Censorship: we do not not like it! we do not condone it! we will not tolerate it!

On the other hand, we endeavor to check our facts when making (farcical) statements about people places or things-most of what we have written is indeed founded on facts that can be readily found on the internet or in print. Well, perhaps, Val Kilmer doesn’t exactly live on his own reservation, but that was metaphor. And, it is funny! Actually I believe we’ve dubbed it “rancher-vation,” get it? It’s a ranch but he’s an Indian and Indians live on reservations and sometimes, if they are lucky, ranches, but mostly reservations..well no according to recent census records most Indians live in urban cities but mainstream America thinks they live on reservations or don’t live at all. See? It’s a fine line between creative articulations and boring fact based journo-blah blah. But we do endeavor to check our facts before posting.
However, opinions and rhetorical/diaristic blogging is another case altogether. If it is my opinion a film or exhibition is, or is not, lacking in anyway than I have a right to express my opinions on what amounts to a public display open to interpretation, i.e. a gallery opens it’s door to the public who consumes the show, a screening is held, people are invited to sit and watch, etc.

Interpretation. Interpretation. Interpretation which is mine and mine alone. In this case interpreting art events or whatever else I happen upon is the same as expressing my own opinion with the minor exception that I do not have to base my opinion in anything other than my subjective predilections while interpreting work for public consumption requires forethought, investigation and objective reason. As editor of NAICA and Longviews it has been a great thrill to me that most of the contributors to the webzine and blog have easily fell within this dichotomous writing style without my having to coach or weedle them. Objective journalism blends easily with their informed tastes to create the effect (perhaps illusion) of fine art and film criticism. We have lofty ideas here, critical and lofty.

Their writings have been inspired, their visual contributions (art direction, graphic design, photography, etc) consistently excellent, and again, their dedication to the advancement of Native cinema and contemporary art has gotten us where we are today which is largely broke but having fun. Being the forerunners on recognizing the growth of Native film and contemporary art nationally and globally is a relief as well. This is why I do not censor my collaborators when it comes to their writings, especially on something like a blog. We do not pretend that this space is anything more than a current events forum to express our opinions and offer timely interviews with artists, filmmakers and the like on topics of the day. Therefore, the contributors and interviewees must stand by whatever statements they make or criticisms they levy. To ensure public retort there is a nifty comments section per blog so that the general public may weigh in. Unfortunately, people are too lazy to bother registering. They jump to emails and phone calls often to negative effect-in most cases it turns out they only partially read the blogs.

Jee-bus save us!

If I can offer our dear readers, whom we are all too grateful for, any advice it is this: READ THE WHOLE BLOG AND EMPLOY COMPREHENSION SKILLS WHILST DOING SO!
Then if you have further questions or comments register here on the blog and tell us what you think. I promise we will post your comments and then we will respond-if necessary. I have to say, behind the scenes phone-calling and emailing isn’t as effective as people might think. Really, it makes the people who do it look lazy and uninformed and, even worse, as if they are lacking in fine reading comprehension skills. I mean I know I did pretty well on the verbal/analytical sections of the GRE and that makes me pretty much a genius but I sincerely doubt I am the only one who can discern subtext in writing and/or censorship issues-subtle and not so subtle.
Or maybe I am?

“Sunstroke” magazine: courtesy of crafty ole Colon

Why is it that every Halloween Americans of varying degrees of ethnicity dress up in the stereotypical garb of the “ethnic other” other than themselves? This year, of course, no exception.

Exhibit A:

Actress Liv Tyler as Land o Lakes girl? Her husband, Royston Langdon of Spacehog, as Emiliano Zapata?

In case you’re unawares he’s a prop Brit and she’s an ethno-nebulous concotion spawned from the genetic detritus of Bebe Buell and Steven Tyler. One thing is certain-she’s not native!

Back to my point. Technically they are ethnic “others” in that both Tyler and Langdon are foreigners living in a foreign land which has been adotpted as their own. That land being the West Village New York. A foreign land indeed! As a Brit, Langdon is most certainly “other” than those who normally reside in the W.V. but not so “other” that he can claim ties to Mexican heritage which would truly be “other” than those who can afford to live in that sanctimonious enclave. She, on the other hand, can blend right in what with her baby soft voice and 70’s rocker/model pedigree. But a born and bred West Villager she is not. You’d have to be Jewish and/or gay I believe to fit that bill.

So my question is why can’t those who obviously do not fit the “typical” American profile dress up in “costumes” from their own ethnic background? For example, Langdon could have been King George before he went totally fucking insane and Tyler could have dressed up like her father in drag-both would have been more appealing than these two obnoxious stereotypes. But ethnicity-deprived people dressed up in cultural representations from their own background just wouldn’t be as fun now would it?

I am not Native nor am I Mexican, but it’s just as infuriating for me to see two seemingly intelligent people cave to blatant ignorance as it was to witness the blonde white girl at a Halloween party at the University of Florida in 2002 who was dressed up as “Sexy Latina.”
Her idea of a sexy Latina: a bulbous prosthetic ass, spandex mini-dress, a ratty brunette wig, rope chains and big hoop earrings. She got lots of feel ups on that fake ass.
As if Bitch!
No self-respecting Latina I know would ever let random men touch her that way, but it was o.k. for this girl because she was not herself that night. She was “Rosie the Latina,” and as we all know the Latin Rosies of the world love for strange men to rub their asses in public. Right. It was a performance and as such it was o.k. Right.
No doubt Halloween is fun, but not when you see people dressed in crass ass representations of your culture, or rather, when you see people totally fucking pervert even the most superficial aspects of your culture thus reinforcing negative attitudes about people of color.

Anyway for white people dressing up as stereotypes of other white people just isn’t as fun, is it?

Negotiating any identity in world that is evermore globalized and homogenized can be a tricky business at best. Compound that with an identity that is in direct (or even remotely adjacent) contrast to the globalized majority and you run the risk of negotiating yourself into a tight spot. Context is everything when it comes to fully (or partially) realizing another’s culture, and most audiences’ attention spans haven’t the time for things like context. Therein lays the proverbial rub.

It is with this in mind, that NAICA attended the 8^th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival in the hopes that we would get a good dose of context in which to begin another year of curatorial internet madness. And really, for the most part, I would say we were not to be disappointed. imagineNATIVE has always (as far as I know) included a Fine Art component in their programming that not only lends itself to compliment the larger media festival, but adds a precious dose of cultural context that so many of us need to have a decent world view. Plus, as we all know, those seats in the Al Green Theatre are less than comfy, so it is nice to get off one’s ass and go look at some art.

So let’s talk about the art this year. In a co-curated exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) entitled Shapeshifters, Time Travellers and Storytellers, curators Candice Hopkins and Kerry Swanson created a beautifully esoteric exhibition combining works of contemporary indigenous artists and filmmakers with a few samplings of traditional native objects, such as an Iroquois wampum bag and an engraved prehistoric mammoth tusk from Alaska. “Beautifully esoteric” are deliberate word choices on my part (not to insinuate that most of my words choices aren’t deliberate…) because the exhibition was truly beautiful and well crafted as far as choice of contemporary artists and their work, but esoteric even more so, mainly for the decision to include these few traditional objects from the ROM’s “cultural” collection with an almost arbitrary flair. I don’t want to equate it to that “primitive” art exhibition scandal in New York many years back (at which museum now escapes me) in which the curators exhibited artists like Picasso alongside categorically de-contextualized African and South Pacific carvings. But… then again, I must compare in that way simply because that is what came to mind when viewing these traditional objects in the larger context of contemporary indigenous based art. As an objective viewer, I simply had no idea what they were doing there.

I know that historically, the ROM has had a somewhat spotty reputation (on par with the Smithsonian here in the States) for exhibiting indigenous-made objects in an anthropologically patronizing way, and that the curators of this exhibition, in part, desired to display these objects, contemporary and traditional, side-by-side in order to weave a dialogue of past and present indigenous identities. The problem was that instead of a time-traveling, shape shifting dialogue, you simply had a wonderfully curated contemporary indigenous art exhibit with a random sampling of anthropological tidbits. There was no talking between the contemporary and the traditional. They were like silent strangers, awkwardly crowded together on a subway car.

The curation of contemporary work was pretty much spot on though (aside from the exhibition space being a little weird), and I wish that these pieces (from artists such as Kent Monkman, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Brian Jungen, Isuma Productions and the wonderful Alan Michelson) had been left to stand alone, on their own merits and on their own strengths as pieces of powerful storytelling. It wasn’t that the traditional objects took away from the exhibition necessarily; it was more that they didn’t add anything to it. And certainly these objects did not give the viewer the dose of context that I believe the curators were going for.

I digress though, because what I really wanted to talk about were the contemporary pieces, as that is what I believe imagineNATIVE does best; contextualize contemporary indigenous artists for a broader audience. There are plenty of great pieces to mention, but I will stick with my favorites, the ones I spent the most time with, and refer the reader to the podcast (below) between myself and Maria Colon, for further information and opinions on the exhibit in full.

First I have to mention the piece by Brian Jungen, Cetology, a 40 foot sculpture of a whale skeleton made out of plastic lawn chair parts. It was suspended from the ceiling by wires, like a dinosaur in a natural history museum. I mention this piece first simply because it visually dominated the exhibit, and also because I feel it did more to set the stage for dialogue between past and present than say, the wampum wallet or the mammoth tusk. It also challenged the viewer to look past the obvious contexts of contemporary objects (read: plastic lawn chairs) and anthropological references (read: natural history lookin’ skeleton) and determine the fragile space between the two. That fragile space is exactly the space contemporary indigenous artists must negotiate.

Another great example this carefully negotiated space: a piece by Faye HeavyShield, entitled hours, which was small, white book, whose pages were completely constructed out of seed beads. I don’t need to mention the correlation between traditionally exhibited Indian beaded objects and HeavyShield’s piece, but I will mention it simply for the fact, that yet again, this contemporary work did not need no wampum wallet to contextualize it for the audience. It spoke for itself.

Other great pieces were an installation by Nadia Myre, The Dreamers, which was a sprawling sculpture with spears and traditional Innu fishing nets, a 13-part video installation Nunavut (Our Land) by the beloved Kunuk and Cohn of Isuma Productions, and three mixed media objets d’art by the imitable Kent Monkman, who despite his tendencies to be extravagant for the sake of being extravagant, does a damn good job of negotiating the fragile space mentioned above. Not to mention he’s openly gay, which adds a whole other ingredient to the identity pot. But my favorite work by far was Light After Darkness, a video triptych by US artist, Alan Michelson. With titles (and an artist’s statement) taken from a melodramatic 1907 quote by Edward Curtis, Michelson paints a digital portrait of an ever-changing contemporary indigenous landscape. These three real time videos of urban skylines, displayed in gold frames like Remington landscapes, moved slowly from daylight to dusk, deluminating the industrialized cities of Ontario. All they needed to contextualize them was an incongruously gleaned quote from the Great Father of Indian Portraiture:

Alone with my campfire, I gaze about on the completely circling hill-top, crested with countless campfires, around which are gathered the people of a dying race. The gloom of the approaching night wraps itself about me. I feel that the life of these children of nature is like the dying day drawing to its end; only off in the West is the glorious light of the setting sun, telling us, perhaps, of light after darkness.

Edward S. Curtis, 1907.

 ROM Exhibit: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (76)

In this post-modern world, identity is not so much a crisis, I think, as it is a challenge.

I was watching a TV show on PBS the other night. It was one of those last, straggling Black History month shows. You know, the ones broadcasters (yes, even public television) try to squeeze in at the end of February to prove that they did indeed acknowledge the month’s significance. But that’s another story.

Anyway, this particular show, African American Lives was hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a noted scholar and chair of Harvard’s Afro-American Studies program. The show was on the predicament most contemporary African-Americans find themselves in; the lack of information regarding their genealogical roots. Unlike most Anglo-Americans who can trace their lineage back to say, 13th-century France, most African-Americans can only point in one general direction: east.

Gates, along with a dozen or so participants including Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker, Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. Jakes, underwent genealogical tests to derive the percentage of African blood which would then be further analyzed and compared with other DNA samples to pinpoint a more precise location on the looming continent that is Africa.

Percentages. Hmm, where could I possibly be going with this?

One of the main tests the scientists on the show did was called Admixture Testing (see example above). According to the website, “this type of testing analyzes a selection of specific regions of your DNA, compares them against a database and estimates what proportions of your genetic ancestry may originate from different population groups.”

Basically it was just a chart with columns. In fact, the charts they showed looked like some sort of grade-school math exercise: “If you have 112 black people and add 32 white folks, 24 Indians and 5 Chinese laborers over 11 decades what will you end up with?” It was shocking to see such a complex idea reduced to such a simple chart … I wanted one of those charts.

What an incredibly enticing idea it was, the notion of seeing one’s genetics neatly mapped out in columns. The participants on the TV show felt the same way - at least until they saw their own identities neatly mapped out. Who was more black, who was more Indian, who looked more black, who looked more white, etc, etc, etc. The columns on these charts would either prove to validate the identity in question or challenge it, all based upon which column was the tallest. I won’t delve into the history or politics related to the intermingling of races in the North Americas; we all know what’s up with what. What I do want to talk about are the reactions of the participants to their respective charts.

Specifically, I want to talk about the reactions of two in particular; Henry Louis Gates Jr., noted Harvard scholar, and Chris Tucker, noted star of such films as Rush Hour and … Rush Hour II. While one of these participants was eager to learn about the different facets of his genealogy; the other asked the scientist, point-blank, for the “short answer” as to what his genealogical background consisted of. And if you think the guy who wanted the short answer was Chris Tucker, you are mistaken … it was Henry Louis Gates.

I was surprised by Tucker’s unassuming reaction to this chart which supposedly defined who he was as a human being. Actually, I was more shocked than surprised. During the first half of the show I had been too busy making sweeping assumptions on his character based upon his role in Rush Hour: a role that involved pigeon-holing Asians and “acting” blacker than the Jeffersons. But actors are nothing like the characters they play, right? Of course they’re not.

For the record, Tucker’s chart showed that he was 80% African and 10% Native American. While the other participants rambled and romanticized on and on about their particular percentages of “Native American” blood, Tucker was the only one who expressed active interest in finding the specific Indian nation(s) he was descended from. “Is there any way to know what tribes they were?” he asked his grandma in an interview. She shrugged. “So now I gotta go find two tribes.” he said, “African and Indian.”

More surprising than Tucker’s reaction was that of Gates. Not only was he shocked by his 50% African and 50% Northern European percentages, but he was, understandably, distressed that they could not pinpoint a more precise location for his African genealogy. In fact, the scientists were able to give more exact locations for his white ancestry than his African ones. Now, I’m not judging Gates for his reaction and I’m not praising Tucker for his, I’m simply pointing out how elusive the idea of identity is. A chart is tangible, identity is not. And so we choose to look at charts and columns and blood quanta to tell us who we are. We look to them for answers, but as proven by Gates’ chart, they don’t always have the answers we are looking for.

Gates’ reaction was not only understandable, but perfectly logical. His idea of self was shaped by an African-American community, not a Northern European one. What did he care about Bavaria? The chart challenged the very idea of who he was as a person. He even said, jokingly, “Should I resign from my position at Harvard?” Tucker’s reaction, on the other hand, simply expressed the innate desire in all of us to learn more about our genetic makeup. But by luck of genealogical draw, Chris Tucker’s chart defined him as “more black” than Gates. What exactly does “more black” mean? Or “more Indian” for that matter?

The TV show took Chris Tucker to Africa. He was the only participant who had an exact match to a specific tribe in Sub-Saharan Africa, and so I suppose the show’s producers thought he had the best chance of having one of those life-changing television moments. Upon arriving in that small, remote village, Chris Tucker’s entire demeanor changed. He looked lost and uncomfortable. I am sure it was pretty overwhelming for him, but I also had the feeling that he expected to feel more at home than he actually was. It was a pretty anti-climactic television “homecoming.” But all the important moments in life are anti-climactic, aren’t they ?

I digress.

Does Henry Gates’ 50% African blood quantum make him any “less black” than Tucker’s 80%? Quincy Jones, another participant, put it all into perspective, “being ten percent white don’t change the mind of the cop who pulled me over.”

How do we define and represent ourselves in this age where even the most un-mixed of folks are raised in extremely hybrid cultures? Are we indeed under pressure, consciously or unconsciously, to represent our particular “categories”? In this day and age it is becoming less and less common for people to fit into one category. Chris Tucker and Henry Louis Gates are perfect examples of that. We all have our own charts. Charts and columns and blood quanta. All of which are meaningless without context. And many of us, like Tucker and Gates, lack that specific context.

Identity is transitory any way you slice it. It seems that those who are easily categorized by society, whether by looks or blood quantum, want to break out of this pigeon-hole of an identity. Read: Chris Tucker. And those whom society finds harder to categorize must instead search out an identity with which to hold on to. Read: Henry Louis Gates.

A chart can be read many different ways.

It always seems to come back to the same point (for me at least): identity is not so much defined by genetics in as much as it is defined by community. Community on an intimate level, community on a social level, community on a global level. We are defined by our communities, and in turn, how we represent ourselves in the larger hegemony defines our specific community to those outside of it.

Another participant, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (not “Native American” by the way) said it best: “It’s not the percentage, it’s what you take from the tradition[s] at hand, and then, what you do with them.”

And anyway, we all came out of Africa to begin with, right? So maybe the next time someone asks you where you came from, you should just point east. It would be easier than showing them your chart.