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.