Long Con: Sterlin Harjo & Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ep 1

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century.

The conversation takes us into the beginning of Harjo’s relationship to Native art rom childhood, through experiences within the Native art market with his peers and into Harjo’s experience in meeting up with Luger in Plymouth, UK to film. We also hear about Harjo’s poetic and visionary approach to the choices he made for Love & Fury’s aesthetic and storyline and Harjo talks about his upcoming exciting TV series with Taika Waititi, Reservation Dogs. Sterlin is an incredible storyteller and we are grateful to share his perspective with you here.

We hope you enjoy listening in to this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. More info: www.sttlmnt.org/projects/love-and-fury

About the film Love & Fury:

Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo follows Native artists as they navigate their careers in the US and abroad. The film explores the immense complexities each artist faces of their own identity as Native artists, as well as, advancing Native art into a post-colonial world.

DIRECTORS NOTE: “The film is a conversation that I’ve wanted to have for a long time. Native art has been shackled to history by a false vision of what Native people are through the settler gaze of our current reality. I wanted to make something bold and in your face, directly putting up a finger to the shackles of the art world and historic representation of our people. We are diverse, we are dark, we are beautiful and so is our artwork. We are human beings.” - Sterlin Harjo

LOVE & FURY
DIRECTOR  - Sterlin Harjo 
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Robin Ballenger  
RUNTIME - 93 minutes
MORE INFO - www.loveandfuryfilm.com

This conversation was hosted by Cannupa Hanska Luger of Broken Boxes Podcast

On Location: Ancestral Ink PART II - Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions

Ancestral Ink: A Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions brought together Indigenous tattoo practitioners and cultural bearers from the Pacific and North America who are the forerunners in the revival of traditional cultural practises and celebrated the resurgence and resilience of Indigenous peoples and traditional tattooing practices.

Part 2 of this rebroadcasting, we hear from tattoo practitioner Marjorie Tahbone, (Inupiaq from Nome, Alaska) followed by a panel discussion of Native California cultural bearers who have been part of the renewal and reawakening of their tattoo traditions including - Loren Bommelyn (Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation), Lena Bommelyn (Karuk), L Frank Manriquez (Tongva-Acjachemen), Sage La Peña (NomtipomWintu) and Tiffany Adams. We end the program with Corey Kamehanaokal Holt Taum (Native Hawaiian or Kanaka Maoli) who introduces Master tattoo practitioner, Keone Nunes (Native Hawaiian or Kanaka Maoli). 

More information/show notes:

Ancestral Ink, a Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions took place on Tewa/Tewa ancestral lands of what is now known as Santa Fe New Mexico on August 18th 2019. This Symposium brought together Indigenous tattoo practitioners and cultural bearers from the Pacific and North America who are the forerunners in the revival of traditional, cultural tattoo practises, This event provided space and time for an informative, engaging and inspiring forum that celebrated the resurgence and resilience of Indigenous peoples and traditional tattooing practices. 

Ancestral Ink is produced collaboratively by Kua’aina Associates and Broken Boxes Podcast, and was hosted and supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute.

This episode is now streaming on iTunes & Spotify
Learn more about the Ancestral Ink program HERE

On Location: Ancestral Ink PART I - Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions

Ancestral Ink: A Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions brought together Indigenous tattoo practitioners and cultural bearers from the Pacific and North America who are the forerunners in the revival of traditional cultural practises and celebrated the resurgence and resilience of Indigenous peoples and traditional tattooing practices.

In this first part of rebroadcasting the symposium, we hear a brief introductions and cultural bearer L Frank Manriquez (Tongva-Acjachemen)  introduces tattoo practitioner Dion Kaszas, Nlaka’pamux or Thomposon Indian from British Columbia, Canada, followed by Te Rangitu Netana of the Ngapuhi, Ngati Wai & Te Arawa tribes of Aotearoa. Between presenters we hear video excerpts from the documentary series Skindigenous.

More information/show notes:

Ancestral Ink, a Symposium Honoring Indigenous Tattoo Traditions took place on Tewa/Tewa ancestral lands of what is now known as Santa Fe New Mexico on August 18th 2019. This Symposium brought together Indigenous tattoo practitioners and cultural bearers from the Pacific and North America who are the forerunners in the revival of traditional, cultural tattoo practises, This event provided space and time for an informative, engaging and inspiring forum that celebrated the resurgence and resilience of Indigenous peoples and traditional tattooing practices.

Ancestral Ink is produced collaboratively by Kua’aina Associates and Broken Boxes Podcast, and was hosted and supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute.

This episode is now streaming on iTunes & Spotify
Learn more about the Ancestral Ink program HERE

"dear fellow settler colonizer," A Minus Plato broadcast. Episode 5

"dear fellow settler colonizer," is a Minus Plato series, rebroadcast on Broken Boxes for STTLMNT Digital Occupation as resource archive directed towards education of settler ancestors who may like to more relationally engage with work created by and centering Indigenous artists, such as with the STTLMNT project.

“The show will explore the transformative work of contemporary global Indigenous artists from the explicitly problematic perspective of the settler colonizer. By critically examining our complicity in ongoing structures of colonial violence, the show offers tools for settler colonizers to engage with Indigenous artmaking beyond positions of exploitation, appropriation and other harmful moves to innocence.” - Minus Plato

"This episode focuses on STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, by asking how settlers can change our relationship to the internet as part of the reclamation of digital space by and for Indigenous artists and audiences. The whole episode comprises a conversation between Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT and filmmaker and Red Brigade Films Director Razelle Benally.

Through an intimate exchange, the two artists share their experiences at the very heart of the STTLMNT project; how the conceptual core of the project shifted to digital space and how this concept was expanded and enriched through the intense and exhausting labor of Benally’s pandemic-era travel across the country to create the sequence of films devoted to the participating artists and their practices. Expanding on her statement about the project posted on the STTLMNT website, Benally discusses her films as ‘vessels of access’ to the participating artists as a generative alternative to settler colonial methods of occupation, extraction and erasure. Her process in careful dialogue with each artist challenges the very language of documentary film that speaks of ‘shooting’, ‘capturing’, and ‘cutting’ within the filming and editing process. The conversation offers a compelling insight into the making of the STTLMNT project that shows how its uniqueness as an Indigenous online art project cannot be simplistically accessed or consumed by curious settler audiences, but must be engaged as part of an ongoing process of unlearning entrenched ideas about what it means to occupy space across, even across digital networks." - Minus Plato

Image: taken on-site in Tulsa, Oklahoma at Wild Mountain Studios while gathering footage of participating artist Elisa Harkins as part of the final region of the Red Brigade Films short documentary series for STTLMNT. The image features Director Razelle Benally,
Cinematographer Adam Conte, Executive Producer Ginger Dunnill
and was taken by Jade Begay, 2021, with text in Pueblo typeface by Vier5

"dear fellow settler colonizer," A Minus Plato broadcast. Episode 4

"dear fellow settler colonizer," is a Minus Plato series, rebroadcast on Broken Boxes for STTLMNT Digital Occupation as resource archive directed towards education of settler ancestors who may like to more relationally engage with work created by and centering Indigenous artists, such as with the STTLMNT project.

“The show will explore the transformative work of contemporary global Indigenous artists from the explicitly problematic perspective of the settler colonizer. By critically examining our complicity in ongoing structures of colonial violence, the show offers tools for settler colonizers to engage with Indigenous artmaking beyond positions of exploitation, appropriation and other harmful moves to innocence.” - Minus Plato

"This episode will discuss approaches to curriculum for global Indigenous arts from within and beyond the settler institutions of the university and the museum. In addition to an ongoing conversation on this topic with Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, the episode centers on a narrative by Jaime Morse, educator for Indigenous Programs and Outreach at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Focusing on her experience as an educator at the two large-scale exhibitions of global Indigenous art, Sakahàn (2013) and Àbadakone (2019), Morse describes the work of Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango (Sámi Architectural Library, 2019) at the latter as a space of gathering and knowledge exchange, not only for other artists in the exhibition, but also for Indigenous community members. At the beginning and end of the episode are two spoken word pieces by writer, artist and curator Taqralik Partridge, of Inuit, Scottish and Canadian heritage: ‘Decolonisation is a Pyramid Scheme’ and ‘Untitled’. The former was included in a TV show created by Joar Nango and Ken Are Bongo called Post-Capitalist Architecture TV for Bergen Kunsthall, while the latter was included in NIRIN: 22nd Sydney Biennale, curated by Brook Andrew. ‘Untitled’ was originally written following a performance by Indigenous Brazilian artist Denilson Baniwa in Toronto and Partridge agreed for it to be included in today’s episode with a request for donations to support the South American Indigenous Network Emergency Fund – here is the link to donate: www.gofundme.com/f/south-american…k-emergency-fund " - Minus Plato

Episode Image: detail of AKA by Mata Aho Collective (used with permission of the artists), installed at Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada, 2019 with text in Pueblo typeface by Vier5