Indigenous Artist To Artist, Part 3: Who Decides?

Welcome back to another episode of All My Relations. We love you all so much and are so glad you've come to listen and learn with us again. So today we're talking to three badass indigenous women in the art museum world and we wanted to have this conversation to build off of our artist conversations from the last two episodes. We got the artist perspective from our amazing guests in the last few episodes but there's another important piece to the art world where historically a lot of gatekeeping but also a lot of amazing things have happened and that is museums. So I'm someone who studied indigenous contemporary art as an undergrad and I spent my campus job and summers interning in museums and trying to learn how to transform curatorial practices and museum spaces to be more welcoming and representative of native cultures. And I'm definitely someone who still loves curating and I've curated two small exhibits of brown and I think there's like a ton of potential to create needed dialogue and educate through museum spaces but I also realize that we have a long way to go on a lot of ways. Today we have three different perspectives of the museum world. We have Miss Jamie Powell who's Osage and the first indigenous curator at the Hidden Museum at Dartmouth. Kristen Dorsey, a Chick-a-Saw Fine Arts Jeweler and Metal Worker artist who is transitioning her career to become a curator. I don't know if that's public yet. And we also have Jacqueline Russell, a citizen of the Navajo Nation who recently transitioned away from the herd and is getting to an entirely new work and arts practice that we're excited to hear about today. So I just want to say welcome relatives, sisters. Thank you so much for being here. It feels like a real honor to get to spend time with you and even though we're in the middle of a pandemic, this virtual space feels uplifting to me and so thank you for being here. Take great seat and I love you and appreciate you and thank you for taking the time. Sorry. All my relations. So I think we wanted to just start off by hearing from each of you like why were you or are you interested in the type of work that you do in museum and cultural spaces and then what do you see as the challenges from your position where you are in your career, the challenges of these museum spaces. And in that sense too, like we also since our podcast is called All My Relations, I'm kind of thinking about the ways that museums and curation fit into this idea of being in good relation. So that's like a multi-parter. But basically, why are you interested in this work? What do you see as the challenges and then like any sort of thoughts around these ideas of museums and curation fitting into the idea of being in good relation. Well, I'll go first. So I, this is Jamie and I grew up with my father being in the Navy. And so my mom is Osage, my dad's non-native and he was in the Navy. So we moved around a lot but spent summers at home in Oklahoma, participating in our in Launchka and being, you know, with family and relatives there. But when I was in elementary school, we lived north of Chicago and Chicago has some incredible museums. And so, you know, I would go to museums on the weekend with my families or we would go for field trips and I loved museums. The Museum of Science and Industry was a place that really sparked my interest and curiosity. I loved the field museum where you could go and like go into a pyramid and, you know, be Indiana Jones, which is problematic in a lot of ways too. But, you know, and so, and I think it was fourth grade was like the one year where learning about Native Americans was part of the, you know, Illinois State curriculum. And so we went to the field museum to the Native American cultures hall and I was really excited because I had told my friends that I was Native American and they were like, no, you're not. You don't live in a T.P. You know, you don't look like a, you know, a Pocahontas or like have a pet like a friend raccoon. And so we go to the museum and they have a case about Osage people and it's like Osage men's costumes. And there's like no representation of women. And the clothes that are on view are not the kinds of clothes that my, that we wear today, even on, you know, our dances. And, you know, it was just like a really sad experience and then my friends were at these kids in my class told me like, well, it's because you're not a real Indian anyway. We didn't believe you. And it was just like this really kind of like damaging experience for me. And so a lot of the reason, you know, the reason I got into museums is because I want kids to go into museums and feel like they're represented in meaningful and respectful ways. And to like experience the kind of joy and curiosity, you know, that you can happen in museums and that should happen in museums and not those kind of negative feelings. So there's a lot of work to be done. Things are getting better, you know, but there's still like a lot of a lot of space for for growth. I had the same experience at the Field Museum, but that was like three or four years ago when I was asked to do a show there. And I walked in and there's those total polls that are in the in the center house. And, you know, they're like still unnamed polls. You know, like some high-da-artist did it or some cinch-simcy and artist. And then I went and you know, walked into the native area and they had these what we call squadilish. We run squadilish for ceremony. They're these paddle boards. And we don't really talk about it. It's not even something I would publicly talk about here and say this is why we do it and what it's for because it's super sacred and it's quiet, you know, it's something we do quietly. And those when you run squadilish, those boards are taken there, putting back inside their box and they're putting it put away for for good reason. And then those were just sitting there at the front of the exhibit and I was like, oh no, I cannot go, I cannot walk in here. You know, like I literally turned around and walked in the other direction. And the person giving me a tour was like, what where are you going? I said, this is I can't go in here. This is inappropriate. But you know, that was a couple of years ago. So I completely relate to that, Jamie. Yeah, well and I will say about the Field Museum, they, you know, have taken down the old Native American cultures hall, not the Northwest Coast, but the Native American, you know, the other part of the hall and have been working with a, you know, a collaborative team and a native or an Indigenous advisory group to reinstall that. And so, you know, there is, you know, some conversation happening there and some, there's a great show there curated by Nina Sanders, upsalika, women and warriors. The Nina Sanders did supported by Miranda Roberts, who's a curatorial fellow there. And so, you know, they're, I don't want to just like bash the Field Museum, even though it's like super easy to do. Right. Yeah, I actually really want to see that show. It looks really cool. Yeah, my heart goes out to Nina and the team because it opened just like literally a week before everybody needed to be at home and shelter in place. Right. So, but it's such a feat in terms of just that that monumental of an exhibit with contemporary Indigenous artists is there a, a real like world-renowned institution. So, big props to Nina and the team. So, I can go ahead and jump in. So, you know, Jack Lerossiancia, Tachine Inishle, Kianani Besheeshchin, Torekojeda Shache, Bilagane Deshinelle, Wukuchiketo, Sena Kanade Nasha. I am connecting in from the Mayabakeya, the lands of the, the Mayab people in Santa Ana Pueblo. It's my partner's home in a North Central New Mexico and it's where we raise our son and our family. And so, I, I think listening to Jamie's story, going back to where I found the magic and the interest in museums, I was a young kid in the interactive galleries of the Heard Museum and waiting for my dad to finish up some consulting that he was doing as a photographer with the museum. And so, I would just wait and play all different museums all over the Southwest and all over the country as he would have these meetings. And so, it was always a really exciting place to be, to explore. When I filled out my application for college, I knew that I like art. I knew that I like art and I knew that I like history and so I just put the two together. I didn't know that art history was a thing. I grew up in rural res, K&A, shout out to all the, you know, infemustings and and my application came back with my major having been declared art history and I was like, wow, it didn't get returned. I guess it's a thing. In college, I love sitting in the dark room, like watching slides drop, like on the old, like, slide, Kodak carousels and just being like so taken by seeing the world through, like, through like the art of other cultures and so I really loved art history and went into it because like my grandparents had actually helped build the new Navajo Nation Museum and Library and Archives on my res and so I grew up in a family that always like prided itself on the power of culture and like understanding and like that there was value in like being proud of who we are as native people as a dinew person and to me that there seemed to be like such a direct correlation to like that and like museums and so of all the things I wanted to do from like museum like magazine editor to like museum director to like astronomer which I don't know who wants to be a astronomer like that's all like math and like digits and I realized it wasn't looking at the stars but I realized that like the museums were like this really interesting place and then I like begged for internship at the heard museum and got it and it was like unpaid. I don't recommend this but then it led to a paid position and that just in itself like was the way that like I was able to like grow with the help of another dinew woman who is really like a mentor to me in those early days because she really like created a pathway for me and like other I think like indigenous people who began to like come into this space and and so I really felt there was such this like beauty and museums of being able to work at a institution that in a lot of ways did things right and working with communities um definitely had room to improve as I like learned over the course of my career there um but it was really I think the thing that attracted to attracted me to museums was the way that there was such an opportunity for learning because of this proximity and like a veil like proximity of like privilege of people coming in with like no recollection like or even not even recollection but also just not understanding indigenous people at all and I felt like that was such an interesting place to be um I like being a translator um between institution and like my culture and people not a spokesperson but a translator um and I really found that place to be really interesting um and over the course of my time in museums working on the inside also found them to be very problematic filled with institutional racism um a lot of just white supremacy culture that was at work and I transitioned out of museums to consult um really because of that because I was so burnt out and so I think we also have to acknowledge how yes beautiful museums are about how harmful they can be and taxing to indigenous black and POC um community members thank you I can go um chokma chokma sa hulchifoat uh chokha chafa hulchifo koni homa an chafa chikasha jagni chikasha sa ja chita famichi hutiku chokmaski my name is Kristen Dorsey um I'm from the red scant clan of the chikassan nation and I'm so happy to be with all of you today and um my I've always been oh and I'm speaking to you from Tongvelland um where I grew up uh uh wait away from my tribal community in south central oklahoma and I um when I was in college I had the opportunity to intern with my tribes cultural center before the building was actually constructed and they were in the beginning planning phase of the exhibits and um everything about the cultural center and so I got to spend a whole summer working with different um staff who were involved in all sorts of amazing cultural revitalization programs um I it was a way for me to really connect with the work that my tribe was doing around our language and our arts and our scholarship and I met some really inspiring people and so I think that really set me up to go on my way into the cultural center uh museum world space and I've always been an artist my whole life um since I was a small child I would sit and draw for hours and I've always been very visual I've always loved going to museums and staring at a piece for um very very long my family would always leave me behind in the different rooms and um so I I've just loved um studying other art my entire life and I think when you're so visual you kind of create um a visual memory for people's bodies of work and you learn to hone your own aesthetic as well and so I went to school um I did a dual degree program with Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts and I was actually in um the same area Adrian was around the same time before we knew each other and um in my research um I did native studies through American studies and for my thesis I actually built a business plan for a jewelry company but then also was researching um our Mississippi and techniques in metal smithing because we have copper working um that goes way back to our ancestors and so I was I would always visit the Peabody Museum at Harvard and go into um their collections and look at their books for my research and um I was also taking a lot of courses um from my professor and still mentor like um she's like family gel luster and um so she was teaching us to think critically about what the exhibits were saying and what they were actually teaching and I remember one day I was at the Peabody and I was standing behind a mother and a small boy and there were all of these mannequins of native people and um and they're like very stiff very creepy looking mannequins and I remember the little boy asked his mom mom are all the Indians dead and I was standing right behind them and I think that was kind of an aha moment for me it really drove home the importance of changing that um like what you all have spoken about already um I think seeing my cultural center take shape and Oklahoma versus seeing the really antiquated exhibit about native people at the Harvard Peabody um and contrasting those at that time really informs the direction that I'm going um I think you bring up a really important point I had a similar experience um and a lot of this is because it's like the natural history museums where um there are exhibits about um indigenous peoples and you know other in brown people it's like brown people and animals um next to you in rocks are you know what we have in dinosaurs um and so you know I worked at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science um and they have this really interesting exhibit case about taxiderming animals and a kid and his grandfather had clearly seen that and then went into the Native American culture's hall and um I heard this little kid ask his grandpa you know how those other animals were like stuffed dead animals are these stuffed dead Indians when he saw the mannequins and you know and so I think that's you know like you get to this really interesting point and it's why a lot of us I think have this interesting contemporary art and the work that contemporary artists are doing because we really have to like counter those um you know problematic representations of indigenous peoples only existing in the past only existing, you know, as these historic beings who are like less than human. And so, you know, the history is important too. And I think those of us who work within these spaces are trying to figure out ways to talk about that history. But like, people aren't ready for that yet. They still need like the primer that like, "Hey, we're still here." And so, I think that's one of the big challenges. You actually helped us segue beautifully, Jamie, which into our next question. And that's thinking about how the narrative shifts when the curator is a native person versus a non-native person or an indigenous person versus a non-indigenous person and how the power structure changes. For me, you know, like, I have the final show of Project 5.62 coming out at the Seattle Art Museum next year. And I am going to be the curator for the exhibition, which is like this massive shift that was required for because they don't have a native curator on staff or any native people in that sort of position. And I just said, like, I cannot do that. So they say, "Okay, well, you know, we'll let you curate the show." But that being said, you know, I have, I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to do a show with Edward S. Curtis, you know, and in fact, I did a show like that 15 years ago at the Seattle Art Museum where they said, "Hey, we really want to take, we want to, we have this huge collection of Curtis images. We want to put up your work next to his so that you can be in dialogue with his work." And I won't name all the other institutions that have asked me to do that that I've had to politely decline. But I find that it's very, it's not often, it's very difficult for me to find entry into these spaces without it, without it being like shown to the lens of a non-native person. Especially when we think about the board, you know, it's like, it's one thing if there's a native curator, but the board is usually not, and there's usually not native people on the board too. So that also makes this kind of a difficult experience for me as an artist, and I wonder how you navigate that and think about that from your perspective. I have some thoughts. Easy question, no video. How much time do you have? I think that, like, to the first half of the question, when I was at the herd over the course of 11 years, there was two exhibitions that came from a tribal community museum and/or was created by a community itself. So we're talking about over, I don't know, 80, I don't know, 60 exhibitions over 11 years, over a decade, and two of them came from the perspective of indigenous people. One in particular was actually from the public of his letter, and the power shift of doing so my role as director of education and public programs was like thousands of things every every museum educator listening to this knows that they're the part of your job description that says other duties that may be required is like huge, it's long. But one of the things that I was in charge of was doing like walkthroughs of different, so training docents, so mostly training about 98% of the docent core is non-indigenous people to talk in a way about native people that was promoting at least a contemporary respectful, culturally aware view of native people, and for the most part, like that was something that was well embraced. And I remember the walkthrough of the Pueblo of his letter show, and just being so inspired by the shift and the buzz of docents in that moment of the label saying we, we and I, we and I believe in this, and not they, not they did this, they did that, they believe in this, these people did that, and like that, you can't you can't bottle up the power in like being able to speak for yourself. And it, the other exhibit was a Deneff photography exhibit that came from the Navajo Nation Museum that was a kind of a survey of contemporary youth, mostly youth photographers, and it was the same thing of like this is my grandmother, this is like labels being incorporated in their own language, and so there's I think there's so much power, and it's really difficult to underscore like how much of a difference that makes in the consciousness of people who are the visitors who are taking in the material, who are taking in like the, like the subject matter, the impact, like they're able to identify it in a real way. The other part of your question is I, there is a huge problem that's not talked about enough because of the insidious nature of having collectors who sit on every native arts museum's board who are making, if this were any other industry, this would be insider trading. They're the ones who make decisions about their own collections, their friends collections, who get to choose what gets on display, and what doesn't. And that is why we are seeing the same things, that's why we're seeing and have, you know, problematic conversations that don't happen when we're talking about the unethically acquired material that a lot of these collectors have, because we know that these things, they may not be required by NACPRA to be repatriated, but they are sacred, they are significant. Everything we do as indigenous people is, we believe that breath is breath into things. So we're not just creating a rug or a blanket or a hair comb. It's something that is meant to serve its purpose and give significance. And so it's, that is something that's not being portrayed and it's still something that is not being addressed like in the native arts field as a whole. And it's something that I think we're going to have to reckon like with like in the in the next few years. I think a Jacqueline, all of your points, yes, absolutely. And I think another huge issue around that is that native art exhibits seem to be put in natural history museums over and over again. They're not put in places like the Met and major main, quote, mainstream museums. And that's a huge issue. And they're not included in places like art basil or prestigious art collecting for quote, mainstream contemporary art. And I remember back when I was a student in visiting New York, I saw this incredible native jewelry exhibit that was so powerful and it was really well done. And it was at the Natural History Museum. And I was thinking, why is this here in this museum? Like I was at the group of friends. There's two of their strengths, rocks and Indians. And like I was at the group of friends and I opted to go, we didn't have much time before the museum closed because we were always late. And I opted, I opted to go see this exhibit and then they all went to go see the butterfly exhibit. And it just like what the app? So that was that was another really big aha moment for me. And then we see that over and over again, or native artists got pigeonholed into smaller museums that exhibit native art, but are not, we're not able to break out of that. We're always attached to these stereotypes when they're non-native board members, non-native museum directors and non-native curators. Yeah, and I think that the problem is that both native curators, but native artists too are constantly trying to meet expectations that people have of what native art should look like, what a native show should be, what kinds of conversations we should be having. And I think this ties to the thing, Matika you mentioned about the Edward Curtis show, is that it's always like in reference to these colonial structures that we're always having to either are you with them, disprove them, grapple with them, but the thing that I've been thinking about lately, and now that there are more you know, indigenous curators and indigenous women curators in the field. We're starting to think more about indigenizing rather than decolonizing. And so with decolonizing, which is super helpful, it's, you know, Linda, to I Smith's work, I think has been something that has been central to my work, but probably all of our academic work. And Amy Lone Trees work decolonizing museums opened up really important conversations, but it's still kind of this decolonizing. You're still like centering, you know, colonizing within those conversations. So for me, you know, my curatorial practice, I'm thinking about, well, what does indigenizing a museum space look like? And how is that different from decolonizing? And for me, that's, you know, I will likely never have a show that I don't have a co-curator on. I always have, you know, a curatorial fellow or an intern who's working as my co-curator. Their name is included on the project. Their name is listed in a publication, you know, because they're helping do the work too. You know, that they're, you know, when I write labels, I invite other people to participate in those conversations. You know, when I write a label, I usually ask questions or think about possibilities. This, you know, I think there's an expectation people have about going into museum and like, being told what to think. And that's not actually very useful. And so, you know, how do we, I have a show up now at the Hood Museum here at Dartmouth that open to the public the same day we close to the public. So I've been jokingly calling it the show, no one's ever going to see. But it's called, it's called form and relation, contemporary native ceramics and, you know, one of the questions I pose a series of questions in the introductory panel. And it's like, how do we acknowledge our shared humanity? How do we think about our relationship to place in terms of relationality, not in terms of extraction or ownership? And then I ask questions in the labels because I'm not trying to tell people what to think. You know, especially like new England audiences don't want me to tell them what to think. They want to, you know, they know what they want to think. And, you know, so it's like the this constant battle of like, okay, here's what people need to know. But how do you like meet them where they're at? And, you know, facilitate a dialogue and a conversation that helps people get there on their own is the, is like a challenge that I enjoy about museum work. Jamie, just hearing you talk like that is the power of having an indigenous person in that role. Like you're thinking about building relationships with younger generations so they can also take on these roles and like be in these spaces. You're thinking about the relationship to place and how to frame questions. Like those are things that don't necessarily happen with a non-native curator. So I think that is really powerful. And I love Jacqueline how you talked about the like switch from we to I, or from like they to like we and I and the power of that too. And the last thing Jamie that you were talking about in terms of audience is something that I'm really curious to hear from all of you in terms of the curatorial work in a museum has to serve so many different audiences in terms of like there's going to be the non-native folks who are walking in who think that they're going to be walking into like a mannequin to like museum exhibit of Indians or whatever, who know nothing. And then there's native folks who like want to see themselves reflected, want to learn about other communities, whatever it is. But at the same time the values and practices of a museum are completely created by like a white western model. The idea that like the art has to be in certain ways on the walls, the idea that there has to be labels, the idea that you're supposed to be all quiet and like reverent as you like move through the space, all of these things. So I would love to hear from you guys about how you think of who you're curating for and how you kind of navigate those tensions between wanting to speak to multiple audiences in that space. I was actually just talking about this with Mercedes-Doramay, who's a Tongva photographer and installation artist. And we were talking last week and actually about this exact question. And it's super complicated and it can be very tricky because there is so much knowledge that the general public does not have about native people in general. And so your work has to be to on one hand just teach that this artist is part of a tribal community that exists in the first place. Mercedes said like I'd love to be able to tell someone that I'm Tongva and not get a blank stare back in return because that's step one. And as an artist who's exhibited my work and marketed my own work, no one that I encountered knew who my tribe was either. And so there there's a lot of basic knowledge that needs to be addressed in a lot of truth telling about history that is important to address. But then on the other hand we were talking about well how can curation and how can these projects actually benefit the artist and benefit the community because Mercedes told me like I feel accountable towards my own community when I'm presenting my work because there's so little representation in the public sphere and people's minds. And so it's an interesting tension to have and it's something that I don't have the answer to. But I think it's a question that you have to keep asking yourself as you plan exhibitions. Yeah, I mean I think there's such an opportunity where it could be a place where you like really unsettle the settler visitors you know where they're suddenly thrust into an environment where they feel out of place and a little bit unsure of things like how a lot of native people feel walking through like a traditional kind of white western museum. But there's all the challenges of like wanting to also you know not alienate people like bring people in that kind of stuff. I think it's just really an interesting thing to me. Yeah well I was going to say what prompted this conversation in this question was how I was telling Adrienne and how it's really interesting to see and for me to see how my work exists in these places. So at one time I was I was having a show at this national museum and I brought a bunch of my students and they were looking at the pictures on the walls and we were laughing and making jokes and you know it was like 20 kids from the res it was loud. We were having a lot of fun and the dosent kept saying I'm sorry could you guys please be more quiet and at one point somebody in the museum came over to me and said you know I would really appreciate it if you guys could just you know like be less disruptive and I said I would normally say yes but since you know like this is my exhibition I'm atika this is my show I feel like I'm allowed to be as loud as I want and they were like oh I'm so sorry you know but you know like that these sort of things happen you know like where I you know I feel like in the times that I've brought groups of students to these places they felt you could tell that they were active like very uncomfortable and they knew that the space wasn't for them and how do we change how do we shift that you know how do we change that and I know like in Tulalip where I'm from we've created our own museum and there's a lot of community things that happen there like there's a there was a long house that was built and you can go there several times a week and you can learn to beat or you can learn to you know like we've cedar or there's there's lectures that it's and it's all four community and it's amazing how different it feels in that space versus going to some other spaces you know and so I just I really wonder like when you're curating these exhibitions and you finally get to this place where you can curate a contemporary Native art exhibition what is it like when Native audiences interact with the space yeah I think one of the you know you definitely got that right that like these spaces weren't built for us right like when museums were brought into existence here and we're being built like they were being built with our things in them because we were no longer going to exist and so they would have a record You know, I'm a digitized people and so We certainly aren't supposed to be in these places as visitors certainly not, you know as curators or you know, hopefully one day directors And I think that tribal museums I spent a lot of time at the Ose Age Nation Museum growing up my aunt was the director of the Ose Age Nation Museum and it was like a space where people go in and visit and drink coffee and like You know when black panther came out all of my curator friends were like did you see she had coffee in the gallery and I was like That's what your tell like that's what you got out of black panther That scene that scene you miss at the point. Yeah, yeah, so You know not only did they miss the point But you know, it also brings up this thing that like I we like to eat we like to feed people we like to visit And museums never have like you can't have food and understand why you can't have food But there's also never anywhere to sit You know because it's like they don't want you to stay they don't want you to spend time and you know I think that's because we've you know in Western institutions art objects are art their objects. You should look at them Whereas within a lot of communities, you know the work that's in these places are relatives. There are beings like we should spend time and visit with them We should be able to leave offerings for them and you know, that's not something that is Comfortable for you know people who work in museums. I was you know recently having a conversation with a large institution And the museum director came on and you know, we were as an advisory board. We're saying like oh well, you know, these are things you should consider And the director said well, we just we don't want to make our public feel uncomfortable and I said well What part of your public because there are you know like by-pop folks who have always been uncomfortable in these spaces so maybe you know White folks should join us and feel discomfort because it can actually be really productive um, you know because look at all of the things that have come from limitations um, you know look at the beauty that has been created even in times of extreme um, you know limitation and um warfare even and genocide that like Native people have still created beautiful things and continued traditions and maintained ceremony um, that like That's really productive and for a lot of folks they're for the first time ever Experient discomfort, experiencing discomfort or feeling threatened by the government And it's like uh, yeah Some people have lived their whole lives feeling that way You know words will come join us comes sit with us in this uncomfortable place Thank you very much. I just want to acknowledge what you just said about snacks. First of all, about snacks. I get it, but can we talk about snacks? I always get in trouble about snacks in museums. I'm always a thing. But I feel more comfortable when I have snacks with me. About artifacts and things being alive. When we carve a mask, which I've only done once, my teacher told me that as you're carving into the cedar tree, remember that it comes from the tree people. And as we transform it, we're giving it a new spirit. And as that spirit comes alive, we feed it. And you have to remember that this isn't a spirit that wants to be put on the wall. The spirit wants to be put on and danced and presented to the people. And you have to feed the spirit of this mask. You need to sage it off and burn cedar for this mask. And you have to reintroduce him when you bring him out to the people. And that's your responsibility, since you've given this life. And so when I put up a new exhibition in a new space, I like to go and smudge it off and feed the spirit of the exhibition. And I can't tell you how many times, like, curator, to be like, what are you doing? You can't burn anything in here. You're going to set up the smoke alarms. It's a whole thing. And it's remained a whole thing. It's difficult to be able to do that. Sometimes I've had to pretend I was lighting the smudge and then just sort of wafed it with no smoke. But there's this relationship that we're supposed to have as caretakers of these things. And sometimes it's strange to not be able to do that. And I've really reminded of that when you have that story that I was told a long time ago by actually George David told me that story. Yeah, so I think that I'm at this place where my attitude is very like, I don't owe you anything. And just being very unapologetically dine, or indigenous, depending on the space. What I'm brought to consult on, or what I'm invited, like, to be, yeah, a thought partner in and on. And that was part of the reason for stepping away from museums for myself, was just really to choose myself. Because I had, there was a lot of cost, like personal cost. That I had to endure during my time. And so I think that this point, I'm interested in institutions, backing black indigenous, POC, curators, museum educators, like who we're talking about this imagining of what this new world is going to look like and how we can shape it. It's going to require white curators and white museum professionals to step out of the way to like relinquish the power that they've been holding for decades. And I think that that is going to be a truly transformational, just phase of museums going forward. And so I'm really excited about the future because there are small steps that are moving on. And I think that over the course of this transition and how far things have continued to improve, it's become more and more apparent that there is an opportunity for just re-imagining what the relevance of museums are, especially now. Like whenever the post pandemic, like whenever we get to like, like P.P. like post pandemic, like I'm really interested in like how museums are shaping. And I posted an article on Facebook that their day, and like there have been a lot of like, for every field, there's a lot of like mutual aid efforts that are happening. And there are national institutions that are trying to raise mutual aid for their furloughed, like colleagues for people who've lost their jobs and been terminated during this time. And like the amount of money that most institutions are raising is like only a quarter of the percentage of what the actual amount of money that the institution itself is raising for their own funds to keep light on, to keep all this and that. And it's really disgusting. Like that is like one of the power dynamics that exists like within museums. So I'm really interested about looking forward in terms of just how we move towards, it's this emerging of like indigenous and decolonized liberatory, like lens, like museums. That is much more of what Jamie described of this like community center. But I think that's the conversation that museum, the museum field as a whole, has been trying to like understand of like what is their place as a museum. as a third and fourth place in our society. And what does that look like in mean? And now because of this pandemic, and this reckoning with race, what does that look like? It's not even a fifth place. It's this other Wakanda that we're trying to create. - What are some promising practices or exhibits that you think have been done really well or Jamie, what are some things that you're trying to bring into your job in new ways or Kristen, what kind of work do you hope to do moving forward? So what good work is happening or could be happening in these spaces? - I've been fortunate to, I guess, free-lance carry and not be beholden to a specific institution so far because of that, the projects I've worked on have felt really liberating and empowering. One of those projects was with Jacqueline and we co-curated matriarchs and Matika was featured in it. We really had full creative power over that project and the museum offered its space to us and the staff supported the work that had to get done. And I think we achieved something in the future direction that we wanna go in. And when we were curating that show, we, it was a collective curation effort between Jacqueline and myself, but also between ourselves and the artists that were in the exhibit. And there was a lot of consultation and discussion with the artists about which pieces they wanted to contribute. We gave them the general concepts that we were hoping to discuss through the artwork and then it was a collaborative curation, that's how I viewed that process. I also wanted to give the artists approval over what we were writing about them and what information we presented about them. And I think things as simple as running that text by them if they want to review it and approve of it, something that I had never received as an artist in participating in exhibits before and then I get to the exhibit and there would be an edit that would need to be made but the label was already printed. The other curation project I've been involved with is a completely Chick-A-Saw artist run project called Visual Voices and it's currently traveling. It's an exhibition of 15 Chick-A-Saw artists and there are five of us who are board members who are all Chick-A-Saw artists who have the final say and we structured it to have power over creative decisions and content decisions and we wanted to be impartial. So we brought in two outside co-curators as well and a project manager to manage such a big undertaking but for many people we knew that this would be their first introduction to Art Tribe and so we were able to tell that story in our own words. It had a few successful openings at the Mississippi Museum of Art and Mokna and Santa Fe and the Fred Jones. But also going back we did shop it around to lots of other larger museums and we had hoped to get into more quote mainstream museums that don't typically exhibit native art. And so I think there's still that question. How do we create something that empowers our own artists and how do artists benefit from these exhibits? Something I'm always interested in. That brings up a really great transition to something I wanted to talk about which is money and like paying artists. I now have this position and I'm at an institution that has really incredible resources and one of the things that I was told when I came to Dartmouth was if it's for students the answer is almost always yes. And so like my director calls me the crazy cat lady of interns because I always have like four or five interns and my colleagues have one. But I'm like if a native kid wants to work in a museum or in the cultural field or is a studio artist and wants to like experience what museums are like so they have a kind of insight understanding of these spaces and I have the resources to do it why wouldn't I. But also like the show that I just opened for interlation. I made a commitment. There are six artists in the show and I made a commitment to acquire a work by each of the artists a significant work for the exhibition and not just borrow works. And I had site specific commissions. I also talked to some of the artists and said, you know what I have space and I have resources is there's something that you have been wanting to create but haven't had the support to create. How can I facilitate that? But I think it's in whenever I talk to folks too they're like well you know what should we be doing and I'm like you should be paying artists. You should be acquiring artists not just inviting them to give a talk or asking to borrow their work that you need to make a commitment to them. You know that helps support this work and that's sustainable too. I think sustainability something I've been thinking about a lot lately. You know and I think it's like everything we have these complicated like our lives are very complicated right now but we have this moment where like I would normally be I'm calling in from the library at Dartmouth but I would normally be calling in from home and my kids would probably interrupt or you know you would see like that my house is not always the cleanest or you know that like I'm not just a curator but I'm a mom, I'm a partner, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm a granddaughter, I'm an auntie and a teacher and a mentor and like I take all of these roles really seriously and I'm one person, I shouldn't have to compartmentalize all of this and so I think our current moment has kind of opened up a space for us to be humans and to exist as humans in our professional roles in academia and in museums that might you know have some some positive impact you know after this you know we move beyond this really difficult moment that we're sharing yeah I love that thinking of like the like we're always in webs of relation and you can't take that away from a work in a museum that all of those pieces come from communities that are in webs of relation all of those artists are in webs of relation I'm invited to shows weekly where they don't want to pay me they don't want to pay me to speak they don't want to or they don't want to acquire the art they want to pay me to speak about the art you know and so those are two big things that I really have like take issue with institutions and I keep telling them like there's no amount of exposure that's going to pay my mortgage you know so thank you for the exposure but it's not going to help it's not gonna help me be a stable person and I can't make art if I'm not a stable person so please stop asking me to to give you things for free and I've had to become really I've tried to become very like serious about that well and it's hard too because sometimes it's your friends so like I have a buffer now you know like I don't ever like I just I don't even receive the email until after my assistant has vetted it and said that they're going to pay your normal fee and usually if they won't pay my normal fee I never even see the email you know so it's like that's why I'm at now but it took you know it took a really long time to get there and for years I did favors for institutions who you know it it was really painful I think looking back on it and so I won't I don't try really hard not to do that anymore but that's also a position of privilege you know because it's really hard to get into these institutions it's not an easy thing to be shown in national museums it's not and so there's that too I have to say one more thing about money I think there's an interesting thing that happens when we have to also recognize that while there are most institutions that don't pay artists like for their work in terms of like buying and purchasing it for the collection what tends to happen a lot is collectors then sometimes donate but then also museums purchase collections from collectors of work so we're thinking about the distribution like of funds and like money oftentimes it goes back into the hands of collectors and not the hands of native artists so like there's also this other we're talking about equity and like who gets paid That's another layer in terms of like who takes money out of the hands of native artists. And then also I think that very few collectors actually understand the value of native art. So whether we're talking about traditional art, even contemporary art, that there's a lived experience that is part of the making of the art that is not being compensated for, or is always called into question when a particular price is put on a piece, and that is not the worth of it. Like that is what said, that's not the value of what that piece is. But if you're a non-indigenous person, who are you to say what the value of a piece is, when a price also considers an entire culture, like transference of knowledge and legacy that happens, so I think that that's also something that we're talking about disconnect of values and lack of equity. That's something to consider too. Switching gears to the best practices, I think one of the examples of the best practice that I was really just excited to see was the hearts of our people, native women artists exhibition, that was just like a monumental contemporary exhibition that was curated by Terry Greaves and Indigenous artists, and the way that that was installed with care kind of coincided with what Jamie was talking about. Like there were places for people to give offerings to different artworks in that show, that it was acknowledging this live spirit of the pieces that were part of that exhibition, which it first showed at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, that was the organizing institution, and they, I have a lot of respect for their team in terms of the way they are looking at equity as a whole and other work that they're doing. So that's a, I think, a great example of best practice. That particular formation of offerings for that space was unique to like homeland communities of that area because of the relationships that were built by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, like with their homeland communities as partners. And I happened to know that because I was doing docent training for the second institution, and they were navigating just conversations about, well, what does their practice look like that could mirror that but not copy it? Because MIA was very much like this is something we came up with for this installation and this community and this space. So I think that's something that's also important is recognizing that something that fits for one community may not and likely won't fit for another community. I actually wanted to wrap up by asking you guys to talk a little bit as mothers, you know, you guys are all moms. I'm a new mom. You, you, Kristen and Jacqueline just had a baby. Jamie, I understand you're a mom and two. And I'm, if you could think about it from that perspective of how you hope to shape the future of the museum world, of the art world, of access to the art world for your little ones and for the next generation. Well, Brynn was born into an exhibit. For matriarchs Jacqueline and myself were both pregnant when we were planning that exhibit. Fortunately, I didn't have to give birth in the exhibit, but I gave birth to her two months before the opening of the exhibit. So anytime I was talking to an artist or doing a meeting on Zoom or something, I was probably breastfeeding and I was doing interviews while breastfeeding her in the exhibit. And just, um, and facilitating public events there while breastfeeding. There's a trend there. When I brought her to the exhibit, she, it was really special because I could even when she was a tiny baby, she loved, loved GMio Kumas cradle board piece. And there are certain pieces that she would just stare at and it was really interesting to watch her visual preferences take shape from such an early age when she was just months old. And, um, to be in the presence of these powerful works from Indigenous Femmes, I think was a really great start for her in my opinion. And I'm thankful for that. But yeah, I want her to be able to walk into a space when she's older and to feel empowered and to be comfortable to be herself and to, um, to be able to see our community in that space and to feel welcomed. Yeah, I, um, I have two boys Grayson and Calum, they're eight and four. And, um, I got pregnant my first year of my PhD program with Grayson and was terrified that I was like, oh, of course, like the, I'm like the Indigenous woman, like getting pregnant and I'm not going to finish school and like, you know, but I had people supporting me. Um, I had a cousin who came out and lived with me to help take care of Grayson when he was little. Um, I would go to class with like to my grad seminars with Grayson and nurse him when I needed to or, um, this past weekend, um, one of my mentors, Jenny Tonpoho, um, who was just absolutely incredible past, um, and I would sit in her office and nurse while we talked about art. And so like the, my kids have grown up in these spaces and they feel comfortable. Um, I was pregnant with Calum and in the field museum doing work on their collections. Um, I was aged collections there. I did a lot of smudging, um, you know, with him, but, um, they're fascinated by museums. Um, and I think museums are great places. We have great memories in museums and I want everyone, like all kids to be able to have that. I want them, you know, but that's because I get to go to museums for free because I work at a museum or, um, you know, like museums need to be accessible. They need to be open. They need to be welcoming. Um, and we have a lot of work to do in order to facilitate that. And we also need to, um, you know, I know how to advocate for myself now. And I know, you know, um, I hope to teach my kids how to advocate for themselves in a respectful way, you know, but, um, that, you know, a lot of people are intimidated by these spaces. Um, and so how do we, how do we make them places where people feel comfort? You know, like we should be challenged, um, and feel grief or joy or, you know, other things, but like we shouldn't ever feel shame or violated. Um, and so that's really what I, what I hope, um, to do. Um, my son, um, Abraham, he was, um, with me as I was working back and forth. I was commuting between here and San Diego, um, to work with the Museum of Man. And, um, it was an incredible, incredibly hard journey, because I had worked in museums that really didn't have a lot of, um, ancestral remains that had a lot of like just working, like the Museum of Man has been actively for the past few years, like really, um, repairing relationships with, um, different communities. Um, but they were still in process. So I was very acutely aware of carrying my son and, and being not, and, and just like hearing my grandma's voice of like knowing I really wasn't supposed to be there. Um, and yet at the same time, remembering just when I told her when I was younger, that I was going into museums and the protection prayer that, um, we had for me and like my career to be able to like have protection in these spaces. Um, and I think about that, um, a lot. And in that place of really trying to help, um, museums, become more, is really like the service on the way I've been working within my business now having moved out from being on staff at museums. And within that, I want my son to feel welcomed when he's in spaces and just thinking about what his uncles have endured, like coming to like my shows and exhibitions and like have literally not been allowed in because of the way that they were dressed and the way that they were and they weren't even dressed in like it doesn't even matter, like they they were my guests and were turned away. And so I want my son to feel welcomed like in these spaces, like movie forward. His dad is a very talented artist. We have traveled as a family like all across the country as I've given trainings and different lectures at different institutions across the states and and so he already has been exposed like to museums, has played in interactive galleries, has put things together even as like a baby and and I want him to continue to find the beauty in art, the beauty in culture and in learning about other people's culture like through art and through museums. And so I there's a lot of that vision that like I can help cultivate but then there's a lot of them that I carry like raising an indigenous boy and him becoming an indigenous man and just being carrying hope but maybe a little bit of fear about like that what I'm doing is enough to create the world where him and other other black indigenous like people of color like feel welcomed and safe in in museums and just our society as a whole. Thank you all so so much. Yeah I'm just in awe of all of you and feel so honored to know you and like have seen the growth of your careers and lives and the birth of these beautiful babies and all of these things is just so it gives me a lot of hope like as someone who has had bad experiences in museums it gives me so much hope to think about this powerful work being done and I'm just so full of gratitude for the work that you have done and will do and in all spaces around art and museums as well so I'm just so grateful for all of you. Yes I'm grateful for you and Matika and bringing us together and being on this podcast and having this podcast in the first place I think is just so powerful. It's such an important space too and I think it really kind of demonstrates that like we need to combat these things from all different angles and use different strategies and that there's space for all of our voices because they're different too and you know that like that you're you know uplifting people in these conversations. Thank you. I also just got to thank museums because that's how we met like that's how right literally like where how we met and like that and itself is just so remarkable so yeah yeah. Teaguey took friends, protruding into the special three-part series, Indigenous artist to artist inspired by our friend Grace Bonnet design sponge. Big thank you Grace and to our friends in the series. Wadi Crazy Horse, Pat Pruitt, Jane Nicole Hatfield, Yachtica Fields, Brian Redcorn, Holly Nordman and from this episode Jacqueline Russell, Kristen Dorsey and Jamie Powell. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great pleasure. As always we realize that this is just a small selection of artist friends and over here at All My Relations we remain committed to continuing to illuminate the work of Indigenous artists. In the meantime we link to more Indigenous artists to follow support and build relations with in the description and on the gram. We invite you to take other Native artists that really inspire you. Please stay tuned for our next series on monoclea as we talk story with our Hawaiian relatives about the resistance and uprising and how we can be good relatives to them right now. This podcast takes a lot of people to put it together. First thank you Teo for the sound, recording, editing, video editing, music and mastering. Same goes to Max Levin for the late night scoring and piano magic. Thank you to Sierra Sona for our episode art, Kristen Bolin and Will Paisley for Back of Housework and thank you to all of you for tuning in. And please consider supporting our podcast as we are listener supported. We have a Patreon and a direct link to donate at our website on myrelationspodcast.com or donating isn't possible right now. Just giving us a subscribe and sharing this episode on your socials is super helpful. Until next time we send our love and good energy out to you wherever you are. Blessings, solidarity. I hope. All myrelations.