In July and August, the St. Charles Public Library is hosting an exhibit by local artist Tessa Koller, a St. Charles native who specializes in multiple mediums.

Her art-making skills led to her earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2008.

Since then, she has pursued painting, abstraction, realistic portraits and landscapes, and visually dynamic acrylic pours. She’s had her work displayed at 116Gallery and many venues in and outside of St. Charles.

In addition to exhibiting locally, Koller has traveled to almost nine countries delivering keynote speeches and showcasing her work.

The story behind her artwork is one to follow and is regularly published in multiple magazines and national health and wellness journals. She was recently published in the international magazine Wellbeing Magazine and manages a blog that draws hundreds of unique subscribers from across the world. Visit www.tessakollerart.com for more details about her triumphant story, her articles and blog, and subscribe to her monthly newsletter.

Since 1979, the works of local artists have been on display at the St. Charles Public Library through its Community Artist Gallery program. For more information about the gallery and the art that is showcased, or if you would like to feature your work, send an email via www.scpld.org/use-your-library/displays/.

The exhibit can be seen anytime the Library is open: Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

The St. Charles Public Library is located at One South Sixth Avenue in St. Charles. For more information, visit scpld.org or call (630) 584-0076, ext. 240.

Earlier this week, the Washington State History Museum debuted the 18th iteration of its In the Spirit Contemporary Native Arts Exhibition — and today, the organization shared which artists among the crop received awards from a specially chosen jury.

The exhibit annually encompasses a collection of works by Native American artists. The 2023 exhibit features 36 pieces from 26 selected creators. Those who won awards were selected by a panel of rotating jury members consisting of Native artists or subject experts, a release from the organization said. 

“We do our best to choose works that represent a highlight of the year’s pieces entered, but we take into consideration how the piece could be used in future exhibitions and whether or not the artist is already represented in the collection among other factors,” co-curators Todd Clark and Dr. Danica Sterud Miller, who also selected this year’s Purchase Prize winner, said in a joint statement. “We believe this year’s selection checked all of those boxes.”

The winners were, per the release: 

Carly Feddersen (Colville Confederated Tribes) — Best in Show for her woven waxed linen pictorial basket “Coyote and the Monster Who Ate Everyone.” 

Timothy O’Connell III (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe) — Spirit of the Northwest Award for his formline landscape painting “ʔəsxʷənáʔwəs skʷáči ʔaʔ cə cácu (cloudy day at the beach).”

Denise Emerson (Skokomish Enrolled and Navajo) — Honoring the Ancestors Award for her painted design “Skokomish People of the River Basket.” 

Alison Bremner (Tlingit) — Honoring Innovation Award and Purchase Prize Award for her Beanie Baby “Millennium Dreams” beadwork. 

To put on the exhibit, the museum every year works closely with a Native advisory committee to plan the exhibit and the accompanying In the Spirit Arts Market & Northwest Native Festival (which will be held this year from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Aug. 12), the release said. 

The In the Spirit exhibit will continue through Sept. 24. Get tickets here.

A state judge has ordered a tourist shop outside Denali National Park to stop selling products labeled as “made in Alaska” after the state of Alaska accused the shop of repeatedly selling fake souvenirs and art.

According to a complaint filed by the Alaska Department of Law on Thursday in Fairbanks, the owners of a shop known variously as The Himalayan and Mt. McKinley Clothing Company repeatedly attempted to mislabel foreign products as Alaska-made.

At one point, the owners of the store told an undercover investigator “that an alpaca poncho depicting a Native American chief in a feather headdress reflected Alaska’s traditions.”

According to the complaint, “the defendants made the false claims that the store was a nonprofit that was owned by the Yakutat Village Council, that they were volunteering at the store, that the alpaca products were made from Yakutat alpacas, that products in the store were made by Alaska Natives in Yakutat, and that proceeds were returned to the Village Council to be used for charitable purposes such as building schools and building a rehabilitation center.”

Alaska has no native alpacas, and the Yakutat Village Council does not exist.

In response to the complaint, Superior Court Judge Patricia Haines issued a restraining order and preliminary injunction against The Himalayan and its owners on Monday.

The order requires that the store not sell products labeled as made in Alaska or made by an Alaska Native unless those products are approved by the state.

As the state’s tourism industry rebounds after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, state and federal officials have been cracking down on fake Alaska Native art.

This spring, federal investigators prosecuted the owners of a Ketchikan store selling fake Native art, and at the start of this year’s tourist season, the Department of Law sent a warning letter to almost four dozen tourist shops statewide, warning them to not remove country-of-origin labels from imported souvenirs.

Passing off a foreign-made souvenir as Alaska-made is a violation of state law, and if a store falsely claims that an item was made by an Alaska Native or a member of a Native tribe, it may be a federal crime as well.

In a written statement about the restraining order, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said, “My office will not tolerate false claims that products were made by Alaska Natives or that proceeds from sales will be used for charitable purposes. We will not allow businesses that lie to consumers to gain an unfair competitive advantage over the many excellent stores that sell legitimate Alaska-made or Alaska Native products.”

Remains representing more than 600 Native American individuals sit in collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Research Laboratories of Archeology — the state’s oldest North Carolina-focused archeology center. Those remains have not been made available for return to tribes, despite a federal law intended to facilitate the repatriation of Native ancestors and related funerary artifacts.

A national investigation published earlier this year by ProPublica found many of the nation’s top universities and museums continue to hold the remains of Native American people in their collections. Only about half of the more than 200,000 human remains collected across the country have been made available for return to tribes.

In North Carolina, that return rate is even lower. Three decades after Congress passed NAGPRA — the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — less than 30% of ancestral remains held in institutions have been made available for return.

Institutions in the state continue to hold more than 1,200 of these human remains, along with thousands of funerary artifacts, in their collections. UNC’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology holds the largest share of these unrepatriated remains.

The roots of NAGPRA

Before NAGPRA, Native American graves were commonly looted in the name of science and research, said Ann Kakaliouras, who earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology at UNC and now teaches at Whittier College in California specializing in repatriation issues.

“Large archeological programs literally built themselves on the mass excavation of indigenous remains throughout the country,” she said.

There are deep correlations between colonialism and the rise in popularity of archeology, according to Kakaliouras.

“It actually took Native activism in the 1960s and 70s to wake archeology up to the idea that Indigenous people in North America are interested in their ancestors,” she said.

After these decades of activism, Congress passed NAGPRA in 1990. The law was intended to stop the desecration of Native gravesites and to ensure that human remains “must at all times be treated with dignity and respect.” It required returning the remains of Native Americans to affiliated tribes.

All institutions that receive federal funding must comply with NAGPRA — from large national museums to state colleges or even local governments.

Protecting sacred objects

On a May morning, Shana Bushyhead Condill walked by the glowing display cases in the Museum of the Cherokee Indian on the Qualla Boundary in Western North Carolina.

Since NAGPRA’s passage, institutions have made remains and artifacts available for return to tribes, including more than 10,000 remains to Condill’s community — the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

“Just hearing that number is hard to process,” Condill said, her voice heavy with emotion. “Thinking about the ancestors that have had their journey disrupted, and are many times in boxes and basements of institutions, that’s hard to just comprehend on a human level.”

It’s been a little over two years since Condill took over as executive director of the museum, after four years at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her work spans the intersection of public education and the preservation of precious — and sometimes private — objects.

Until recently, those museum displays showcased artifacts that had been on view for years. But in 2022, as part of the museum’s ongoing exhibit “Disruption,” Condill and her staff decided to remove sacred and funeral-related items from public view and replace them with modern art produced by Cherokee artists.

“What we know is that when objects are fully intact — if it’s pottery, or effigy pots, or that kind of a thing, gorgets — that generally they come from a grave site,” Condill said. “I would rather default to removing objects from view than to have something mistakenly on view.”

Some artifacts are available for private viewings in the museum archive by families with historic ties to the object. In 1999, as an intern at the National Museum of the American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center, Condill witnessed artifacts being held and sung to. Others were stored under muslin to “allow the objects to continue to breathe without being seen.” She saw value in these interactions.

“So, we try to facilitate that as well with a family who wants to come in and see their objects and have a connection with them and hold them in their hands,” she said. “Sixth-generation weavers coming out and being able to interact with their objects is really amazing.”

Bringing Cherokee ancestors home

As Condill cares for ceremonial items at the museum, the team in the Eastern Band’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office manages efforts to reclaim the community’s ancestors.

Miranda Panther, the tribe’s NAGPRA officer who is not a member of the tribe, sees her work as a way to protect human rights.

“I got a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and I went to grad school for social work. So you might think that’s not necessarily something that’s related, but I view NAGPRA, and the work that we do here more as advocating for people who aren’t able to advocate for themselves,” she said.

She added: “I take that aspect of the job really seriously. And I always try to do what’s right by them, the best thing that we can after all of this time when mistakes have been made, or they’ve been languishing on shelves, in different institutions and museums.”

Once repatriation is initiated, the process can last years. The shortest repatriation Panther worked on took one year, with the longest extending for about a decade. She said a number of factors can draw out repatriation, like high staff turnover or a lack of needed staff expertise at the institution holding the remains.

But Panther is patient and organized. Her office has brought home thousands of ancestors to be reburied. Sometimes, reburials take place one at a time. Other times, more than 100 remains may be reburied at once. Reburial is always the ultimate goal, Panther said.

“Even though some of the ancestors that we’re burying might be 10,000 years old, or a couple-hundred years old, they’re still Cherokee. They’re still a person,” Panther said. “Not only did they not ask to be disturbed, and I’m sure had no expectation that something like that would ever happen and that their graves would be looted and disrespected, but we want to make sure and try and right that wrong as best as we can, and get them back to them being at peace.”

For the Eastern Band, reburials are solemn ceremonies carried out according to Cherokee cultural beliefs. Women are not allowed to be present, Panther said. The events are largely private, to prevent looting and to ensure the ancestors are not disturbed again.

“It’s a very honorable job that we have. And so we all take that very seriously,” she said.

Hundreds of ancestral remains at UNC-CH

Three-hundred miles east in Chapel Hill, UNC-CH’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology has repatriated only 40% of the more than 1,000 Native American remains it reported in federal NAGPRA filings.

Margaret Scarry, who heads UNC-CH’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology, said the practice of research around burial sites has changed significantly since the lab’s origins in the 1930s. The school’s archaeologists and students have not excavated graves since the mid-1980s, she said. Instead, new technologies like GIS and ground-penetrating radar allow researchers to examine history without disturbing sacred grounds.

Still, her labs at UNC continue to hold the remains of more than 600 Native American individuals that have not been made available for return to tribes. Scarry said every one of those remains is considered culturally unaffiliated — a designation that ProPublica called a “loophole” because the law does not require institutions to initiate repatriation of unaffiliated remains.

“We have deemed them unaffiliated because we don’t have the evidence to be sure which federal tribes they would be most related to, but they are available for return following the NAGPRA procedures,” she said.

For unaffiliated remains to be returned, tribes must proactively reach out to the institutions. Scarry said affiliation is complicated and that “it’s not always a simple matter to map archaeological sites onto modern tribes.”

Melanie O’Brien is the program manager for the National NAGPRA. In reviewing the university’s federal files, she said “It doesn’t seem that UNC has done a lot of work to allow repatriation of the ancestors in their inventory.”

Others slow to repatriate

UNC-CH is not alone in holding onto remains. In the more than 30 years since the law’s passage, the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology in Raleigh has only made 20 remains available for return — a fraction of the more than 250 remains left in its collection.

There are a number of factors that allow institutions to drag their feet when it comes to returning remains. A big one is that there’s little to no punishment for not meeting the law. According to ProPublica, institutions that have violated NAGPRA “have faced only minuscule fines, and some are not fined at all even after the Interior Department has found wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources which oversees the Office of State Archaeology declined interview requests. A statement by the office said “in recent years, the Office of State Archaeology has made repatriation a priority” and that Governor Cooper’s proposed budget includes “funding for an additional position to advance and accelerate our repatriation efforts.”

Condill, at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, recognizes that the NAGPRA process is tedious.

“I’ll be the first to admit it’s a time-consuming process, but there are folks that are experts in it. There are other institutions that are doing the work and doing it proactively,” she said, highlighting the progress at the museum at the University of Tennessee, which holds collections from the Tennessee Valley Authority. “I think they are doing a good job of leading the way.”

She is adamant that institutions need to return ancestors and funerary artifacts to their historic lands or communities.

“That is egregious and needs to be corrected as soon as possible.”

Law does little for state-recognized tribes

In North Carolina, repatriation is complicated by a lack of federal recognition of several tribes. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is the only North Carolina-based tribe with full federal recognition, and NAGPRA does little to help state-recognized tribes reclaim their ancestors’ remains.

Eight tribes in the state, including the Eastern Band, are state-recognized. The Catawba Nation, based in South Carolina, has historic territory that spans into North Carolina, and the Lumbee Tribe has partial federal recognition.

NAGPRA doesn’t require institutions to consult with non-federally recognized tribes. If museums or universities do want to return remains to state-recognized tribes, they would have to make a formal request to a NAGPRA review committee.

Kevin Melvin, the Lumbee Tribe’s first-ever tribal historic preservation officer, said gaining full federal recognition for the tribe would help them access remains and burial artifacts that may be associated with the Lumbee. As the tribe fights for that recognition, Melvin said repatriation is not the top priority, but that receiving or reburying remains would be deeply meaningful.

“To me personally, that would be like the culmination of my life’s work,” he said.

No North Carolina state laws outline a repatriation process for state-recognized tribes.

The spokesperson for the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources said in a statement that the department is “committed to consulting with North Carolina’s state-recognized tribes and advocating to the National Park Service’s NAGPRA Review Committee for their inclusion in the repatriation process.”

Changes coming to the law

Changes are afoot at the national level. Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna now heads the U.S. Department of the Interior, making her the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. Under her leadership, new NAGPRA regulations are expected by the end of 2023. The updated rules should address barriers to timely repatriation.

Panther, at the Eastern Band’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office, considers what these changes may mean for the band and her own work.

“I definitely hope that the burden won’t be on tribes as it has been in the past,” she said. “I’m hoping that I can work myself out of a job in the next, you know, 10 or 20 years, just given how long some projects are known to take. … My next goal is international repatriation.”

And for Condill, at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the changes represent a path toward a more just outcome.

“It’s not enough anymore,” she said. “Bringing ancestors home is just humanly ethical.”

Kellen Stepler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Kellen by email at kstepler@triblive.com or via Twitter .

In 1939, and then again in 1964, Queens, New York played host to the World’s Fair, an international expo where countries came together to show off their achievements in technology and industry. This September, the borough will play host to a different event: The World’s UnFair. 

That’s the name of a new Creative Time-presented project by the collective New Red Order (NRO). With artworks, film screenings, and musical performances, the event will mimic the elaborate pageants of yore, albeit with a different agenda: to expose, in the group’s words, the United States as an “ongoing occupation of stolen Indigenous land.” 

Founded by artists Adam and Zack Khalil (who are both Ojibway, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit), New Red Order identifies itself as a “public secret society composed of networks of informants and accomplices dedicated to rechanneling desires for indigeneity towards the expansion of Indigenous futures.” That may be a mouthful, but the group’s central message is pointedly uncomplicated: “Give it back.”  

New Red Order. Courtesy of the artists.

For NRO, the phrase is a call to action: return all land to the peoples who were forcibly displaced from it by settler colonialists. Through its larger, ongoing research project—also called Give It Back—the group investigates and promotes real-life instances where this exchange has voluntarily taken place.  

“New Red Order’s whole work is about harnessing people’s desire for indigeneity—to co-opt it, to appropriate it, to assume it,” said Creative Time curator Diya Vij, who is organizing The World’s UnFair with the collective. NRO’s goal, she went on, is to “take that desire and turn it toward a pathway for [transforming] settlers into accomplices in the return of all indigenous land and life.” 

“They say ‘Give it back’ instead of ‘land back’ because it is something that we can all do. It is a giving and not a taking. It’s being in community together,” Vij added.

Among other attractions, The World’s UnFair will feature an installation of hundreds of tribal flags, signposts indicating the site’s proximity to present day locations of diasporic Lenape communities, and a large-scale video sculpture—titled Fort Freedumb—enwrapped in various forms of fencing. At the center of the fair will be Dexter and Sinister (2023), an animatronic talking tree and beaver that chat with each other about issues of land and the concept of private property. 

An illustrative map for New Red Order’s upcoming The World’s UnFair project. Courtesy of NRO and Creative Time.

That NRO would be interested in the World’s Fairs make sense. With its expos, the U.S. has a troubling history of exploiting indigenous and other minority communities to prop up its own imperialist ideologies. The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, for instance, barred people of color from participating in the event’s central “White City” section. The St. Louis iteration of 1904 put Filipinos and Native Americans on display to demonstrate “uncivilized” cultures. 

“In a time where the future appears bleak or non-existent, giving it back offers a bright path forward, a way for us to survive an apocalypse together,” NRO said in a joint statement. “The landmass here is enormous. And its ecological capacity to sustain life is immense if we care for these resources correctly. You can have a place. But first things first: Give it back.”   

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At the heart of the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala is the question of how language manifests physically in our bodies and upon the environment. Titled Bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños (I drank words immersed in dreams), the 23rd edition of the biennial, which bills itself as the largest contemporary art exhibition in Central America, brings together 30 artists and collectives who explore ideas of translation and interpretation—of dreams, territories, bodies and movement. Its title comes from a line in Nací mujer (I was born a woman), a poem by the Guatemalan writer Maya Cú.

The exhibition is a feminist and intersectional project, foregrounding the relationship between vulnerable and often-marginalised bodies and the earth. Many works link language, race and class through different periods of forced migration due to slavery, attacks against Indigenous communities and shifting territorial claims. Beyond artistic and theoretical examinations of these forms of violence, several works propose practical strategies for healing trauma caused by gender-based violence and ecological extraction.

The biennial is taking place in Guatemala City and Antigua, spanning five venues: the Centro Cultural de España, Centro Cultural Municipal Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, Portal de la Sexta, the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española and La Nueva Fábrica. For its co-organisers, independent curators Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig and Juan Canela, the exhibition is an opportunity to present a “polyphony of voices”, an approach exemplified by a collaboration with educator Esperanza de León to organise a cultural convening to consult on the exhibition. This cohort is composed entirely of artists—Minia Biabiany, Marilyn Boror Bor, Duen Neka’hen Sacchi and Juana Valdés—whose works are also featured in the exhibition. The work of Indigenous collectives, artists selected from an open call and five historical women artists—Margarita Azurdia, Ana Mendieta, Fina Miralles, María Thereza Negreiros and Cecilia Vicuña—are also included.

Those five historical revolutionary artists’ works from the 1960s and 70s opened up new channels for feminist thinking about bodies and ecologies, providing elements of a conceptual framework for the biennial as a whole. At a time when predominantly white, male Land artists were gaining notoriety for large-scale and permanent interventions into the landscape, these artists took a specifically feminine and personal approach. In the series of photographs L’arbre (1975), Miralles, a Spanish conceptual artist, submerges her body in the soil of her native Catalonia to poetically underline the connection between humans and the earth, both types of organic matter.

For the late Cuban American artist Mendieta, art was a way to “become one with the earth [to] become an extension of nature and nature becom[ing] an extension of [her] body”, as much as it was a means to re-establish a bond with Cuba, her birthplace. In her Silueta (Silhouette) (1970s) series of photographs and Corazón de Roca con Sangre (Rock heart with blood) (1975) video on view, Mendieta traces the outline of her silhouette upon the earth—in rocks, mud, water, blood and flowers, among other materials.

That communion between the human body and the earth, plus preoccupations with belonging and transformation, persist today in the work of Colectivo Ixqcrear, a Guatemalan collective created by Q’eqchi’ Maya women and composed of sisters Ixmukane and Ixmayab’ Quib Caal and their aunt Elena Caal Hub. In their video La fuerza que emancipa al cuerpo (The force that emancipates the body) (2022), a woman sleeps in clay, personifying pepem ixq (butterfly woman), the spirit of all subjugated women. Pepem ixq is awoken by the voices of emancipated women and subsequently arises, dresses and meets the women who supported her, an intergenerational group inspired by the collective members’ mother and grandmother, who survived gender-based and colonial violence.

In the text Mi abuela Juana (From my grandmother Juana) by indigenous Kaqchikel Maya artist Marilyn Boror Bor and writer Jimena Pons Ganddini, they similarly mark a generational sharing of knowledge, writing: “something in my grandmother’s gesture and in the way the fire respects her give me the impression that… she was forged from earth and fire; that’s why she carries maps on her skin because she is guide, memory and pure territory”.

The Panamanian artist Risseth Yangüez Singh explores the notion of intergenerational mapping in Panamáfrica (2023), a textile work made in collaboration with her grandmother that shows the map of Panama. Created from braided hair and shells, the work marks places with African names and their derivations in the territory. The work is presented with the video performance Hacerme un capullo (Make myself a cocoon) (2023), in which Singh, with the help of close friends, braids herself into a cocoon of hair as a communal and meditative act of care using a politicised, organic material. The curators note the musical quality of this gesture, explaining that Singh “question[s] her experience as a Black woman, drawing new lines, like sheet music in her hair”.

In the Guatemalan artist Carolina Alvarado’s installation Comen poemas mojados en leche, uno dos tres gatos (They eat poets soaked in milk, one two three cats) (2023), voices are made manifest. Working with women at Casa Refugiados, an organisation that supports refugees in Mexico City, she has constructed a white tree of branches with embroidered elements cascading down as roots. Inspired by a poem of the same name that is recited in Spanish, English, French and Quiché (the language of the Kʼicheʼ Maya), the work connects recent poetry with elements of the Mayan worldview present in the Popol Vuh, a foundational sacred text for the Kʼicheʼ people, to honour the memory of writers and poets assassinated during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-96). As much as Alvarado’s installation is about estrangement and the violence that can be done to a body by a state and society, it is guided by a belief in a universal connectivity, a “rhythm” that the curators identify as setting a pace for the entire exhibition.

At an opening press conference, Birbragher-Rozencwaig and Canela framed their biennial as an invitation for discussion and to party, a provocation that was supported by the inaugural ceremony organised by Colectivo Tz’aqol. Led by Victor Manuel Barillas and Marta Guadalupe Tuyuc Us, the collective facilitates theatre and healing workshops from the perspective of a Mayan worldview. Solik/Desatar (Solik/Tie off) (2022) is a monologue that chronicles a young girl’s daily life, rape and subsequent cycles of trauma. As a form of communal healing, attendees were invited to actively join the ceremony and throw candles into a fire, join hands, lean on the backs of fellow attendees and strangers, and finally dance. In this presentation—as in many other works in the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial, tactile and corporeal gestures operate as languages between and beyond words.

• XXIII Paiz Art Biennial, until 30 July, various venues, Guatemala City and Antigua, Guatemala. Presentations at Centro Cultural de España and the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española in Guatemala City, and at La Nueva Fábrica in Antigua, will be open until 30 September

Earlier this month, the digital artwork project Winds of Yawanawá premiered at Scorpios Mykonos as part of a special program surrounding the launch of the new art platform Scorpios Encounters. Co-created by new media artist Refik Anadol and the Yawanawá, an indigenous people of Brazil, Winds of Yawanawá is the first iteration of Possible Futures, an initiative derived from the indigenous outreach program Genesis, commissioned by Impact One CEO Mikolaj Sekutowicz, and curated by Jeanne de Kroon as part of Therme Art’s Wellbeing Culture Forum.

Premier of Winds of Yawanawá (2023). Courtesy of Impact One.

Following an invitation from Yawanawá Chiefs Nixiwaka and Putanny, Therme Art and Impact One visited the Yawanawá Sacred Village of Aldeia Sagrada in the Brazillian state of Acre. The experience inspired the initiative—which has since grown to become an expansive platform amplifying indigenous voices—and the development of Possible Futures, comprised of a collection of ongoing initiatives and programs that offer new ways of platforming perspectives and courses of action for future-oriented, environmentally minded ways of living by leveraging new technology.

For the visit to the Yawanawá homeland, Impact One invited Anadol, whose experiences with media arts, public art, as well as data sculpture and painting, provided an unparalleled opportunity for collaboration. The resultant digital artwork Winds of Yawanawá reflects the tribe’s culture and the singular importance and influence of the surrounding native rainforest environment. Simultaneously, it highlights the value of new Web3 technologies—like blockchain and NFTs—in preserving and uplifting indigenous modes and models of environmental protection and sustainability. “At the peak of the digital age, this work reconnects to our natural heritage, sourcing its form and language from the Amazon rainforest, while sourcing funds for the Yawanawá and their stewardship of the rainforest, to give back. That makes this collaboration truly nature-positive in its entirety,” said Sekutowicz.

Winds of Yawanawá is comprised of a limited, 1,000-piece Genesis NFT collection, with each NFT featuring a unique video and sound compilation born from the central artwork of the series. Elements such as live weather data from the tribe’s location within the Amazon rainforest—including temperature as well as wind speed and direction—are interpreted through artistic means in Anadol’s work, highlighting the mutualism between tribe and environment.

Chief Nixiwaka Yawanawá and Refik Anadol. © Fotinos Bakrisioris for Scorpios.

Chief Nixiwaka Yawanawá said, “This partnership that we are building with Refik is directly for our communities. It strengthens our village, it strengthens our culture, it strengthens our spirituality, it gives us strength to defend, to protect our forest. And shows us that we are not alone. That we have allies around the world. This empowers us. This project can serve as a model and an example for many indigenous peoples and for big companies, big artists, big actors, big celebrities of the world.”

The necessity of a symbiotic approach to living within the natural world is particularly prevalent today, as environmental concerns reach all-time highs and with the rapid development of technology offering potential, mappable solutions. Anadol said of the use of new technologies in the realm of environmentalism and the project at hand, “We need collective wisdom. And if you think about collective wisdom, you will need ancestral wisdom. At some level, it’s more educational and inspiring—hearing the Yawanawá’s voices and how we are evolving and bringing their perspective to the dialogue is the most fundamental part of the project.”

Community members of Yawanawá. © Camilla Coutinho for Impact One.

The proceeds from the Winds of Yawanawá, which had its pre-sale sell out, go directly to Instituto Nixiwaka, which represents the Yawanawá communities of Aldeia Sagrada and Nova Esperança, and in turn supports key projects and initiatives geared toward protecting the tribe’s culture and territories—including building sustainable infrastructure, hosting conferences, and developing local school curriculums. And as it exists on the blockchain, the distribution of the proceeds is inherently transparent—a new model of community-focused Web3 smart contracts that have the potential to offer immeasurable aid and support to grassroots projects up to global-scale initiatives.

The Winds of Yawanawá marks an exciting early stage of Web3, art, and indigenous collaboration, which bears a hopeful and concrete aim of bettering the future for the earth and the ways in which humans live and move through the natural world.

Inquire about Winds of Yawanawa Data Painting NFTs here.

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by Katie Arthurs

Although the umbrella term “Two-Spirit” has only been around since the ’90s, the Indigenous gender-variant identities it encompasses have deep roots within many Indigenous communities across North America. Historically, Two-Spirit people often held revered roles within their communities such as medicine people, teachers, name givers, spiritual leaders, and storytellers. 

Despite efforts of erasure, the Two-Spirit community remains ever present. From Water Protectors standing at the front lines of protests to protect water supplies, to activists working to stop the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S) epidemic, to artists expressing their identities through performance and paintings; we remain steadfast in who we are and what we represent. We have even seen more and more Two-Spirit artists taking control of their own narratives and telling their stories, expanding and reframing the definition of traditional storytelling. Two-Spirit filmmaker Kymon Greyhorse’s short film I Am Home was featured at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. 

To continue to uplift and celebrate Two-Spirit and other Indigenous gender-variant voices to tell their own stories, the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program has created a writing-focused  Two-Spirit Intensive. Running virtually from July 26–28, this intensive aims to provide a supportive environment for participating artists to hone and develop their short film scripts, connect with community, and engage in conversations about identity and art. The advisors for the Intensive include Theo Jean Cuthand (Plains Cree, Kwêskosîw [She Whistles]), Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga, Fancy Dance), and Tiare Ribeaux (Kānaka Maoli / Kānaka ‘Ōiwi, Pō’ele Wai) with opening blessing conducted by Landa Lakes (Chickasaw).

The following are this year’s selected Fellows and their projects: 

Gillian Joseph with Heċhetu:Tash’s latest writing project is a collection of fictitious love letters between an Indigenous lesbian couple in the 1800s. While tending to the creation of the lovers’ world, their realities begin to blend. Soon, the three women enter a romantic relationship as Tash gives herself over to imagination.

Gillian Joseph (Ihaŋktoŋwaŋ and Mdewakaŋtoŋ Dakota) Gillian Joseph is a queer, 2-Spirit Ihaŋktoŋwaŋ and Mdewakaŋtoŋ Dakota storyteller who grew up as a guest on Waxhaw and Catawba lands. They’re passionate about creating art that collapses colonial boundaries by re-imagining time, carving out pathways for knowledge sharing, and building restorative worlds. Find them online at gillian-joseph.com.

Littlebear Sanchez with Always, My Love: Warlance White Buffalo, a Native American man living alone on the reservation, stumbles upon an obituary of someone he once deeply loved. Plagued by memories of his past romance with Juno Mata, a Two-Spirited man, Warlance confronts his long-suppressed emotions and sets out on a poignant journey to honor his lost love.

Born in Austin, Texas, Littlebear Sanchez (Lipan Apache & Mexican) is a Two-Spirit filmmaker and the founder of Wild Butterfly Films. With experience in producing short films, documentary, and experimental films, Their focus is creating impactful storytelling with a diverse cast and crew, while specifically highlighting the voices and experiences of indigenous communities.

M. Kaleipumehana Cabral with Becoming My Own Ahupuaʻa: Becoming My Own Ahupuaʻa is an indigiqueer take on “self-care.” This experimental short tells the story of one queer Kanaka (re)connecting with culture and home through becoming their own refuge. We experience their journey through movement, mixed media, and a range of Native Hawaiian practices, moʻolelo (stories), and beliefs.

Pumehana Cabral (Kanaka Maoli) is a nonbinary queer Kanaka whose creative work centers around community and pilina, connection. They are a freelancer and consultant committed to art, ʻāina education, indigenous rights, and traditional and holistic healing. They believe that creative, collaborative work is pivotal to long-term social change — in Hawaiʻi and beyond.

Last fall, poet Heid Erdrich ’86, an award-winning author and educator, was invited by the Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies to teach NAIS 8: Perspectives in Native American Studies.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Native American Studies Program and of co-education at Dartmouth, Erdrich, a visiting professor, invited a different Native American alumna to the class each week. The speakers included women artists, authors, and activists, and what they had to say resonated with students.