pictures from my cell phone we performed at the school, this is the entire school kindergarten through high school about 60 kids elders were there it was completely the meat area 18 year old hip hop artist and there's tau and the reason I kept this photo in this is the kind of community where if the clip on the microphone stand is broken they're not going to get another one they can't go to Costco they're not going to get anything to replace that until next summer and so that's a they found a pipe there and some clear tape and we made a microphone stand there it is yeah metal pipe in the back and lastly after the sharing another important thing is food so again this is a good picture of the food hahahaha um but now always does this but if you're going to have a native artist they're, I guarantee you they're going to want to share food with the local community so do your best to arrange that kind of thing anyone want to talk about how hard that work is I mean we do these things and people will say you know I emailed the tribe and I never heard that and I really wanted it to be that tribe I had brought a group there the year before Ryan Conorow with Gary O'Pike Bieber for Alaska and Alaska and they loved it so much and it was relatively spontaneous it was one of those weather window days where we just went with about four days notice and it was fantastic what made it so special is that Chief Kovacnikov who was probably about my age about 50 things were sent off to boarding school you know and they were they were shamed and punished for speaking their language and so when we went to Nambalak you know and we brought this play Alaska which was about the juxtapositions and the white telling and the native telling of the story of place he made sure that everybody in the community was there from the pre-k to the elders who could make it there and he talked about what it was like to go to boarding school and he talked about and people talked about alcoholism they talked about intergenerational trauma and instead of excluding the children his openness and the children were like in the conversation like this they were like watching everything and they were hearing people talk about the challenges and the work of families and the trauma families to deal with this and I just I love this chief to be this village because he is so busy and he is so engaged and he's so committed to like this open dialogue so in the end with that little tiny weather window we made it over there and we didn't have quite as much time for conversation but that's okay it's like in the long few of it I think that I know that village is talking and that's what really matters that's what really matters accessible and protective actually I know this that Mara had to assign a lot of autographs it was so cute all the little girls went to Mara and all the high school boys went to areas excuse the hip hop artists so so as we said before the the proving agent you know the experiment to like showcase this this process is the indigenous roadshow that we're developing right now and Maura is a cast member and she's offered to talk a little bit about that process and about what native artists need in these kinds of situations yes, okay are you going to show things? yeah oh yeah so first Steve you want to introduce folks oh these pictures are awful look at my computer I'll just should we turn the lights maybe over there does that mess with Hal Brown? no it's just a bad I don't really I don't want to see mine so I'm going to just look this way so there's there's four of us in the indigenous roadshow right now there is Aries Hoyle who is Clingit and he is from Juno but currently lives in Seattle he's a hip hop artist he raps in his language and also in English does a lot of work that has to do with Alaska and his people and his community and talking about their traditions and life then there is okay there's me then there is Shelly Morningsong who is a beautiful singer she's known in Cheyenne and she is just one native American music she's one of the best artists of the year she went too I forgot the best blues artists and she is married to his current formal name is Fabian that's true we don't call him that but Fabian Fontanel who is Zuni and Omaha and they are a couple he is a traditional dancer a storyteller a singer a comedian and they have a wonderful relationship that they also bring to the whole show so they both live in Zuni Rez in Mexico and did you already talk about Peter? okay Peter we call him Tau but Peter Lockford is from Hawaii and he is someone in Hawaiian and he is our artistic director he's marvelous he was wonderful to work with and we didn't know each other before this process I feel like I've known him for a long time now but we just all met when we came to this residency so we don't have to follow slides okay I just wanted to talk a little bit about first talk about the experience in the residency and it was pretty amazing because I think you all actually almost did everything right so when we got there we were allowed to do ceremony as we wanted to take however long we needed to take because we're all from literally many parts of the world the way that we created our protocols we tried to incorporate some of everybody's we have our own way of time and there was no rush to do things on a certain schedule we were able to do it when we needed to have them done so we were able to start with ceremony we had a really nice balance of being alone as native artists we were able to be alone and work alone but when we needed other people there they were there we had good food we had all kinds of fish that you could imagine and moose and berries and people really just brought out their heart they had heart food for us they cooked in their homes we were like as you were saying we were able to connect with local people there talk with people meet other native artists from that area I even got stuck there and ended up eating dinner when she was talking about the grandmother daughter ate dinner at their house I really appreciated how they listened to us they people always say that we're held space people always say that now but I would say they made space and uplifted space for us and I appreciated that sometimes when we were doing things if it wasn't supposed to be photographed or it wasn't supposed to be recorded we could request that it was not recorded that's important particularly we were allowed to smoke out the area people were allowed to smudge that was not an issue at all we were allowed to have an altar there and also that for me I live in a town area but I was raised out in the country some people live in rural areas some people live in cities we had access to the ocean we had access to open air and it was right there which was really nice it was a wonderful thing and I just wanted to contrast I got to go to another residency somewhere else but I just remember that we were I was alone the whole time and it was really depressing to be alone I was the only native person there and it was like fielding a lot of annoying racist comments just weird questions like white people that were a part of the residency or a part of the staff so having contrasting that to what I had in Alaska it was just a wonderful experience so I think it's just that they were asked and they were asking people and listened and are open and then they said yes so that was kind of easy did you say yes so and then I also wanted to share a little bit about what I as an artist would hope from a residency and then I have also collected a few other native artists their input because we don't really do things alone so I didn't want to be the only one speaking and I'll not speak too long and then I'm going to also ask my kin folk here there's three of you I spoke to before that I warned you about this so yeah I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about your residency experience but I'll just do it kind of like bullet point this is coming from me some of the things that I would hope that would be offered myself and other native artists would be one money meaning money for travel, money for lodging money for per diem money for ground transport money as a stipend because a lot of times people either have to I don't know where money comes from for people who are the residencies I don't know how that happens and if the residency program doesn't have the money then support locating and applying for funding because that's not a lot of artists may not have funding funding it's just mysterious so if not money then help finding money I also put not to be alone that we're allowed to bring family or our partners or our kids that there's childcare for single parents a lot of us are single parents that we're not the only native person there there are other native people there that we can connect with local other native people and if the local native folks want that we can work with them that we have the ability to connect with elders with leaders and then I put again don't let let's not be the only native there because that can be kind of distracting and painful from the work that's me speaking then I have from Olivia Davies who's Ojibwe she's based in Vancouver BC she's a dancer and choreographer she's director of Odella Arts founder of Matrix Uprising a contemporary indigenous female choreographer festival she said rather than looking at the effect of the problem the effect being where the touring native artist she said look at the root of the problem and she said it would be important for organizations to get native people as a voice embedded in your organizations as opposed to tokenizing so she said natives on committees as natives on boards on staff leadership roles ushers everything you can think of and that having native people in those leadership roles helps to auto correct the machine faster to ensure that native voices are already a part of everything that's going out so when you get an artist's call you know if you're native you can tell oh that's for me that's for me it's not they go to us it's not for me so Tai Hifo of Indigenous Directions who's based in New York, Oneida and Ojibwe an interdisciplinary artist and performer and maker of many things he specifically had something to say about what the dream about getting space in New York City was so this is I think pertinent to urban places he said getting the space to create the work where one can move hang giant papers on the walls to sketch out what is in our minds to play music to have natural light that fills both our soul and our perspective Shelley Morning Song who also is Indigenous Roadshow who wants to she's Northern Cheyenne as I said and lives on the Zuni Res in New Mexico with her husband she said at the Brunel Residency that the whole I was like oh I thought I was like no! I think that's from your phone oh yeah cause I didn't turn it off how's that but yeah she said the whole thing of Residency was new to both her and her husband and Residency together as we were working felt important that's what she had to say so that we were able to be just have native folks by ourselves not with other people just for that time alone was very important and she liked the balance of having group workspace and then also having quiet alone resting space so that you could sometimes be away from the group and create or meditate or rest let's see Mona Cliff who's based in Lawrence, Kansas who's a mixed media artist and a master beater once again she said financing biggest barrier to Indigenous communities she said access not enough art programs in rural areas because sometimes it's daunting if you've got your family and whatever other responsibilities and you know to go off to somewhere halfway across the country for two weeks what are you going to do with everybody back home having more things in rural areas helping people to find money to fund and make the process easy and she also echoed for Residencies in your native communities like you all did inviting community elders and knowledge keepers to be involved and find ways to sustain engagement in the community after your artist are gone and it's like oh hi there people come on in and then we forget about them and she said also it's daunting to be the only native in some places Brooke Smiley who is a she's a dance an earth artist she's based in California she's also an advancing Indigenous performance program she said to be aware of and then let go of stereotypes of what an Indigenous artist might create research and get help about how to be open and how to become informed as allies and supporters opportunities that financially support artists in developing new work and she talked about wanting support with audience connection support with funders getting to know who the funders are and collectors and I think that was all of my other people's feedback from folks I collected but then I also wanted to share the time with James and Talon and Gunnar if you like just to talk about their experiences with residencies and that there's also native folks creating residencies I can start because I've never been on a residency so I'll take the least amount of time but just to introduce myself my name is Gunnar Krogman I go by Gunnar Jewel my middle name I'm from the Rosbus who tribe in South Dakota so we're really out in the middle of nowhere but I say the middle of everywhere we're right in the middle of we're Plains Tribe and us, Rosbus and Pine Ridge you know there's seven tribes in South Dakota but ours is so as far as residencies go my main thing is it's interesting carrying these things because those are all that's kind of the space that we desire on the reservation you know we'd like to host and bring people in because we're secluded just not quite as much as Alaska but we really feel like it especially when it comes to art and these things that's like the vehicle to change and expression and really reaching the youth just changing talking earlier we don't have a lajota word for art so it's just a part of us in what we do so just to have that space so experiencing a residency and things that I've had experiences just being in a professional space like that we really need that a lot of times we get we don't have state of the art equipment because we go with the lowest bidder because we don't have so we're just really deprived of resources equipment things as an indigenous artist who grew up on the reservation it's not zero exposure no infrastructure for artists there's so much challenge that never had the chance opportunity like I had older relatives who so great at what they do and I really looked up to those but they didn't have the opportunity to make that a career and a lot of the people even from Rosebud who I've met who become successful I've never heard of them because they will find their success somewhere else so for me to be able to create a space like that on the reservation then bring people to us and have organizers or people who are doing similar work and indigenous not indigenous but just with the same values be able to create their at home would be that's like my ultimate dream what's actually happening Lori's not here but First Peoples Month has a project with art space where they're building a place in Kyle will that be a residency yeah there will be I think five arts businesses that can and there will be a recording studio there but I mean Pine Ridge is the size of Kentucky and we're talking about Rosebud being like in the center so it's still quite a distance away sorry that's just trying something that I just want to share right now but I'll remember you from waiting out to Kenny Ramos which he and Kenny Ramos I'm from the Bruna Band of Mission Indians I grew up and live on the Bruna Indian Reservation I'm a theater artist and part of First Peoples Fund but I love what God is talking about cause like I don't know if this is relevant here for talking about residencies but like we're talking about native people being so grounded in our communities and who we are and loving that and like how could is there like some type of an organization that already has a residency I mean I guess that's the point about how you have to be in residence there but could is there ability to sponsor indigenous people to make art at home for that to be a residency and for support from that to come from somewhere else like how can the residency be really catered to what the indigenous artist needs cause for me I know it's about being I mean I'm connected to my people and my culture and my land and that is kind of first and foremost and I travel a lot for work which I love but I rarely get to actually work at home within my community and how can a residency come that's like sponsored by this organization but really to the point of like well we want to support you so much we want to put you in residence and if that means you being over there then we'll sponsor you to be in residence in your residence and do what you do sorry anyway just you can actually apply as an artist for the MPN creation fund which is coming up right now and that what happens is you get a tour but you can actually create that work in your own community as a creation fund artist you get to create in your own place but you get three national organizations to support you it's the same thing that Ed is doing the creation fund, the MPN creation fund allows you to do that you can apply as an individual artist but I like the idea of the residency delivery service I hate to cut off the conversation but we wanted to let Aaron have an opportunity to we've only got 10 minutes left so we want to give Aaron an opportunity to talk about what are sort of next steps if we, you know, we talked about things that we're doing now the Indigenous Roadshow just so you know has five co-commissioners Vanell Putty Foundation, Model Arts and Cultural Center in Hawaii, Panjio World Theater and the International Samaritan Desert Alliance and Aho you should know about them they're awesome, they're across the border what does it mean to be a good ally we wanted to give Aaron and Pika an opportunity to talk about how they're addressing this thank you I am absolutely I think it's absolutely appropriate for me to take the shortest amount of time and to mostly listen as an ally or whatever you want to call it a friend, an accomplice and what I wanted to share is actually we've been asked this question a couple of times to kind of assess where we are and where we're going and this what I just wanted to read to you was something that was posted to Demian Deneagy's Instagram and Demian's an artist we've worked with many times and put out this question to say so you allies who are doing land acknowledgments, what else are you doing and our colleague Roya and her soul money was great maybe some of you have met her wrote this response and then we took it and kind of have been using it as a starting point for what we are and what we're doing and apparently it's been helpful to other people who want to move forward in this work so I'll share it with you acknowledging that a lot of you are further in this work than we are so the first thing, the first set is kind of what, where are we now what have we already been doing one, an individual an organizational consciousness shift awareness and acknowledgement commitment to prioritize indigenous artists and communities and our research curation and community engagement efforts and I have to acknowledge also that that has really been catalyzed by Emily Johnson and work that we did with her as an artist and also is the the leader of the First Nations Dialogues and Global First Nations Performance Network that we've been involved with for about three years we do land acknowledgement statements before every public event credit statements in our programs and lobby, I think that that's just like baseline now if you're not there, there's lots of resources to help you we are ensuring indigenous artists are represented in our TBA festival year-round programming residencies and grant funding with emphasis on queer trans women, two-spirit gender non-conforming and non-binary people, that's just an extension of the work we were already doing in queer as a queer feminist organization we don't have a quota for this but roughly about 10% of our artistic budget is a goal for us and we've been doing for about the past two years and we're planning to continue that working to expand and strengthen trusted relationships with indigenous artists, communities and groups ensuring there is indigenous representation on our staff there is, but there should be more participating actively in helping to provide fiscal sponsorship and resources for GFNPN we're the fiscal sponsor and kind of incubator for that network sharing whatever resources we have calling other ally partners in that effort in when needed and attempting to relieve indigenous folks of always having to do that labor providing admin labor where we can reading and discussing texts on decolonization politics and practices incorporating decolonization and specific consideration of indigeneity in our ongoing racial equity plan regularly turning over our physical and material space, time and resources to black indigenous POC plus artists making connections between local national and international artists and curators and supporting artists led exchanges and supporting indigenous curated programming so that's what we're doing where we are going grow and ensure indigenous representation, inclusion and retention on our board and staff work to ensure work in office culture feel as safe as possible for indigenous folks build trusted relationships and conversations with local and regional elders, tribes and indigenous communities not just individual artists which is frankly where we are now all of our relationships are one to one individual artists because that's always been our practice repair past relationships and actively acknowledge the colonizing groups and forces of the non-profit industrial complex and work to subvert, upend and decolonize with the understanding that reparations and decolonization of space, mind and culture is life long and imperfect work seek indigenous folks input recognize participation along the way with financial compensation embed policies, values and protocols in the organizational fabric so this work will be carried out consistently in all areas staff board, volunteers, production and continue to evolve through changes and leadership and then the question what was asked that was asked to us was what would we find difficult to commit to and we changed it to say we are committed to doing these things with challenges with these things prioritizing indigenous artists first peoples first when other marginalized and oppressed people in our community are also struggling for resources striving to be intersectional in this work and our understanding of intersectional is that centering black and specifically black femme people but in our community it also means a lot of other kinds of people building trust with local indigenous elders community is given the range of work we support including clear transgressive voices and experimental aesthetics that might be actually a miss or kind of an assumption on our part that the elders might not be open to the kind of work that we've shown but we actually haven't tested that yet so that might just be a mindset problem on our part let's see building capacity for programs staff and board positions so we can recruit and retain indigenous individuals and compensate them equitably many staff begin as volunteers and board is unpaid so how can we improve working conditions so that those roles are ones that we could equitably ask people to do building capacity for commissioning residencies and developments so we can support artists through the whole life of their work and this one we keep coming back to this one which I'm realizing is more of like maybe a mindset issue than an actual issue that many on the land where we are Shinnok, Multnom, and Clackamas land most of the people of that land were either killed or forcibly removed and so our urban population represents 380 different tribal affiliations and it's about 70,000 people so how do we find the right people to go to as elders and there is some hesitation on our part of not wanting to do the wrong thing and now that I look back I can see that that's been a big mistake of ours of like not trying because we weren't sure the right path and actually listening to a lot of people today and I was thinking about some things like I could have asked instead of waiting but anyway that's where we are that's helpful Is all that public we're actually working on publishing it right now so we're happy to make that public and it's been circulated on Instagram on what on Instagram on Instagram on our artist page but no we're working on publishing it and I don't know we just don't have really any time left in the session but I wanted to maybe just super briefly say what the GFNPN is in case people don't already know so you should it is in process as everything is and it is on the advisory group with myself and then in the opinion and lawyer for a year and lawyer again and we work with colleagues first nations leaders and artists currently in what is called Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the US to build a global network that will support the commissioning and touring and presenting of our first nations performing artists in the way that we want to make and present work so a lot of the things touched on like where do we want to work, if you want to work thoroughly, how do we support that if you want to work urban, how do we support that if you want to tour globally, how do we support that if you want to just stay home, how do we support that and doing that work with presenters who are indigenous and also presenters who are not indigenous and then a lot of that work as Erin just very beautifully laid out in this document is a lot of decolonization and indigenization work we have partner organizations and all of that in an effort to not only build this network but overall to shift the consciousness and to really center indigenous people in indigenous voices and stories Are there any questions for at time? Can I just ask him briefly to tell because I didn't mean to cut that off and just to let everyone know the session is at time but I'm willing to just briefly talk about the native residency that you created Yeah My My My My My My My My My My My My My that the work is not of an artist, but to produce for other artists. And again, it was approached by First People's Fund through a grant that they won. And Talon D'Occino here, was our very first artist in residence. And I've only released, I'm an artist myself, I'm gonna release my first song a year ago. So I'm very early in this, but I have a very smart business acumen. So I went to Arts Northwest, and it was my first booking conference ever last year. And I went and I felt vastly unprepared. I'm an artist, I've got work, but I didn't have a nice website. I didn't have a very good press kit. So the first thing I asked Talon when he showed up, I was like, hey, how's your press kit? How can we help with that? So as far as needs of what artists needs in residence, they're gonna need press kits because it's not enough to just get them to the conference. They need to be prepared when they're there. So we need press kits, and we only had four days with them. And in four days, it was building community and I brought my goddaughter in. She braided our hair. She cooked for the whole week. We went to the store. We got massive amounts of groceries. So anybody that stepped in that space, she was gonna cook as well, but we also had everything to wear. It didn't matter at what time of day, because we recorded from nine in the morning until four a.m. We had four days. And in four days, we brought in 16 separate artists, four different producers, three different camera crews, and we recorded 22 songs. And so it was, and this is our first experience doing anything like this, but it was like, for me, the whole space is created for artistry and creation. So with that, I've got a five bedroom house that I renovated the whole basement into a studio. So I've got professional acoustics. I've got professional hardware, professional software. You're in a computer that I built from scratch, just so we could have all of the professional resources that we don't have in that area. Like I am the source of that now. So for me, it's about career development. It's not just enough to make the art anymore in today's world. Like we've got to know marketing. We've got to know how to mix and master and track ourselves. Gunner me and talent take that on ourselves as well, because we're self-producing at this point. A lot of the artists that we see and we mesh with are emerging artists. Not all of us are professionals. So for me in my area, it's my goal and my passion to raise the bar of artistry in my area. So we do workshops of mixing techniques, how to use an equalizer, the proper way, how to use a condenser, and in what ways do you pair these to bring your mix to a higher level? We teach them about press kits and how do you get a one sheet looking really nice? What is in a artist statement? First People's Fund made me a certified trainer in their NAPD trainings, where they go through a whole spectrum of visual arts performance art. It doesn't matter whole career development. So I'm bringing that knowledge and experience that they gave with me to other artists in my area. So for me, it was that building a community, bringing all these people in. It wasn't just about him being an outside artist. It was him bringing into the fold of our network that we've established in Spokane, Washington. He came all the way across the country. He didn't know anybody.  It was like a mix of races so that we could tear down these walls. His whole story was, the whole album was about Hitomi traveling the multiverse. There's a lot of tricks here and a story that goes with his people. Hitomi is specific to his people and for us, it's Coyote and other tricks here, but it was mingling of that and how do these tribal belief systems and spirituality, how do they transcend that because these type of belief systems and stories are in every one of our races. These types of characters are in every one of our races. So it was like hearing that perspective in that lens and yeah, there was a little bit of education of the people that were non-tribal into what this is and what is this spirit? What is this belief system? Why is it important to us and why does it matter to you? And how can you shed light on that from your perspective and your lens without us controlling your voice but still lifting up his belief system behind what he wanted to achieve. So it was a beautiful process and the biggest thing that I think that we need as artists going in is definitely finances. We even had a good amount of a grant but still reinvesting that into all the food, hiring a cook, with three camera crews, with photography, videography, shooting the whole thing so it's an investment to do all that and plus having to pay the artists and the producers. Now we're talking about how we did like over 40 hours of just tracking, just tracking. And then there's mixing and there's mastering. So there's all of these hours that we got to give an audio engineer. And then so there's finances go deep really quickly. So a lot of that money that we got we reinvested the whole thing except for maybe like a thousand dollars just to pay different people. The rest of it was reinvesting into services. So especially in a residency too that press kit stuff it's like we wanted everyone to walk away with pictures and video for their own social media for their own websites. All of us involved can benefit and be lifted from a residency like this. I don't care if you walk in, my god daughter's got professional photos of her braiding hair and quaking stuff that she can use on posts and in fact it doesn't have to be business. This is like building a community. So there's a lot that goes into it. That's from my aspect being an artist but being kind of, I wouldn't say thrown but I volunteered to step in to produce the residency and it was intense but artists come first. You know, he really came to work and we were really proud to work with him. So that's all I really had to say about this. This is land-based, sorry, I might jump in here. Land-based, but you created it in where you were, like land in your community. Anyway, I just think it ties back. Sorry about that. Land-based, well that's in the land everybody, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Land-based, it wasn't even like in that way where we were connected. It wasn't even my ancestral land because I come from the Caldwell Tribes and when I got that grant and I'm a staple in my community, I'm a leader in my community but we have like four different reservations that need these type of resources. So I use that money to go get a house in the city away from my people that was more centralized to all four reservations. So now we're bringing in elements and I'm bringing in sources from each one. You know, and each one of us matter because a lot of us are, we're only an hour or two away from each other. So, I mean, in Washington, Washington State, in Spokane, Washington. So we've got the Coral Lanes, the Spokane, the Calasville, and the Calville, right? All right there. And a lot of us have family in all of them because we, I mean, you know what I'm saying? We're known that. So we traveled and we traded with each other so we've got a lot of familial ties. So tying in these cultural ties in different culture, like you said, we all have different practices and stuff in the news.  And the ones from my studio. Yeah, oh yeah, can you talk a little bit about that? Here's our artist and resident here. Hello. Shakeda Hemian, Mia Dama Kota, Ma Lakota. Lakota, Dakota, I'm from the Crow Creek, Dakota Rez, and the Cheyenne River, Lakota Rez. I get mixed up, because I'm always, it's by nature, you want to say soup, but that's more a derogatory term for us. It means like lesser snake. And Ojibwe, we used to have issues, over art. So, yeah. Yeah. But, Yeah, just remove. Take it, Mr. Federal. Alright. There was, from my perspective, so I just have put it out there first and foremost, cause I'm not like every, every other artist is different, right? But one major thing about me is I don't, and this isn't for a moral compass or a status or anything, I really don't care about money. And I really don't care about being, which is weird because I'm an artist and that's the only way we could kind of live. But I don't care about those things. And that's how I live my life. I live my life for my family and for my people there. And that means that even right now, I feel bad sitting on this chair. I really do this whole time. But I didn't want to disrupt and get up and move around or anything and have someone convince to take my seat for me. But it's that deep for me. And where I'm at, I work 20 hours a week as a trio advisor, mainly because I like to be around the sixth through twelfth graders. And since I meet with them so infrequently, I can teach them about anything I want. I can bring in aim. I can bring in civil rights. I can teach it all through ethnomusicology. I can teach it through my experiences at their residency and share those things constantly with them. But it means that I struggle. And even though I'm an established artist, I've made over 10 self-produced albums. One of them is 51 Traps Long. Of course, he's a work horse. I really do love this thing because it's what saved me. So a big portion of, in my perspective, when Amber approached me with this offer from I don't want to misname the grant, the USDA slash... Rural Business something. Yeah. That grant. When I was approached with that grant, my initial thought was because we had hit it off so well in Phoenix, we made a song with Gunner that released like... Tones Spotify just released two weeks ago, check it out. We had hit it off so well in Phoenix that our first, we're talking like, I need to come out to you guys. So are you guys need to come out to me, vice versa? My initial thought went there. And so two big forms of trust had to come from Amber for me, which was one, which was the artist that's gonna be pushing for money and fame and stuff, which may not sound great to a lot of funders because it's an investment for some of them and they want something back from that. Me as the kind of artist that I am, I can't guarantee that all the time. We can say that that, yeah, we all believe in that. But we all need a lid. And this is the world that we're in, unfortunately. And it's one that I'm reminded of every time I leave my rest and every time that I'm in it. I needed that trust from Amber. And that was clear when she first approached me. The second was to picking James and choosing him. There was never an issue of, are you sure James can do that? Are we sure he's capable? Are we sure he's qualified? A lot of other, I'm a university of Penn alum. I'm very familiar with the Ivy League. For reference, that's where Trump went. So pretty, I'm sharing. Said it, so, because not everybody knows that. That's where I went. So I'm very familiar with exploitation. I'm very familiar with tokenism. I'm very familiar with people asking you to do something but not believing you can do it. Can you speak for us? Well, are you sure you know how to present? That sort of thing. I needed that trust from Amber to keep this water clear. And from James, I needed that same amount of trust which I'm not used to creatively. I realized that through this residency, the main thing I always wanted to do in hip hop was not, I really wanted to be a good rapper and a good beat maker and these things developed over time, but more than anything, I wanted to be a hip hop composer. I wanted to be able to compose an album where it's not just me because if it's just me, even I'm gonna turn it off. And this, the thought that I had, because James had asked me, you know, what's your goal here? Like, what do you want? And I said, well, I wanna do the album with you guys and with my people, because that way we're all in it. And I'm thinking, well, what's the narrative for that album then? Because we can't just throw songs together. You know, it has to be something. And my thought went to, well, for some reason, I thought of this title, traveling the multiverse with Iqtomi. Iqtomi is the trickster's fire spirit that teaches us everything not to do. But personally, I don't like the way that he's depicted as an evil being. You know, we're always laughing at Iqtomi. We're always playing at Iqtomi. When in reality, he lives a hard life and the people that he affects live hard lives, at least for that moment. And those are powerful because that's a sacrifice to teach us something. The people who are doing things wrong out there are teaching us how to do it right. A long time ago when I was 12, my dad looked at me in the eye and he said, son, I'm teaching you everything not to do. And he guzzled. I was 12. And now that I'm 26, he talked to me the other month. And he said, you know, I don't know why I told you that. I don't know why I did that because he's since recovered. And I said, dad, you know, it's weird, but that made me who I am in a weird way. I'm not mad at that, you know, and we get a long sense. And this is the guy who I had my first fist fight with, you know, attempted whatever on. And, you know, it's the reservation. It was a rough life, but a good life. And I wanted to paint this picture of Iqtomi showing not just, you know, the negative and exploiting the poverty and the struggle and everything and creating a hopeless aspect, but rather showing the power through Iqtomi and showing the lessons that we can learn, the things that we can learn from, the mistakes, and for us to heal and be like, okay, none of us are perfect. We all know these feelings, which is why it's a narrative album, but for the most part, everything is more or less an emotion and experience that is different for us. And that's where the multiverse comes in. For me, the indigenous experience and the human experience is one of a multiverse. We're all walking with a different perspective, experiences, memories of hereditary memories and generational memories and memories that we're still remembering. They say, when you make a song, you're just remembering. And so in my thought, when I approached James with it, I was like, I want to call it this.  I even presented it as a joke because on there, that's what we do. Like when we think someone's going to dog on us, we just like, yeah, I was messing around. But he was straight up, you know, that sounds awesome. Let's do that. And I was like, all right. And so that amount of trust was really, really needed because then when I got to be there, a great amount of respect and open-mindedness came with that based off of this topic of the album. And it took a lot of bravery for James to come and sit down with me, even though we had already kind of had this general understanding of the album concept. And he sat down and he said, I really kind of want to know more about Ikadon and am I wrong in saying that, you know, Sincleep is our version of him. So we sat down and we talked in that studio for a while while everybody else is outside. And I loved that because being open, I think we're not expecting any non-native to know the ins and outs of us and come to us and kind of give us this like proof that they know. You know, because we're just hearing it again. Rather, I enjoy the bravery that some people have to say, I want to know more about this thing. I want, I don't know enough. Or I feel like I just need to understand a bit more. I understand this much, but can you tell me a little bit more so I can help, you know, to figure out this aura that we're going for? So there was that. And then that open-mindedness and access to his network there really opened the doors for me to learn how to be that composer that I was mentioning before. Seeing how he interacts with his young people, because back where I'm at, apart from the trio, I run a twice a week open studio for the community where anybody can come in and record anything. Stories, teachings, rap, rock, powwow, hand drum, traditional, contemporary, anything. And part of the issue that I was facing for a while was how do I maintain a free and open space to creativity while, especially in the medium of rap, giving a little reality checks to some of the younger ones who might be popping off and saying a little bit too much. And maybe causing more divisiveness than togetherness.  He showed me a way to do that. And the thing was, I got to use it this last week. A 15-year-old came in, and he was recording, and he said the n-word like five times. He's native. And I said, OK, bro, I paused it, and I remembered what James did. So I just looked at him, and I said, I just want you to answer me this question. And I'm not, you don't have to change anything. I'm going to ask you this.  And this person is not going to be professional with you. This person is not going to be nice. This person might come from a struggle worse than yours, and maybe twice your size. Are you prepared to look up to that person and tell them, I can say this? And he was like, yeah, I kind of figured this would kind of come. And I was like, you know, native is the same amount of syllables. He's like, OK. And that's what I learned from CNN. Do it there. But also, it helped me be a composer in the sense of talking with a couple of people this last night. I admire people like Scorsese. And other composers that are in music and outside of music. Scorsese can go to actors like this recent Irishman that just came out and tell them what he wants, but still have that open space for them to put their own identity in it and their own improvisation ideals, values, created their own character that's off of what he wanted to fulfill this larger piece. I, as a composer, can't tell a rap artist, yeah, feel free to do whatever you feel will work best for the song. I can't say that to them, because then what they're hearing is, oh, a talent don't really care too much about this song. I can just kind of do whatever. But I learned that I could be like, well, this is the thing. And I explained the multiverse and this and that. I want you to bring your universe into this topic. So anything you say, I'm not going to be offended by it. I'm not going to question. Maybe we'll talk later, but for now, I want you to bring your full youth. And because of that, we have 22 songs, and I know albums that have filler songs in them. This is, everything contributes to the narrative and has something special in it to where I was on the plane over here going through organizing the first order of the songs and just like in tears, because I finally made something that, for me, was what I've always wanted musically. And I think a big part of that and what should be considered with a lot of native artists is I can go five days, throw me in for five days, and I'll make my best work. If I'm just focused on that, things are taken care of. And even the food, I appreciated that about the food, because in my culture, our belief with food is that whoever prepares it, whatever spirit they're carrying, that's going into the food, and that's what you're ingesting. A meal could be completely greasy, but depending on the spirit that you have behind it, you'll eat it, and you'll be up. If I'm making a burrito, I'm just like, here you go. That person's going to feel that energy from me, and they're going to ingest it. And that's going to be in their soul for however long. For me, we're eating good food, but more importantly, my spirit felt that peace to where it was literally, I would be downstairs, punching my verses, go upstairs, someone's making a beat, I write to that beat, come down, hey, they made that beat, can I record it real quick and get so-and-so on here, so-and-so comes down, they hear me record. Okay, bro, here's what I want you to do. If you hear this, I'm going for this vibe. You know, you ever have this happen to you, and they're like, yeah, I have, and then they start writing. I'm like, cool, I'm going to go outside, and get some medication, and come back in, and do my other part. It was like that constant, constant, constant, and that's how we ended up doing those songs in that time. And I don't mean to brag by saying I'm so proud of what we did, and there's like one or two songs that I'm not on at all, and there's production that I'm not involved in at all, but it fulfills the vision that I had because everybody was on the same page, even people who were just there for like an hour. And so when we're approaching different native artists, I think it does need to be realized that not necessarily, you know, poverty for poverty's sake, but even people like me, I have a job. I help take care of my mom. I help take care of my little brother. I struggle, but I'm not, for the most part, I either break even or I'm lestered in, you know, that's my mode in life, and I don't keep anything. But, and so when people kind of expect me to cover things, it really puts me in like an ugly mode because I don't want to complain, I don't want to say I need something. And even as far as the food, you know, James was very hospitable, and for Dakota people that's really important, because you almost have to force us to take something from your home, or to even sit. And he made me feel comfortable. And there's something to be said about that and in trusting those types of positions to people like me and James. Where, you know, no one questioned his ability. And partially done it before. And partially because even though he's never done it before, he's really good at it. But I think in part, you know, our whatever success came out of this came from that trust and respect and open mindedness from everybody, especially even from, you know, Amber's position and she wasn't there with us, she was coordinating it and the way she approached me about it. If anybody else did, I might have hesitated. Even, you know, that though it's an opportunity, I might have hesitated because I've had so many bad experiences before.  Things like that, where I'm from and my family and our small res of Crow Creek, one of the seven in South Dakota, that's huge for us, you know. And I'm sure for a lot of other natives and non-natives too, especially for artists, if you're looking for a piece that really has meaning and value in it, you know, those somehow those worries of finance gotta be, because I think those values go beyond it. They go beyond means to where, you know, we could have had nothing and we would have been fine. But the fact that we had all that stuff made it even more productive. And, you know, I'm performing in the arts on Friday. I'm gonna do one of the songs that we made there to show people. So yeah, but that's all I really have to share with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.