"Definitions of the Exotic"
A solo exhibition by artist, Erica Lord

Art Talk: Friday, June 1, 12-1pm
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

Reception:	Friday, June 1, 6-8pm
American Indian Community House Gallery

Gallery Talk: Saturday, June 2, 2-3pm
American Indian Community House Gallery

Definitions of the Exotic is a digital media exhibition of photography
and
video, by artist, Erica Lord (Athabaskan / Inupiaq).  In this
exhibition,
Lord reclaims stereotypes of gender and cultural identity.  She uses
herself
as the subject to be visually altered and changed.  The show will
include
images from the Tanning Series, in which she photographed parts of her
body
with text that was imprinted onto her skin by using a tanning bed.  The
letters that were placed on her skin to block the uv-rays in order to
leave
text, read, “I Tan To Look More Native,”  “Indian Looking,”
“Colonize Me,”
and “Half Breed.”

Media bombards the mainstream culture with misleading information that,
without critical thought, gives people false ideas about culture.
Exotic by
definition means, “belonging by nature or origin to another part of the
world; foreign; strangely different and fascinating.”  The definition
of
exotic has been implemented to the American Indian in media, such as
Hollywood film.  In, Definitions of the Exotic, Lord applies these
definitions to her body to take on the role of the exotic and re-define
herself.

- Sarah Sense (Chitimacha / Choctaw), Curator

www.aich.org

If you really want to support Indigenous film initiatives in North America now is your chance. The Sundance Institute will be screening many films from this year’s festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) including Sterlin Harjo’s feature length film, Four Sheets to the Wind and Jonathan Pulley’s short, Move Me. The National Museum of the American Indian in NYC will be hosting an invitation only event honoring Native filmakers who have come through their halls. They are also hosting the New York premiere of documentarian filmmaker Billy Luther’s Miss Navajo. If you are in New York City, have friends here or will be visiting the first week of June make Native film part of your itinerary or afternoon adventures. There’s no reason for you not to attend thus demonstrating there is indeed an audience for films made by Indians instead of made (ostensibly) about Indians.
See details below for more info. Scoll to bottom of page for links to BAM and the NMAI.
Sundance Institute at BAM
Sundance Shorts Sunday
Program 1, Sunday June 3, noon
MOVE ME
Director: Jonathan Pulley (Laguna Pueblo)
Over the course of his last evening with his dad, Graham must find a way to say goodbye before his relationship slips away completely.
USA, 2006, 17 min, color, Sony HD Cam

FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND
84min
Mon, June 4 at 6:40pm

Director/Screenwriter: Sterlin Harjo (Seminole and Creek)

When Cufé Smallhill finds his father dead, he keeps his promise and sinks his body in the family pond. In the midst of mourning and organizing a phony traditional funeral to satisfy the community, Cufé realizes that he must explore life outside the reservation. His sister invites him to visit her in the big city of Tulsa, opening the door to a world of possibilities.

Infused with a warm sense of humor, director Sterlin Harjo’s delightful first feature creates a rich Oklahoma atmosphere with easy country rhythms, while Cody Lightning and Tamara Podemski (winner of the Special Jury Prize for Acting) give compelling performances. NY Premiere!

A Conversation with the Filmmaker
Join filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and Sundance Institute’s Bird Runningwater for an extended Q&A after the screening to learn more about the film’s development and Harjo’s participation in Sundance Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Initiative and Feature Film Program. Runningwater sheds light on the Institute’s work with native artists in the US and around the world.

RECEPTION (INVITATION ONLY)
Tuesday, June 5th at 6 pm
NMAI, American Indian Community House, Renew Media, Sundance Institute Native Initiatives, Tribeca All Access
Honorees include Native filmmakers Chad Burris, Sterlin Harjo, Terry Jones, William Luther, Andrew Okpeah Maclean, Jeffrey Morgan, Jonathan Pulley, actress Tamara Podemski, and special guest Adam Beach

New York Premiere of MISS NAVAJO
Director: William Luther (Navajo/Hopi/Laguna Pueblo)
Tickets are free but you must rvsp to reserve them. Contact the Film and Video Center: email fvc@si.edu or phone 212.514.3737
Tuesday, June 5th at 7 pm and Thursday, June 7th at 6 pm

No ordinary beauty pageant, the Miss Navajo Nation competition requires contestants to answer tough historical questions in the Navajo language and showcase traditional knowledge. The filmmaker, whose mother was crowned Miss Navajo in 1966, goes along on one contender’s journey and interviews winners from the past five decades. The event’s sacred dimension also emerges—young women are joining a matriarchal continuum that goes back to creation and the first Diné life-giving ancestor, Changing Woman

BILLY LUTHER (Producer/Director) studied film at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began writing and directing short films including FACE VALUE, a short documentary on racial profiling. In 2002, he was selected as an honoree at Film Independent’s Project: Involve. Most recently Luther was selected for the Sundance Ford Fellowship with his first feature documentary MISS NAVAJO, which was also recently honored with a Roy W. Dean documentary award. Luther belongs to the Navajo, Hopi and Laguna Pueblo Tribes.

CRYSTAL FRAZIER (Miss Navajo Nation contestant) is employed by National Association of State Department of Agriculture as a Field Enumerator. She is an undergraduate student of Brigham Young University majoring in Pre-Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Math. Crystal is a 2002 graduate of Shiprock High School.

TAMARA PODEMSKI (Salteaux) performs original songs at the Living Room, Wednesday, June 6, 11 pm
Actress, singer, and dancer Tamara Podemski (Saulteaux) won a Special Jury Prize for Acting at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, for her role as Miri Smallhill in Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind. Other notable film roles include Rox in Jorge Manzano’s Johnny Greyeyes and Little Margaret in Bruce McDonald’s Dance Me Outside. Her television roles include Deborah “Chicky” Etienne in Gil Cardinal’s mini-series Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis, and a reoccurring role as Carla Slavinski in the teen drama Ready or Not. She recently acted in New Amsterdam, a Fox Television pilot directed by Lasses Hallstrom. Podemski was a member of the original Canadian cast of Rent, and has played Maureen in Rent’s Broadway company. She has released 5 albums, two of which were recorded in the Ojibwe language. For her solo album, Tamara, Tamara Podemski won Best Female Artist at the 2006 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, and shared the Best Songwriter award with Karen Kosowski. She has been a lead dancer for the Aboriginal Achievement Awards since 1995, and choreographed the 2007 Aboriginal Achievement Awards. Podemski teaches dance classes in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Links:

Brooklyn Academy of Music

http://www.bam.org/index.aspx

National Museum of the American Indian

http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=visitor&second=ny&third=hours

‘Travelling Light’ is an exhibition put together for the Mexican Art Biennale Arte Nuevo Interactiva 07 at the Galleries of Peon Contreras Cultural Complex, Merida, Yucatan from June 15. The show will premiere at the Dreaming Festival, Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Queensland, Australia June 9-12. The short screen-based works presented by cyberTribe are bursts of light between 2 and 5 minutes with powerful messages. Here work from 2 Australian Aboriginal Artists is featured alongside 2 Canadian Aboriginal Artists under the curatorial axis of memory and idea.

The exhibition title also references the idea of nomadism and other more current irregular migratory movements and is presented in small, portable DVD format: what we can carry with us. ‘Coureurs de Nuit’ (Night Hunters) by Shanouk Newashish is an exceptionally beautiful experimental documentary where a group of Indigenous people are driven by unseen forces to go running at night. Their struggle with the police – and their determination as a community – become a powerful metaphor for the survival of a people. This film was made by youth from Wemotaci in northern Québec through the Wapikoni Mobile project, a travelling audiovisual production and screening studio that tours northern communities in Canada. ‘Starr’ is a stylised film by Michelle Blakeney, a Yaegl woman based in Sydney. Set in New York in the 1930s about a twenty-four year old high society socialite whose spirit is slowly drowned by the memories of her past. ‘Starr’ was sexually abused as a child and grew up to be become, in the eyes of many, a tramp and gold digger, and then apparently committed suicide by drowning herself.

Queensland Artist / Curator Jenny Fraser offers ‘the Great Australian Dream-ing’ which highlights the inequity and irony of suburban affluence and the denial of basic housing needs in Indigenous communities. Ironically set to an Everly Brothers tune from 1958: “I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine Anytime night or day Only trouble is, gee whiz I’m dreamin’ my life away”… Terrance Houle from the Blood Tribe in Alberta brings us ‘The Wagon Burner’ which examines: what happens when a boy reclaims his identity through the simple act of destruction? The boy burns his wagon and dances to put out the flames. With music by Isho Bailey, Houle’s images tell a story older than colonization: the power of resistance and remembrance. “To see the light is to wake up in remembrance and resistance of the contradictions that face us: inclusion vs exclusion, interior vs exterior, homely vs sterile, family vs individuality, sharing vs ownership, ancient vs modern. To travel with it is to follow our own dreams and destiny in trust” says Artist / Curator Jenny Fraser.
Links:

cyberTribe http://www.fineartforum.org/Gallery/cybertribe/travelling interactiva biennale

http://www.cartodigital.org/interactiva jenny fraser

http://www.geocities.com/dot_ayu/index.htm

Contact – jenfur333@hotmail.com

For those still unable to sleep at night because of this confusing mess with the ever-enigmatic Representative Renzi, I have some good news: NPR is on the case.  The question of tribal affiliation is still on the table, but at least you will be able to inch a bit closer towards getting your eight hours.

Ted Robbins has the story, or some of it at least.

not too long ago i received an email in NAICA’s myspace box from a concerned myspace citizen asking that NAICA withdraw it’s support of The Bastard Fairies (in the form of kicking them off our friends list. AS IF!), specifically, it’s lead singer/songwriter, Yellow Thunder Woman. Evidently, the concerned citizen has found grave danger in Yellow Thunder Woman’s sex-r-castic commnets via her recent Playboy interview, deducing that Yellow Thunder Woman was pro-native prostitution, pro-war, pro-promiscuity! my goodness, it was quite alarming. so i clicked the links provided as proof to see for myself what it is sassy tits had said that was grounds for myspace rejection and what i found was an interview bubbling with sarcasm, biting humour, and mild self-effacement in the form seemingly self-aggrandizing comments. it was a pretty good interview given the dopey questions. but what struck me was how the concerned myspace citizen twisted the intent of Yellow Thunder Woman’s comments to suit her own (humourless cheerless, baseless) ends. i hate people like her-cowardly, twisted, manipulative, mealy-mouthed. just how cowardly is she? i suggested she contact Yellow Thunder Woman to voice her concerns directly but she declined claiming she had all she needed to know from her (few, very few) interviews and songs. really? a few interviews here and there and you have all you need to know about someone? if that’s not a danergous sentiment, i don’t know what is? the long and short is that NAICA advocates free speech. whether you like what someone has to say or not, they do have the right to say it. but, we also advocate contacting people directly, especially if there is something they represent or have said that you find challenging. dialogue is the best possible course to understanding one another and to that end i decided it was best to speak to Wakinyan one on one to hear what she had to say about these (shallow) accusations and her recent forays into internet infamy. (i could be accused of soft balling my questions, and while that might be true in some context, let it be known i already came with an agenda and that was to skewer the cowardly myspace citizen who ill-fatedly dropped me that retardo email on me. cause i will call out some bullshit fo sho! so let that be a lesson to you! behind the back bullshit (and lack of humour) will bite you in the ass everytime!)

In this week’s edition of Longviews, the podcast brought to you by NAICA online, editors du jour Maria Colon & Renee Gick lament the absence of their young grasshopper, Katie Henner; extoll the virtues of congressman Rick Renzi; discuss this season’s historical bloodletting-Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee-brought to everyone’s cable induced T.V. by HBO; review the western noir film Kill Me Again by John Dahl (featuring Val Kilmer’s best wooden indian impression to date!); and discuss the National Museum of the American Indian’s premiere of Toa Frasier’s Naming Number Two.