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.