words from Indigenous Arts Planning Conference > Gail Tremblay

"All of the art Indigenous people do is political—if you decide to do the traditional things and develop them. You are refusing to assimilate and that is a political act. If you decide to make work about the effects of nuclear pollution on your reservation, you are making a political act. If you decide to make art in a European tradition as an Indigenous person, it is a political act. The issues of being an Indigenous person will inform the conversations that people have to have in the world and the art world. We want students to show all over the world. Make Indigenous presence PRESENT in the world. Most important thing is to allow the conversation to stay very fluid and to realize that whatever we do it is not the only way to do Indigenous art. It comes from people choosing to maintain a culture together. Art is an act of sovereignty and an act of existence and presence in Indigenous Arts Planning Conference: Summary Document 30 the larger world. It means to have conversations with our communities on what it means to have a sustainable existence in this world." ---> Gail Tremblay, September 2013. MFA in Indigenous Arts Planning Conference, Evergreen State College.

Current Art Statement--> December 2013

Kaila is a Klamath/Modoc woman named after the Klamath mythological character, G’eeLa (Ka-EE-La), who represents creation, the earth, and the land. She is a visual artist working with oil paint and various printmaking techniques using fabric, canvas and wood panels that collaborate with indigenous geologies. Her artistic expression and practice facilitates a personal journey of de-colonization/re-indigenization, navigating contemporary indigenous identity through forms of reclaimed ancestral knowledge. She explores images and symbols that represent an emergence of indigenous experience and expression, utilizing strong languages of color, form, and abstraction on two-dimensional surface. This expands into a visual experiences of architectural space that creates a conceptual dialogue via the orchestration of significant objects: paintings, hand-twined cordage, and stone people. She utilizes trickster consciousness through titles and text as a form of contextual entrance into the complexity of indigenous/settler colonial relationships, instigating language to inspire reflection. The aim is to bridge viewers toward concepts that discourse past hegemony, working towards indigenous postcolonialities.

Racism & Settler Colonialism Panel--> Notes for Indigenous Voice Discussion

• Noo’ a ewksikinii (I am a Klamath person), introduce tribe, name story: G’eela (pronounced Ka-EE-la is a Klamath word for the mythological being representing Earth, Creation, and the Land). • Andrea Smith in her article “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy,” introduces the three pillars/logics of white-supremacy that were the foundation of the USA: (1) slaveability/anti-black racism that renders black people as enslaveable and property, anchoring capitalism; (2) genocide, this logic holds that Indigenous peoples must disappear so that non-native peoples are left as the inheritors of all that was Indigenous (land, natural resources, culture, art, and spirituality), anchoring colonialism and (3) orientalism, which deems people from other nations (brown and black) as inferior and a constant threat to empire, which anchors war. • I am here this evening to discuss the second pillar or logic of the settler colonial machine, which is genocide, where the settler colonial oppressor needs the erasure of Indigenous people to complete their project of colonization. This relates to my family story and I will outline different aspects of cultural genocide via forced assimilation and relocation policies that have happened in the last 100 years, following events during my father’s life. • Note this begins with ideas and concepts that were propagated to settler’s and non-Natives; doctrine of discovery, expansionism and manifest destiny, which instigated the indian wars, Andrew Jackson’s massacres of Indigenous families, elders, women and children and the removal of tribes via events such as the trail of tears etc. during late 19th century-early 20th century. An important period to note here is the forced removal of tribes to reservations, the reservation period. • I will briefly outline a condensed life history of my father Al Smith in terms of looking at further US government policies that will move this discussion into a contemporary global dialogue describing the continued actions of neo-colonialism an how it’s aims are still the erasure of Indigenous people globally. • Born 1919, Al is born on the Klamath Lakes at Modoc Pointe, speaking Klamath, and he collects huckleberries, chokecherries, wocus (lily pad grows in the Klamath Lakes, food sustenance for my tribe), and lives with strong family connections and love. At age 7, he is removed from family into the Boarding Schools‡ forced removal by Christian Priests to Reform, Boarding, and Indian schools. Loss of culture, language, spirituality, strong family connections. These are colonizing tactics used for forced assimilation into white American culture by dismantling Indigenous knowledge bases and family life through the Boarding School system whose motto was: “Kill the Indian Save the Man”. • Drafted WWII, graduates to living on skid row, in and out of prisons & jail‡ which are settler colonial institutions: the US military and prison industrial complex that are used to continue the control and assimilation by reiterating dominant white culture forced during the Boarding schools, anchoring the erasure of the Indigenous world view. A literal smashing out of an Indigenous paradigm by the colonial oppressor. • The Termination Period, the Klamath tribe is fully terminated in 1954, for our Ponderosa Pine timber, this is the last act to remove all land rights Klamath people have to their homeland, no more reservation. Also at this time are the Relocation programs of rez Indians removed and relocated to work in the cities‡ this is the creation of Urban Indian culture. The colonizing tactic: removal of Indigenous connection to ancestral homelands and food sustenance knowledge. • At age 36 Al gets clean and sober, begins work in A & D (alcohol and drug) recovery programs, and travels around Indian country working with different American Indians on embracing a life of sobriety. 1970’s Al is first introduced to Native American culture i.e.; Sweat lodge ceremony, Peyote church (tipi meetings), and Sundance ceremony that was brought to Oregon with a few Lakota Medicine men, who had visions to share this specific Indigenous ceremony and healing methodologies with the Oregon Natives suffering from recent trauma due to loss of Indigenous spirituality. This sharing was in return for the shared Ghost Dance ceremony with the Lakota’s 100 years earlier. • Al incorporates this into the AA programs for Native people like “Sweathouse lodge,” which was an Indigenous recovery program revolving around sobriety and Sweat Lodge ceremony and this took place as an encampment by American Indians upon an abandoned US government base in Oregon. During this time he stood in resistance alongside his friend and fellow tribal member Edison Chiloquin, resisting against the legalized theft of Klamath land via the Termination act. He also goes to Alcatraz for the AIM occupation. • “Al Smith vs. Oregon,” the Freedom of Religion Case.‡ Al is fired from his job as an A&D councilor for going to a Native American Church meeting and ingesting Peyote an ancient Indigenous medicine, that the state deems an “illegal drug.” This case goes to the Supreme Court and ends in a loss, but sparks the Native American Freedom of Religion Restoration Act that President Clinton signs into law. • 1980’s, I am born and raised in a time of resurgence of Indigenous culture, reinvention and emergence of American Indian political activism and reconnection to land bases and ceremonies. • This reemergence and reconnection or remembering of Indigenous ceremonies and connecting to ancestral land via political activism that usurped government property is important because this is the return of the Warrior culture 100+ years after the Indian wars. This is the empowerment embedded within Indigenous resistance against the dominant settler colonial culture. This time period is an incredible inspiration to my artistic practice. • Settler colonialism aims to erase Indigenous people and this has happened through systematic massacre, genocide, war, and then the continued cultural genocide via forced removal, relocation, and assimilation policies of the USA. This happened through the United States of America’s legal systems, justice systems, military systems and the written documents of treaties. The Native American holocaust was a deliberate and systematic genocide and we survived and thrive in a unique and vibrant contemporary culture, embracing recent ideas of hybridity, border culture and split-headedness. We, the next generations of Indigenous people work to mend these fractured identities within the insanity and greed of the white-settler-colonial dominant culture that has morphed into a larger re-colonizing monster, while still upholding our ancestors strength of Warrior’Ness. • Indigenous nations have a unique relationship with the nation-state USA, because as tribes we are sovereign nations and have a legal relationship that must be honored and respected, specifically in regards to our human rights via our water and land rights. This is being contested and threatened in the face of corporatism, trans-national capitalism, and globalization, which are the face of neo-colonialism. This is what the Idle No More movement is resisting and fighting against, demanding the larger culture become aware. The rape of the earth to fulfill an unsustainable addiction that this “civilized” culture has with mining natural resources around the globe, directly impacts and effects Indigenous peoples and allies world wide who are resisting and fighting to protect Mother Earth, Pachamama , and all life we recognize on this planet.

Critical Film Review: The Lone Ranger (2013)

This review critically deconstructs the film’s content of visual and cultural misrepresentation, embracing an oppositional gaze to the predominant rhetoric of white oppression and erasure of aboriginals in the America’s. The Hollywood blockbuster brought to us by Disney fell far below any standard that should have been demanded for a remake of this racist recolonizing tale. Nothing has changed from the original relationship between Tonto (meaning “stupid,” “idiot,” in Spanish) the Comanche sidekick and the all American white-hero, the Lone Ranger, except that these filmmakers reverted back to casting Tonto with a white man. Unfortunately, in 2013 the film continues to reinforce all of the detrimental stereotypes communicated via false visual information (i.e. regalia, geographic locations) and ‘Tonto Speak,’ which continues to instigate a narrow, white gaze that erases vast diversities of indigenous nations thriving today. Starting with the title, in this version of the action duo Tonto doesn’t even make the cut! That is a clear statement of negating any representation of Native America whilst creating a vivid hierarchy of character importance. What else happened to Tonto in this Disney version? Obviously we all know who Johnny Depp is, a Hollywood super star who happens to be a white guy. No amount of dry crackly make-up and taxidermy accessories (a costume meant for a Zombie apocalypse not a proud Comanche warrior) will ever convince us that Johnny Depp is not white, or allow us to negate the Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean) reference of a bumbling drunk. The movie-viewing public has witnessed through out film history an array of white actors starring as Indian warriors and Indian saviors, none of whom have been as offensive as Depp’s portrayal of Tonto. We are currently witnessing the renaissance of indigenous filmmaking, Native artists writing their own stories, casting indigenous actors, humanizing the gaze and redefining indigeneity in film, movies like: “Powwow Highway,” “Rabbit Proof Fence,” “Whale Rider,” “The Fast Runner,” and “Boy.” This renaissance in indigenous filmmaking functions as a vital area of decolonization for Native and non-Native communities alike because watching indigenous artists make movies from their gaze humanizes the past damage created by characters like Tonto. These films are critical antidotes to colonialism, specifically areas of colonization that are psychological, intellectual, political, and spiritual. Why would Disney and Hollywood take 1000 steps backward by casting a white super-star to make a mockery of an archaic flawed, one-dimensional stereotype, continuing the sad role of defacing indigenous people through essentialist racism? Maybe they couldn’t get any real American Indian’s to play the embarrassing role? Perhaps they should not of made the movie in the first place. The filmmakers are recolonizing the American media-consuming psyche by employing every classic western film tactic, utilizing cowboys versus Indians that stamped the stereotypes of the “wild west” onto mainstream globalizing culture in the first place. These tactics feed myth’s of an unthreatening American Indian caricature like: romanticizing the ‘noble savage,’ the ‘stupid but friendly Indian,’ ‘the sell-out Indian’ who is too dumb to ‘own’ land, the ‘spiritual Indian’ leading a white guy on a vision quest, herds of buffalo stampeding through Monument Valley, which is according to the film, now in Texas. Save the best for last the myth of the ‘vanishing race,’ where every Indian in the movie dies, except for Tonto, who ends up as an exhibition at a carnival being compared to majestic taxidermy animals from the ‘west,’ a buffalo and grizzly bear, orchestrated together for the entertainment of a young white boy dressed up like the Lone Ranger. This film makes hegemony of a complex continent of indigenous nations to justify, satisfy and cater to the gaze of a young white boy searching to fulfill his fantasy of American history and feel nostalgia for the ‘wild west.’ What that little boy (and all children being educated in America) need to learn is why Tonto was a human display, a tactic used by Imperial oppressors to exhibit domination over conquered tribal people’s, comparing them to beasts representative of myths of recent pasts, murdered for concepts of progress and civilization like Manifest Destiny and expansionism. The reality is that little boy needs to read Howard Zinn’ s book “A People’s History of the United States,” to start his education about the 500 year genocide on indigenous people in North America and then watch films like “Smoke Signals” and “Skins” to realize that even after the longest holocaust in living memories we have survived and thrived into contemporary tribal peoples alongside the rest of American society! The Lone Ranger (and Tonto!) are archetypal characters created for and by the white American gaze that inaccurately depicts history, which indigenous nations remember very differently, these characters attempt to rewrite the past and manifest a continual fantasy of white heroism via cowboys and the Texas rangers. By recasting these characters in a contemporary context revalidates a violent colonial past degrading the relationship mass American culture has imagined with indigenous people, relegating American Indian people to a shallow peripheral, reverting back to notions of an idiot sidekick, used for slapstick, mascot, and scapegoat. This is a detriment to the psychological relations, which inevitably degrades real life relationships, instigating stereotypes and racism that manifest into daily interfaces. The story line strongly reiterates every other film made by a white gaze, for a white gaze attempting to define indigeneity, which translates into a colonial portrayal of ‘the pathetic once-were-warrior tribe’ who can have one last stand against their inevitable annihilation in the face of imperialism, but only with the help of a heroic white man, as in the films: “Dances with Wolves,” “Last of the Mohicans,” “Last of the Samurai,” “Pocahontas,” and “Avatar.” This 2013 version was no different and unfortunately left the viewer feeling complicit in the recolonizing tactics by submitting to watch Mr. Depp jester for the white hero, mutter gibberish to a spirit horse, and feed ravenous cannibal rabbits in the glow of a primitive fire. This film was a detriment to all movement forward towards decolonization specifically in the actions of naming exploitation, addressing the mourning process to allow for rediscovery of culture and indigenous spirituality. These detrimental acts of the filmmaker’s and producers only solidify the accusation of embedded white supremacy and colonialism inherent in the film industrial complex.

Questing Indigenous Identity in the Academic Industrial Complex

Excerpt from a critical analysis essay of article “American Indian Identity and Intellectualism: the quest for a new Red Pedagogy” ...The reactions some have of not understanding a painting because it doesn’t “look like” an American Indian painted it, falls into essentialism identity theory because either, the artist or the artwork is not fitting into their Whitestream vision of authentic Native America. The opposite scenario also occurs when I give visual clues to the viewer of cultural content and the responses are; they can’t relate to it because it is “too Indian,” statements of “you are limiting your audience” and asking the question “why are you dwelling in the past?” These comments come from a postmodernist theory on identity where Grande writes “empiricist notions of knowable and absolute determiners of origin and authenticity dissolve and along with them essentialist constructions of identity. In short, it asserts the ‘postmodern condition’ as one in which grand narratives of legitimization are no longer credible.” (Grande 350) So I’ve found myself in reaction to a postmodernist critique of my artwork, feeling the need to return to an essentialist description and use of imagery, or vice-versa, but now I understand that what I am doing is far beyond either of these narrow Eurocentric gazes, including Marxist Critical Theory Grande also includes as identity theory. Witnessing the ease in which Whitestream thinking travels back and forth between dominant identity theories is frustrating and seems to be used to invalidate my subjective, personal experience, which reflects a larger consciousness of indigenous experiences and contemporary survival stories. I have identified this as utilizing Eurocentric intellectual methods of continued oppression upon students who are constructing identities that threaten to unveil dark histories of violent imperial colonialism. ...In concluding thoughts....Beginning to unfold what it truly means to transcend colonialism at an individual basis can be very difficult and must emanate into daily practices. I have attained part of this process by identifying my art practice as personal ceremony and a format to manifest vision, healing, and ancestral memory; so the symbols and visceral memories of annual indigenous ceremonies (the neuro-decolonizers) become a constant source for the writing, creating and image making. I still have a long way to go on my indigenous pathway to freedom of understanding my families struggle, soul wounds, survival and re-emergence of culture, but thanks to authors mentioned in this essay, I have had help identifying my own American Indian intellectualism and the value that has in these institutions of higher academia.

Excerpt from Reflective Esssay #1 for Tribal Critical Race Theory.

In thinking about these ideas of decolonization, indigenization, and reclaiming indigenous cultural identity I was happily surprised to read about my father’s freedom of religion case referred to in the reading. I reminisced about my child hood growing up during the decade of this case, Al Smith vs. Oregon (1980’s). It only makes sense for my own critical thinking process to reflect upon the context of how Deloria Jr. was discussing this in regards to the larger viewpoint of the first amendment and Indian Religious Freedom Act. Growing up, I remember listening to my dad talk about this case to students and the public and I also recall when he would get threatening phone call’s from other Native American Church members living in states where they were already protected under the law, pleading with him to drop the case. Being an aboriginal of Oregon, my father as many Natives didn’t have any protection at the time in most states and his participation in ceremony and taking peyote medicine was illegal. I was a little girl and remember going with our family and friends to Washington D.C. and visited the inside of the Supreme Court, I had the choice to stay 3 minutes, or the duration of the trial, I chose to stay for 3 minutes. My other childhood memories are songs, smells, and prayers from teepee meetings, sweat lodges, and sun dances. I am proud that I was able to grow up freely smelling, living and praying this way thanks to my father’s incorrigible warrior’ Ness! This trial shook Indian Country, U.S Freedom of Religion Law, and shaped my life and understanding of what indigenous people must fight for to be free like white people and how complicated it is to be Native and what protection by the U.S. government’s policies really extends to. I learned the trials and tribulations our ancestors diligently and relentlessly fought for so that our S? aaMaks (relations) and I can go to ceremony and sing songs on our sacred homelands. I remind myself in writing this to never take for granted the wisdom and strength of my people, I have grown up as a bridge between two world-views, paradigms and this continues to shape my identity and educational experiences. This case and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. are important influences for the next indigenous generations creative voices that continuously evolve our vibrant, brilliant cultures. We speak in so many different voices, I aim to speak through color, form and paint, and writing like this aids my continued visual expression.

A Witness to the MFA in Indigenous Arts Conference, Evergreen State College.

This September I was invited to witness and participate in the first conference about creating the MFA in Indigenous Arts program at Evergreen State College. I am sharing some of the Visions, Missions and Goals. The Vision of the MFA in Indigenous Arts Program is to provide an arts education that is grounded in indigenous cultural values, protocols, practices and forms of knowledge. The Mission directed by the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center, is to provide a graduate level, degree-granting program that advanced the field of Indigenous Arts by providing cultural arts leaders with education and training. Some of the Goals are to > develop innovative, student-centered approaches to Indigenous Arts practice within a culturally-affirming educational setting. > Increase the number of indigenous scholars researching, writing and presenting about indigenous arts and cultures within academia and the field at large. > To provide a curriculum that establishes professional development opportunities for students, including curating, exhibiting, grants, public art, networking, business training. > To provide opportunities for indigenous artists to assert their unique voice in the international art world by engaging current scholarship in art theory and criticism, as well as exhibiting. > To foster indigenous artistic and cultural exchange! > To strengthen the relationships among The Evergreen State College, tribes in the U.S., Native communities and indigenous peoples along the Pacific Rim.

MFA Candidacy Review: Project Proposal

My work and concepts have transformed and evolved into many trajectories through out this first year within the program. I mainly focused on evolving my oil painting strategies and techniques, from complicated representational and nostalgic to small fast abstract works. These paintings made transparent the trials and tribulations that happened over many months, the content behind these was revealed through layers of paint, showing the trauma and beauty of past & present temporalities of inter-tribal community stories as well as sharing “second hand memories” and indigenous connections to land and elements. Working in the contemporary vernacular of landscapes reflected the sense of displacement from and yearning to return to my ancestral homelands. Concepts from writers such as: Gloria Anzaldua, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Rebecca Solnit, and Lisa Brooks, have all in different ways influenced my interest in hybridity, border crossing, mapping of culture and social locations, along with developing different concepts of nation and land. This leads me into a project that began in thought while I was hiking in the Anza-Borrego desert during my Signal Fire residency and continued in my research of Nich’I-Wana (Columbia River) petroglyphs, which is to create and discuss the politics of contemporary indigenous glyphs. I have spent many trips recently wandering in the gorge looking for basalt rock surfaces to draw on, but every time I have either been unsuccessful in locating them or had thoughts and boundaries (both spiritual and legal) that keep me from proceeding. Thoughts between my indigenous rights to carry on my people’s art form of language and communication, to am I vandalizing and disrespecting some un-seen boundary of culture and/or legal borders? So this has led me to steal- or borrow- two beautiful basalt rocks from Nich-I-Wana on the edge of the Peninsula I live on past St. Johns, and I laboriously removed them from the river to my studio. I used different acrylic paints and mediums and sand paper to paint glyphs on the rocks, the images are both reclaimed and reinvented from the petroglyphs at the Temani-Pesh Wa site. This is such a fascinating project and I imagine it will continue for a long duration, I have plans this summer to create rock paintings upon a location near Eugene, Oregon as well as plan to travel to my tribe’s homeland in Northern California, to the lavafields north of Tule Lake where there are pictographs I will research. I have recently received a Native Artists Development grant from the Longhouse Culture & Art Center at the Evergreen State College. I propose to make roughly seven drums through out the summer and then paint them in accordance to different Klamath words that reference Earth places, sustenance, and indigenous connections to land. I will begin working on this project this summer and will be completing it near the new year, when I will be writing about the process and what I learned, developing a show to exhibit these finished pieces as well as having a cultural educational element to share the project with my community. I imagine this project will be informing, coexisting, and an integral element to the development of my MFA exhibition for Spring 2014. I have so much energy and ideas regarding these three different trajectories of art exploration and projects. My extensive explorations in painting thus far are supporting and feeding all of these different explorations; drum making & painting, contemporary petroglyphs and teaching painting to the Journey’s in Creativity Native high school student summer art camp at Oregon College of Art’s Craft this summer. I am positive I will have so much to share and bring back to PSU MFA program next Fall 2013 and look forward to witness my own development in working on these complex connections of indigenous identity to concepts of land, borders, and hybrid culture in-between different social locations.

H Y B R I D - C R O S S I N G: Exhibition Statement

This body of work is a collection of oil paintings utilizing color relationships to describe experiences of crossing. Through exploring tensions of line forms and textured color fields, these paintings express the beauty of hybrid crossing, while mapping out abstract relationships of bodies and landscapes. Hybrid being is manifested in the existence mentally, spiritually, and physically between two paradigms, cultures, and connections to place. Hybrid being spends time crossing and contemplating the differences of paradigm and mapping out of the space in-between. Kaila Farrell-Smith is working on her MFA at Portland State University and will graduate in 2014, she received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2004. Kaila teaches and mentors at Journey’s in Creativity an indigenous youth art camp at Oregon College of Arts and Craft in Portland, Oregon and has shown at emerging regional and international exhibits since 2003.

In the Spirit 2013 Artist Statement

I am conceptually incorporating indigenous postcolonial theory reconciling two conflicting paradigms. My focus is on healing the historical traumas of dislocation, displacement, loss of language and ceremony, while simultaneously upholding stories of survival, spiritual regeneration, and ultimately the power of memory and invention. This is being explored through the visual language of abstract expressionism and color in oil painting. Returning to homelands is a decolonizing imperative that I utilize conceptually in the studio. I use abstraction to organize visual information that interprets this sense of displacement from indigenous lands, to depict earth’s sustenance, and reestablish connection to place. The paintings “Wocus Gatherers” and “Lava Field Stronghold” reflect a transcendent return to ancestral homeland, psychological maps locating a post-colonial identity within contemporary concepts of landscape.

Returning to Homelands--->Contemplating Displacement

Returning to homelands---> a decolonizing imperative. This is what I've been more literally approaching recently in my studio. I have been thinking of homelands as the places, spaces, spirit of food sustenance, ceremonial grounds, lost or disconnected attachment to a specific part of earth. I was born in my ancestral homelands, I've traveled back there and visited, but never spent meaningful durations in those sacred spaces. I am painting my ancestral homelands and through art making I transport myself to those places, returning. The part that is interesting and confusing is that through contemplating this return, I realize the displacement that exists and this contemplation of displacement makes sense through abstraction. Is returning to homelands a mental exercise, a spiritual journey, a physical act of travel, an experience possibly had through the act of painting a memory of place? I know that I return to the home of my ancestors through many paths, singing, painting, telling stories, remembering, smelling the earth. This is important to my artistic exploration, life journey, and mainly in relearning how to be a human being.

Remembering Ceremony---> Art as Remembering?

Decolonizing imperatives---> Remembering Ceremony & Returning to Homelands, as liberation from the myths of colonialism, these are imperative to personal decolonization of the mind and life. I am working on creating zones of refuge, where one can practice these indigenous ways of being (human), away from the forceful, dominant walls of colonization. I am practicing and working with members of my family, tribe and inter-tribal indigenous spiritual community at remembering and creating ceremony. I have been apart of this struggle and constant battle to remember since I was born. Tying this into my art conceptually has been difficult (mainly to describe and discuss with cohorts and professors), but I believe that my art practice has become a syndicate and stand in for the loss of regular ceremony (ceremony meaning ways to remember what it is to be human, humans connected to land, relatives, cycles, elements, through prayer, songs, sweatlodge, dances). Approaching these abstract ways of deconstructing and decolonizing my thinking and making art, the practice is in a way remembering the essence of the ceremony and what that represents in indigenous people hood's identity. I am still working on how to discuss this aspect, I know it is apart of my process and is important to continue delving into describing, regardless of how emotional, personal and difficult it can be.

S.H.M--->Modoc Protection System's

From 1872 to 1873 the Modoc tribe and the United States Army engaged in an armed conflict in southern Oregon and northern California . For nearly 7 months, a handful of Modoc warriors and their families held off hundreds of U.S. Army soldiers, by using the lava bed terrain for protection and hiding. Kintpuash (or Captain Jack) led 52 warriors in a band of more than 150 Modoc people (who left the Klamath Reservation) to occupy defensive positions throughout the lava beds south of Tule Lake. For months those few warriors waged a guerrilla war against United States Army forces sent against them and reinforced with artillery. The Modoc's took advantage of the lava ridges, cracks, depressions, and caves, all such natural features being ideal from the standpoint of defense. At the time the 52 Modoc warriors occupied "Captain Jack's Stronghold," Tule Lake bounded the Stronghold on the north and served as a source of water. After long drawn out warfare with reinforcements of US forces, finally some Modoc warriors surrendered, and Captain Jack and the last of his band were captured. Jack and five warriors were tried for murder; Jack and three warriors were executed by public hanging on the Klamath reservation to show the tribes what happens when they resist occupation and colonization. My great-grandma Emma Ball was six years old when her mom brought her to "town" to witness Captain Jack's death by hanging. She never forgot it and told this story to her children and grandchild, Al, my father.

S.H.M--->Al & Skinny Chip's Escape from the Christians!

Al had run away before but was busted hopping freight trains at the station in Eugene. The priests from the Catholic boarding school in Beaverton came and got him, returning him to the school destined to Kill the Indian and save the Man. Shortly after he was forced back between the cold institutional walls he choose to run again, this time he was determined to make it all the way home to his mom and grandma. Just while he was getting ready to run again another Klamath kid, Skinny Chip's came over to his cot. “Al” he spoke in a meek voice, whose whisper of strength came purely from his overwhelming desire to flee, “can I go with you? Back home? I want to go home to my mom…” Now, Skinny Chip's was a really fat kid and that’s why everyone called him Skinny Chip’s, but he was from Modoc Point as well, he lived just down the road from Al. Al didn't think this was a good idea and had doubts that Skinny Chip's could even get his fat self up on the train! He felt bad for him though and didn't want to leave him behind, alone in the dread of the cruel, Christian school. This place breathed a subversive terror, where they were beaten until they spoke English, taught to fear a strange God and forced to forget their families and voices. “Alright Skinny Chip’s! But you better hustle! I don’t want you holding me up, believe me I will leave you in that train yard, you hear me?” Al’s stern voice commanded fear and attention in Skinny Chips, but he was ready to flee with all his might. So Al decided to take Skinny Chip's with him. That night they ran from the brick squares and slapping Nun's, headed for the creaking cacophony of the train yard. Just as Al had predicted, Skinny Chip's couldn’t get on the train, he reached down to pull him up, but the train started to move, jarring his attempt. He reached out again, this time grabbing hold of Skinny Chip's thick arm, he was so heavy, but Al pulled him aboard and they were off! He thought, "I should of never brought Skinny Chip's, I knew he was gonna hold me up!" But inside he was glad he let him come along, he had a friend to be with, who went through the same journey and now their paths were heading home. No priests found them in Eugene this time and their escape was successful. Traveling towards their mom's, towards the marshy lake full of wocas (lily pad seeds) and c’wam (sucker fish), towards their ancestral homelands, they were only nine years old.

Studio Thoughts---> Painting Second Hand Memories (S.H.M.)

What Are Second Hand Memories? -Remembering memories (personal, told, read) while painting. Recalling my own sensory experience of places (spirit of place), remembering my memories of hearing stories told, oral histories that have become apart of my history, etc. during the formative painting (thinking) process. -Describing these 'second hand memories' with intuitive color and found systems of explorative painting methods i.e. (no representational images used to formulate compositions, except from memory). -Painting as a way to depict and communicate as an analogy of the incomprehensible (idea from Richter); examples---> conveying and retelling lost nostalgia's, remembering epic indigenous resistance using knowledge of the land and spirit of place as protection, embodying romantic ancestral memories of pre-colonialism.

Coyote Canyon MFA Trip!

I have been chosen as 1 in 10 MFA candidates from around the nation to participate in the first Wide Open Studios trip to Coyote Canyon in Southern California this Spring Break! "Coyote Canyon is our first trip offered through the Signal Fire Residency program based out of Portland, OR. It is specifically designed for emerging professional artists. Part workshop, part experimental residency, students will camp together on public land for the duration of the week, making new work in response to the landscape. The instructors will demonstrate the basics skills of desert camping and backcountry safety and travel, and will provide readings and discussions designed to spur an exploration of our creative practices. This trip will take place in California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, an arid land of beguiling beauty and startling extremes. Cactus and wildflowers will be in bloom in a land naturalist Susan Zwinger describes as “the secret passage into a Southern California of a century ago.” Here, at the western edge of the Sonoran desert, we’ll convene a group of graduate students to explore the potential for making remote work in response to a stunning and dramatic landscape." I am very excited for this trip!!!