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In 2020, Portland art space Yale Union transferred ownership of its building and land to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), an Indigenous-led organization that works to strengthen and advance Indigenous arts and artists. An example of how cultural institutions might reorient their operating models toward restorative social justice, the Yale Union transfer raises important questions about the ethical and legal dimensions of initiating and stewarding land transfers with thoughtful intentionality.
Amplify’s next virtual Alternate Currents panel discussion, Beneath Our Feet: Land Transfers and Cultural Institutions, on Wednesday March 2nd, from 7-8pm, brings together Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art Kate Beane, PhD, artists and organizers Andrea Carlson and Lydia Cheshewalla and president and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center Marisa Miakonda Cummings for a candid discussion about how cultural institutions that espouse a progressive politics of inclusion can meaningfully work with Native communities to acknowledge and repair the histories of violence and dispossession foundational to their formation.
Register here to join the conversation. You will receive a confirmation email with a link to join the discussion on Zoom after registering. And don’t forget to visit the Alternate Currents blog page to read up on the panel topic before the discussion.
www.amplifyarts.org/alternate-currents
Alternate Currents opens space for conversation, ideation, and action around national and international discussions in the arts that have a profound impact at the local level. Alternate Currents exists both on- and off-line in the form of a dedicated online resource, conversation series, and working group.
Free and open to all. Alternate Currents programming is presented with support from the Sherwood Foundation.
About the Panelists:
Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek) holds a BA in American Indian Studies and a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She served as a Charles A. Eastman Pre-doctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College, and as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2021, Kate was appointed the Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Prior to joining the museum, she worked as the director of Native American Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society. She and her family also championed the cause of restoring the Dakota name Bde Maka Ska (from Lake Calhoun) in her ancestral homeland of Bde Ota (Minneapolis). Kate believes that the dominant narrative of history should be updated and rewritten to honor the languages, lives, and legacies of its Indigenous peoples.
Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional authority relating to objects based on the merit of possession and display. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient. In 2020, Carlson helped form the Center for Native Futures, the only Native art center in Chicago.
Lydia Cheshewalla is an Osage artist with a passion for community, social justice, and environmental activism. Over the past four years, she has led women’s circles and co-founded the art collective Holy Mother, which served to connect, encourage, and support femme-identifying creatives in Tulsa, OK. Collaborating with artists, activists, and organizations within her community, Lydia has striven to facilitate meaningful experiences and generate inclusive narratives through thoughtful art events centering community care, systems of equitable exchange, and healing practices.
She has created and taught art curriculum to children ages 4-12 with the purpose of encouraging curiosity and understanding of our unique place within the symbiotic systems of nature. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, she worked as a studio assistant for multiple artists within the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and led community conversations around art as remediation and responsible activism in a time of climate change. Currently she serves on the board of PostTraditional, an organization raising the visibility of Indigenous contemporary artists; curates a project called Spatial Intimacy, a responsive archive of creative ways to stay connected in a time of physical distancing; and is creating two new bodies of work exploring non-anthropocentric interdependence within a framework of borders and pandemics.
Marisa Miakonda Cummings: Marisa Cummings (Miakonda) is Umóⁿhoⁿ and belongs to the Buffalo Tail Clan of the Sky people as well as the Walker and Springer families. She is a relative to many and is constantly re-learning language, seed keeping, food systems, and re-building relationships with human and non-human relatives. She has worked in higher education for over 15 years and is dedicated to indigenous models of governance, education, food systems, ceremonies, and sovereignty. She studies and teaches knowledge rooted in matriarchy and advocates for dismantling systems of oppression that impact our Native communities, including resource extraction and personal violence. Currently, Marisa is the president and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Marisa holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American Studies from the University of Iowa and a certificate in American Indian/Native Studies and a minor in African American World Studies. She recently earned her Masters in Tribal Administration and Governance from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Prior to her work at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Marisa served as the Director of Native Student Services at the University of South Dakota. She has also served as the Chief of Tribal Operations for the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska and Iowa.