Crossroads: Art + Native Feminisms is a dedicated day of panels, roundtables, and discussions lead by Indigenous knowledge carriers, artists, community members, elders, academics, and their accomplices on the topic of art and Native Feminisms focused on North America. From the countless unnamed works produced by Native women and acquired by historical museums in service of colonial nation states around the world, to Rebecca Belmore representing Canada at the Venice Biennale and Christi Belcourt’s Anishinaabe Nation floral motif inspired designs on the haute couture runway of Valentino, Native women across the continent have a long established tradition in the visual arts that pushes against dominant patriarchal structures. Against the odds of systematic erasure through colonization, and historically situated outside of mainstream Feminisms, the experience and knowledge of native women offer ranging perspectives conceptually better located at the center of the movement. Land recovery, self-determination, and social relations based in respect and inherent dignity of all living beings from non-human to human, are a few examples that fluidly move across and between traditional and contemporary practices today.

Symposium Chairs: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Independent Artist), Maria Hupfield (Independent Artist), Kat Griefen (Rutgers University; Queensborough Community College)

PROGRAM:

Onscreen Projections
Rematriate Project

10:15-10:30 am — Opening Performance
Laura Ortman

10:30-10:45 am — Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Connie Tell (TFAP, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Rutgers University)
Symposium Chairs: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Independent Artist), Maria Hupfield (Independent Artist), Kat Griefen (Rutgers University; Queensborough Community College)

10:45-11:00 am — Keynote Address
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Independent Artist)

11:10 am-12:20 pm — The Struggle for Cultural Capital in Contemporary Native American Art
Chair: Diane Fraher (Amerinda Inc.)
Panelists: Gloria Miguel (Spiderwoman Theater), Muriel Miguel (Spiderwoman Theater), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Independent Artist)
• This panel will discuss the multi-disciplinary struggle for cultural capital in Contemporary Native American Art and share first person aspects of an unknown, organic, highly diverse Native American art movement, based in New York City, a movement that encompasses the founding of contemporary Native American film and theater in the United States as well as the strongest contemporary Native visual arts movement outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.

12:20-1:20 pm — Lunch Break

1:20-1:40 pm — Introduction to Afternoon Sessions
Maria Hupfield (Independent Artist)

1:45-3:15 pm — The Problematics of Making Art While Native and Female
Chair: Andrea Carlson (Independent Artist)
Panelists: Dr. Julie Nagam (University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Art Gallery), Charlene Teters (Independent Artist), Carly Feddersen (Independent Artist), Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen (Independent Artist), Grace Rosario Perkins (Black Salt Collective)
• Are we artists who “happen to be native” or are we native artists? Six artists will scrutinize, question and respond with work that “has it both ways” as they speak from “a native perspective” yet are uncompromisingly universal. Discussion will address navigating the staying power of the colonization and empire from within institutions.

3:25-4:30 pm — Roundtable: “The Teaching is in the Making”: Locating Anishinaabe Feminism as Art Praxis
Participants: Celeste Pedri-Spade (Laurentian University), Leanna Marshall (Independent Artist), Elder Wanda Baxter (Independent Artist)
Respondent: Crystal Migwans (Columbia University)
• Celeste Pedri-Spade and Leanna Marshall invite Elder/Artist Wanda Baxter to discuss their two person exhibit The Teaching is in the Making, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 2016. Applying Anishinaabe knowledge they argue that Indigenous women; as makers of movements, ideas, and tools, continue to effectively challenge and dismantle heteropatriarchal colonial systems and violence.

4:40-6:00 pm — Kinship, Decolonial Love, and Community Art Practice
Chair: Lindsay Nixon (Concordia University)
Panelists: ErinMarie Konsmo (Independent Artist), Dayna Danger (Independent Artist), Marcella Ernest (Independent Artist), Tarah Hogue (grunt gallery), Lyncia Begay (Independent Artist)
• Members from The Indigenous Arts Council, a programming organization for Indigenous artists, cultural workers, and community organizers in Montreal Canada, will lead a “kitchen-table” discussion. Participants will speak about ways of being, to relate, resist, and resurge; to consider the interruption of kinship ways and relations to the land and restore them for the future.