Broken Boxes Podcast

In this episode of Broken Boxes recurring host Cannupa Hanska Luger gets into conversation with Oglala Lakota artist Mato Wayuhi who works in both film and TV as an actor, producer and musical composer, as well as writing his own music. Mato reflects on how he first came to music as an artistic outlet and his creative inspirations and challenges as a young person honing his craft. We hear about Mato's dense and varied approach to realizing a creative vision from filming music videos, to cross discipline collaboration with other artists to activating his family's archived tapes on his recordings. Mato speaks about being the composer for the award-winning FX/Hulu series Reservation Dogs, what impact that project has had on his relationship with his music and acting and how it has built lifelong friendships. Mato also gives a vulnerable and deep dive behind the making of his new album, STANKFACE STANDING SOLDIER, reflecting on the grief and healing that took place through the process of putting together this layered, timely and entirely self-produced record. + Featured song: STANKFACE (feat. A$h Da Hunter) from STANKFACE STANDING SOLDIER by Mato Wayuhi +++ Mato Wayuhi is an Oglala Lakota artist originally from South Dakota. He works in film/TV both as an actor, producer and musical composer, as well as writing his own music. Most notably, Mato is the composer for the award-winning FX/Hulu series Reservation Dogs. He is also featured on the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Hollywood & Entertainment. His most recent album STANKFACE STANDING SOLDIER is an entirely self-produced record, which Forbes calls a "masterpiece that revolutionizes Indigenous music into a new era."

In this episode, I get into deep reflection with artist and dear sister-friend Amaryllis R. Flowers to mark the 10 year anniversary of Broken Boxes. Amaryllis interviews me around the arc of the project over the course of a decade, uncovering how it has become an archive of the lived experiences and world building strategies of contemporary artists, while acknowledging the many variations of an artists practiced values including those of the activist, advocate, disruptor or culture activator. We speak about collective strength while considering how art and imagining may unbind us from collective social trauma. This long-form interview reflects the vulnerability, uncertainty and strength required to maintain an art practice today. I explain a bit about how the past 4 years of this project has become a dedicated imagination praxis, focused on building a toolkit for surviving the chosen career as artist. At the end of our conversation I announce Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action, and Dialog - the forthcoming exhibition and accompanying art book which will premiere this fall at the Albuquerque Museum, featuring installation and video work from 23 artists that have been featured on the podcast with an emphasis on the past 4 years. Originally from Maui, Hawai'i, New Mexico based creative Ginger Dunnill is a producer, journalist, curator, community organizer and sound artist. She collaborates with artists globally, creating work that inspires human connection, promotes plurality and advocates for social justice. Ginger is the founder of Broken Boxes Podcast, the decade long celebrated underground broadcasting project amplifying systemically undervalued voices in the arts. In 2017, Ginger received an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - 516 ARTS Fulcrum Fund Award on behalf of Broken Boxes to realize an exhibition and publication featuring the work and ideas of over 40 artists featured on the project. As a practicing artist, Ginger has exhibited internationally including at IoDeposito, Italy, Washington Project for The Arts, Washington, DC and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Over the past two decades Ginger has produced numerous social engagement projects, community programs and public exhibitions in collaboration with other artists and activists. She is currently working as a creative advisor for numerous prominent artists and musicians and touring the world as a performer. Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Queer Puerto Rican American Artist living and working in upstate New York. Raised between multiple cities and rural communities across America in a constantly shifting landscape, her practice explores themes of hybridity, mythology and sexuality. Utilizing drawings, video, sculpture, performance and installation, her work is a visual language paying attention to the spaces in-between categories, and revering those that know the trouble and pleasure there. Amaryllis earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 2014. She is the recipient of the 2023 Pocantico Prize from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a 2022-2027 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and a 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally including at the Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio (New York), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT), MoCADA (Brooklyn), and SOMArts (San Francisco). The forthcoming exhibition - Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action, and Dialog exhibition will be presented at the Albuquerque Museum September 7, 2024 - March 2, 2025. Featuring installation and video work from 23 artists that have been featured on the podcast with an emphasis on the past 4 years. This exhibition will be accompanied by an art book published by UNM Press which will feature an essay by Broken Boxes creator Ginger Dunnill, a creative response by artist Maria Hupfield and an introduction by Head curator Josie Lopez. The publication will feature the exhibiting artists through quotes from their podcast interviews, images of their work and writings the artists have selected or contributed from their larger practice. Broken Boxes intro song by India Song Featured song: Ocean Breath by Aysanabee

This episode marks the second time featuring artist and friend Raven Chacon on Broken Boxes. The first time I interviewed Raven was in 2017, when I visited with him at the Institute of American Indian Arts where he was participating in a symposium on Indigenous performance titled, Decolonial Gestures. This time around, we met up with Raven at his home in Albuquerque, NM where recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger chatted with Raven for this episode. The conversation reflects on the arc of Ravens practice over the past decade, along with the various projects they have been able to work on together, including Sweet Land (2020), an award-winning, multi-perspectival and site-specific opera staged at the State Historical Park in downtown Los Angeles, for which Raven was composer and Cannupa co-director and costume designer. Raven and Cannupa also reflect on their time together traveling up to Oceti Sakowin camp in support of the water protectors during the resistance of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Raven provides context to his composition Storm Pattern, which was a response to being onsite at Standing Rock, and the artists speak to the long term impact of an Indigenous solidarity gathering of that magnitude. Raven speaks about being named the first Native American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize or Voiceless Mass, and shares the composition's intention and performance trajectory. To end the conversation, Raven shares insight around staying grounded while navigating the pressures of success, travel and touring as a practicing artist, and reminds us to find ways to slow down and do what matters to you first, creatively, wherever possible. Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the two-mile-long land art installation Repellent Fence. A recording artist whose work has spanned twenty-two years, Chacon has appeared on more than eighty releases on various national and international labels. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America. Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy's Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center's Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022) and the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022). His solo artworks are in the collectIons of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian's American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the Albuquerque Museum, University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections. Music Featured: Sweet Land, Scene 1: Introduction (feat. Du Yun & Raven Chacon) · Jehnean Washington · Carmina Escobar · Micaela Tobin · Du Yun · Raven Chacon · Lewis Pesacov. Released on 2021-09-24 by The Industry Productions

This very special episode of Broken Boxes Podcast marked our first ever conversation in front of a live studio audience. Recurring host Cannupa Hanska Luger was joined by Matika Wilbur and Andrea Carlon on October 28th 2023 as part of the University of Michigan Museum of Art's Memory & Monuments program. The artist's drew from a hat of pre-considered topics to speak to and expand upon, including: Ancestral trade routes or sharing knowledge within a cultural continuum such as how culture, language and goods traveled precontact; Indigenous memory in relation to the American Myth; Recognition of Indigenous complexity; Indigenous futures including shared histories and futures; and Institutional critique or a generative airing of problematic power structures impact on Native people. Broken Boxes would like to thank UMMA staff and curators and Monument Lab for being present for this generative and complex conversation to take place. We would like to especially thank the students of the Native American Student Association at the University of Michigan, who welcomed Broken Boxes and the artists and helped make this live audience recording a wonderful experience. More about the artists: Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip) is one of the nation's leading photographers, based in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her BFA from Brooks Institute of Photography where she double majored in Advertising and Digital Imaging. Her most recent endeavor, Project 562, has brought Matika to over 300 tribal nations dispersed throughout 40 U.S. states where she has taken thousands of portraits, and collected hundreds of contemporary narratives from the breadth of Indian Country all in the pursuit of one goal: To Change The Way We See Native America. Andrea Carlson is a visual artist who maintains a studio practice in northern Minnesota. Carlson works primarily on paper, creating painted and drawn surfaces with many mediums. Her work addresses land and institutional spaces, decolonization narratives, and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Walker Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a recipient of a 2008 McKnight Fellow, a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors award, a 2021 Chicago Artadia Award, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship. Carlson is a co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago. Multidisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara), and Lakota. Through monumental installations and social collaborations that reflect a deep engagement and respect for materials, the environment, and community, Luger activates speculative fiction and communicates stories about 21st century Indigeneity. Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft, and was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021, a list that includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability, and equity from across the nation. Music featured: Move, I'm Indigenous by Uyarakq BBP intro track by India Sky

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.This is the sixth episode of the Long Con series and was recorded live in person on Cannupa Hanska Luger and Ginger Dunnill's back porch in Glorieta, NM in the Fall of 2023.Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin's latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX.Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist creating monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. Luger's bold visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our collective humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview. Music featured: Snotty Nose Rez Kids - I Can't Remember My Name ft. Shanks Sioux Broken Boxes intro track by India Sky

After years of planning a conversation together for the podcast, artist and friend Raven Halfmoon and I sat down for a chat on a sunny summer afternoon above the clay education workspace at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana. We talked about the beginning of Raven's path as an artist and how, although she works across mediums, her practice has most recently been centered in clay- and she has been going big! We speak to her conceptual approach of building large scale ceramics as a means to take up space for Indigenous women and how her recent works echo her community and cultural inspirations. We speak about navigating within the various art worlds including the ceramic and clay community, the Native art world and the larger contemporary art market. Raven shares how working with clay has taught her patience, understanding and an acknowledgement that failure, as much as success, is part of the clay journey. As we round out the conversation, Raven reflects on how as artists, we can't just stay cooped up in our studios, we also have to go out, live our lives and be with our communities in order to be able to do our creative work in a sustainable way. Raven reminds us to find balance and practice great care with one of the most valuable resources we possess, time.  Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation) is from Norman, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas where she earned a double Bachelors Degree in ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Raven lives and works in Norman, OK. She is represented by Kouri+Corrao Gallery in Santa Fe, NM and Ross+Kramer Gallery in New York, NY.

This summer I had the opportunity to sit down with twin sisters Sydnie and Haylie Jimenez as they rounded out a two year stint at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts. We sat down in The Bray's library to recap on life and art just a couple weeks before they headed back to Chicago to continue the next chapter in their creative practice. The sisters shared about their upbringing and how growing up with mixed heritage in a mostly white community revealed that art can be a tool for nourishment and survival. They reflected on how in attending the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, they finally found their reflection in the BIPOC student body. And we learn how Sydnie began her clay practice, eventually landing on ceramics by utilizing SIAC's large kilns. Haylie shares her practice of hand drawn animation, providing her the skills she utilizes today through large scale drawings and works on clay.  The artists share how they respectively work with the figure and storytelling, each drawing from identity and representation in an autobiographical nature. The sisters explain how they maintain a practice rooted in DIY culture, making clothes and other accessible pieces as HANDS, along with their more formal artworks. As they round out their journey at The Bray, the sisters reflect on their time in Montana, and we chat about the American clay world and how historically there has been a lack of diversity and representation. We also touch on the gap between the clay and craft markets and the fine art market. We chat about how the sisters inform each other creatively through collaboration while maintaining their own aesthetic and diverse practices - Sydnie produces large scale figurative work and Haylie carves on clay, complimenting her active drawing practice and tattoo trade. As we end our conversation the sisters remind us to take time and nourish our bodies and minds as we push to make space in the world for our communities to thrive creatively. Sydnie Jimenez (b. Orlando, FL) received a BFA from SAIC (2020) focusing in ceramic sculpture and is a recipient of the Windgate- Lamar Fellowship (2020). Much of her work centers around the representation of black and brown youth in an American context. She illustrates in clay self-expression as a form of protest and self care to protect against a Eurocentric society founded on white supremacy and colonization. Jimenez is currently a long-term resident at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago. Born in Orlando and raised in Chattanooga, Haylie later moved to Chicago to attend the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2020). Finding Black and Brown Queer community in Chicago and her long lasting relationships with friends and family in Tennessee was and is a pivotal influence for her work which surrounds the importance of belonging, collective care, self expression, and moving through hardships to times of joy together within these communities. She is currently working out of Chicago developing her ceramic and drawing practice, preparing for various shows with her twin sister, Sydnie Jimenez.

For this episode of Broken Boxes I am joined by Monument Lab Director Paul Farber, University of Michigan Museum of Art Assistant Curator of Global Contemporary Art Ozi Uduma and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. We gathered together in Ann Arbor Michigan in late September 2023 at the University of Michigan's Media Center during the opening week of the monumental project and accompanying exhibition by Luger titled, You're Welcome was developed over the course of two years between Cannupa, Monument Lab and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. This podcast conversation was a chance for the three creatives to speak vulnerably to the process of taking on such a large endeavor and how much care and energy goes into the creation of a project of this magnitude. We learn about the three primary components to the presentation including GIFT, an experimental, time-based, commissioned work by Luger on the front facade of UMMA's Alumni Memorial Hall which challenges institutional memory and the whitewashing of history. GIFT is accompanied by two indoor installations: Meat for the Beast in the museums Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Gallery, which delves into Luger's artistic practice and the relationship between museum collections and resource extraction; and Monument Lab: Public Classroom in the Art Gym, which examines formal and informal modes of memory. Moving through the conceptual application of this work, Paul, Ozi and Cannupa break down the larger themes of whiteness, language and time, and unpack the anchoring question of the project, How do we Remember?. The three offer their personal and professional reflections on implementing a project of this magnitude and it's unknown long term impact. And in speaking to GIFT and the larger constellation of exhibiting works, Paul reflects, “This is an art project that doesn't quite have a precedent. And that's the point. It has cousins and kin and points of inspiration and citation, but this work is actually seeking to do something that has never been done in this way.” Over all, You're Welcome explores the relationship between the Museum's historic building, the land it stands on, and a long history of colonial narratives deeply embedded in public structures. It supports critical dialogues about the responsibilities of public institutions as cultural history makers and stewards, and it is a key component of UMMA's ongoing efforts to challenge its history and practices to create an institution more reflective of its community and honest in its explorations of art, culture, and society. More about YOU'RE WELCOME: HOW DO WE REMEMBER? How do we remember on this campus? This is the central question asked in You're Welcome, a dynamic three-part exhibition. The result of a multiyear collaboration with artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and nonprofit public art and history studio Monument Lab, You're Welcome examines the foundational narratives of the land occupied by the University of Michigan and both national and global discourse on nationalism, land sovereignty, militarism, colonialism, and sites of memory. GIFT The centerpiece of the You're Welcome exhibition, Cannupa Hanska Luger's GIFT, is an experimental, time-based, commissioned work, responding to and challenging the University of Michigan's origin story and the stewardship of the land it occupies. In September 2023, Luger, a multidisciplinary artist and enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota), painted the word “GIFT” in white porcelain clay slip on the columns of Alumni Memorial Hall, a neoclassical war memorial erected in 1910 that now houses UMMA. His point of departure is the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, in which Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi tribes “gifted” land to the University that was then sold to found its endowments. MEAT FOR THE BEAST Meat for the Beast comprises two works by the multidisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger: This is Not a Snake and The One Who Checks and The One Who Balances. An enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota), Luger was born and raised on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. This is Not a Snake was created there, in the aftermath of the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. The “snake” is a serpentine monster made of riot gear, ceramics, fiber, steel, oil drums, concertina wire, ammunition cans, trash, beadwork, and other found objects. Interspersed within the creature's body are artworks from UMMA's collection selected by Luger and the exhibition's curators to reflect on the historical and contemporary destruction and extraction of land as an expendable resource. By positioning the “snake” as if it's ingesting objects from the museum's collection, Luger compares the damage done by extractive industries on Indigenous lands to that of museums, which have historically extracted objects and culture from Indigenous communities. MONUMENT LAB: PUBLIC CLASSROOM How do we remember on this campus? In addressing this central question of the exhibition You're Welcome, Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art and history studio, worked with lead artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, University of Michigan Museum of Art staff, and University students, staff, and faculty to gather hundreds of responses. Using 121 of these compiled responses as a starting point, this “classroom” acts as an exploration of memory itself—how we remember, the physical and ephemeral forms memories take, and how they come to constitute the campus itself. This classroom includes a broad range of ways we remember—instances of personal, collective, ancestral, speculative, and institutional approaches to memory. https://umma.umich.edu/exhibitions/2023/cannupa-hanska-luger-you-re-welcome Featured song: A Tribe Called Red Ft. Hellnback - The Peoples' Champ

In this episode I had the honor to sit down with artist Jeffrey Gibson joined by curator and co-editor of An Indigenous Present, Jenelle Porter. We were given space at SITE Santa Fe in Director Louis Grachos office to have a long and generative conversation while we celebrated the book's launch over Indian Market weekend. We talk about Jeff's practice and his journey to this moment and the Artist shares the vulnerable, complicated, difficult and joyous path of choosing to be an Artist, offering reflection from what he has learned along the way, understanding how the practice and studio has evolved in the 20 some years of being a working Artist. We then dive in with both Jeff and Jenelle to speak on Jeff's thought process behind An Indigenous Present, learning about the years of care and intention behind the project, which is, as Jeff reflects, an “Artist book about Artists”. We round out our 2 plus hour chat with the excitement and work that has come with Jeffrey being named the artist to represent the U.S. at the 60th Venice Biennale. As we end our chat, both Jeff and Jenelle share important and practical insight on how to navigate the art worlds and art markets and Jeffrey reminds us all that “Artists do have the power to set precedence in institutions”. Featured song: SMOKE RINGS SHIMMERS ENDLESS BLUR by Laura Ortman, 2023 Broken Boxes introduction song by India Sky More about the publication An Indigenous Present: https://www.artbook.com/9781636811024.html More about the Artist Jeffrey Gibson Jeffrey Gibson's work fuses his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage and experience of living in Europe, Asia and the USA with references that span club culture, queer theory, fashion, politics, literature and art history. The artist's multi-faceted practice incorporates painting, performance, sculpture, textiles and video, characterised by vibrant colour and pattern. Gibson was born in 1972, Colorado, USA and he currently lives and works in Hudson Valley, New York. The artist combines intricate indigenous artisanal handcraft – such as beadwork, leatherwork and quilting – with narratives of contemporary resistance in protest slogans and song lyrics. This “blend of confrontation and pageantry” is reinforced by what Felicia Feaster describes as a “sense of movement and performance as if these objects ... are costumes waiting for a dancer to inhabit them.” The artist harnesses the power of such materials and techniques to activate overlooked narratives, while embracing the presence of historically marginalised identities. Gibson explains: “I am drawn to these materials because they acknowledge the global world. Historically, beads often came from Italy, the Czech Republic or Poland, and contemporary beads can also come from India, China and Japan. Jingles originated as the lids of tobacco and snuff tins, turned and used to adorn dresses, but now they are commercially made in places such as Taiwan. Metal studs also have trade references and originally may have come from the Spanish, but also have modern references to punk and DIY culture. It's a continual mash-up.” Acknowledging music as a key element in his experience of life as an artist, pop music became one of the primary points of reference in Gibson's practice: musicians became his elders and lyrics became his mantras. Recent paintings synthesise geometric patterns inspired by indigenous American artefacts with the lyrics and psychedelic palette of disco music. Solo exhibitions include ‘THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING', Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2022); ‘This Burning World', Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, California (2022); ‘The Body Electric', SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2022) and Frist Art Museum, Nashville (2023); ‘INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE', deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2021); ‘To Feel Myself Beloved on the Earth', Benenson Center, Art Omi, Ghent, New York (2021); ‘When Fire is Applied to a Stone It Cracks', Brooklyn Art Museum, Brooklyn, New York (2020); ‘The Anthropophagic Effect', New Museum, New York City, New York (2019); ‘Like a Hammer', Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin (2019); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (2019); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi (2019); Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado (2018); ‘This Is the Day', Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2019); Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, New York (2018) and ‘Love Song', Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts (2013). For the Toronto Biennial 2022, Gibson presented an evolving installation featuring fifteen moveable stages at Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Other recent group exhibitions include ‘Dreamhome', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2022); ‘Crafting America', Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, Arkansas (2021); ‘Monuments Now', Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, New York (2020); ‘Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago', Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois (2020) and The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York (2019). Works can be found in the collections of Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado; Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York, amongst others. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015) and Creative Capital Award (2005). More about Curator/Writer Jenelle Porter: Jenelle Porter is a curator and writer living in Los Angeles. Current and recent exhibitions include career surveys of Barbara T. Smith (ICA LA, 2023) and Kay Sekimachi (Berkeley Art Museum, 2021); Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design (ICA/Boston, 2019); and Mike Kelley: Timeless Painting (Mike Kelley Foundation and Hauser & Wirth, New York, 2019). She is co-editor of An Indigenous Present with artist Jeffrey Gibson (fall 2023), and a Viola Frey monograph (fall 2024). From 2011 to 2015 Porter was Mannion Family Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where she organized Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present and Figuring Color: Kathy Butterly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roy McMakin, Sue Williams, as well as monographic exhibitions of the work of Jeffrey Gibson, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Dianna Molzan, Christina Ramberg, Mary Reid Kelley, Arlene Shechet, and Erin Shirreff. Her exhibitions have twice been honored by the International Association of Art Critics. As Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2005–10), Porter organized Dance with Camera and Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay, the first museum surveys of Trisha Donnelly and Charline von Heyl, and numerous other projects. From 1998–2001 Porter was curator at Artists Space, New York. She began her career in curatorial positions at both the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has authored books and essays including those on artists Polly Apfelbaum, Kathy Butterly, Viola Frey, Jeffrey Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Jay Heikes, Margaret Kilgallen, Liz Larner, Ruby Neri, and Matthew Ritchie, among others. An Indigenous Present: Conversation with Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter

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. This episode is the fifth conversation between Harjo and Luger on Broken Boxes, and the artists dive right in, chatting about conspiracy theories, aliens, AI, Indigenous ceramic practices, the current state of the film industry and the writers strike, how creating sanctuary for producing big ideas is important and how everyone's creative process is different, so it's about finding what your groove is. They also speak about fatherhood, the importance of storytelling, and of course the final season of Reservation Dogs - Season 3 - which premieres August 2nd, just days after this episode airs. Sterlin shares why he decided to complete the series after three seasons and reflects on his adventures of being a showrunner for a production that has changed the face of television for Indigenous people, and how making this work has, in turn, changed him. I am excited to see what comes next for our dear friend Sterlin. Broken Boxes will continue to produce these long conversations between the two artists and also we are so excited for Sterlin's podcast The Cuts to activate again, please go listen to his podcast archive If you have not yet! Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin's latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX. Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental and situational installations and durational performance and often initiates community participation and social collaboration. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent. Music featured: 25 and Wastin' Time by Vincent Neil Emerson Broken Boxes intro track by India Sky

Nine years after our first conversation on Broken Boxes Podcast, I got to circle back with one of my besties, and the incredible artist now known as Amaryllis R. Flowers. Amaryllis works across materials from drawing to video, to performance to clay, creating a visual language paying attention to the spaces in-between categories, and revering those that know the trouble and pleasure there. It was a warm early summer day and we sat outside in the clover fields at the Rockefeller Brothers Estate in New York where Amaryllis was an artist in residence at the Pocantico Center. In our conversation, Amaryllis reflects on her journey in claiming and reframing what the term Artist can mean, how it can evolve. She gives us a glimpse into the adventures and miseducation of the formal art school path and how her experiences in academia have had lasting effects on her life and practice, both positive and negative. Amaryllis takes some time to speak vulnerably about mental health and how stigmatized certain diagnoses still are in our society. She shares her own path of healing over the past few years and provides tangible resources and support systems she has gleaned in finding wellness. We speak to her current experience of reclaiming her way as Artist, as she reforms a more balanced and generative relationship with her practice and the artworld. Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Queer Puerto Rican American Artist living and working in upstate New York. Raised between multiple cities and rural communities across America in a constantly shifting landscape, her practice explores themes of hybridity, mythology and sexuality. Drawing inspiration from visual systems of communication such as comics, cartoons, codices, Egyptian scrolls, sympathetic magic, Caribbean Surrealisms, and alchemical diagrams for transformation, Amaryllis  creates non-linear symbol sets that buck colonial notions of how to navigate and describe our world. Where taste has been constructed by these notions, she aims to create work of questionable taste, utilizing color and material classed as “femme” and casting it to the center of the circle. Illuminated with fluorescents, metallics, and iridescence, these images refuse a naturalizing aesthetic of the universe.Amaryllis earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 2014. She is the recipient of the 2023 Pocantico Prize from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a 2022-2027 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and a 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally including at the Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio (New York), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT), MoCADA (Brooklyn), and SOMArts (San Francisco).  https://www.amaryllisartist.com Featured Song: Goin' Looney by Big Freedia

In this episode of Broken Boxes we sit down with Relative Arts founders Korina Emmerich and Liana Shewey. We chat about their long and collaborative friendship, the powerful impact and also social harms that can often accompany radical collective advocacy within mutual aid and direct action work. We speak to the growing pains and collective strength of community organizing and how Korina and Liana recently launched Relative Arts with an urgency to create a contemporary Indigenous artist-run community shop, showroom, artist studio / education and event space in Manhattan's East Village. We speak to the community care that is woven throughout Relative Arts, how the space has become a destination stop for Indigenous folks in New York to find community, connect and bond over art and fashion and so much more. We hear how in their experience the most important advice for community organizing, movement building and revolution is not to look to the person taking up the most space but how it is in autonomy that we are able to find true intersection, to change and to hear other perspectives. The overall theme of our conversation echoing throughout is that “We are nothing without our community.” Relative Arts is a new brick-and-mortar community space, open atelier, and shop displaying contemporary Indigenous fashion and design. Their mission is to provide a peer-run space in New York City to celebrate and foster the advancement of Indigenous futurism in fashion through representation and education. Relative Arts is Indigenous owned and operated by Korina Emmerich (Puyallup) and Liana Shewey (Mvskoke) and is located at 367 E 10th St, NY, NY 10009, open Thursday - Sunday 12pm - 6pm. www.relativeartsnyc.com @relativeartsnyc Artist and designer Korina Emmerich founded EMME Studio in 2015 and co-founded Relative Arts, NYC in 2023. Her colorful work celebrates her patrilineal Indigenous heritage from The Puyallup tribe while aligning art and design with education. With a strong focus on social and climate justice, Emmerich's artwork strives to expose and dismantle systems of oppression in the fashion industry and challenge colonial ways of thinking. Her work has been featured in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Moma PS1, The Denver Art Museum, Vogue, Elle, Instyle, Fashion, Flare, New York Magazine, and more notable publications. She has presented her collections in Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, Indigenous Fashion and Arts, Santa Fe Indian Market's Couture Runway Show, and New York Fashion Week. She most recently co-founded the new atelier, gallery, showroom, and community space Relative Arts NYC. Located in the East Village, the space celebrates Indigenous and subversive art and fashion. Liana Shewey (Mvskoke) is the Programming Director at Relative Arts. Shewey is a committed educator and community organizer who has led teach-ins and speak-outs to create awareness around missing and murdered Indigenous relatives (MMIR), the damaging effects of fossil fuels, and Indigenous liberation. She has also worked in music and event production for more than 15 years and brings those skills and relationships to Relative Arts to host events featuring artists of all forms, and to develop progressive educational programming.

In this episode of Broken Boxes Podcast we hear from Tsedaye Makonnen, a multidisciplinary artist, curator, researcher and cultural producer. Tsedaye's practice is driven by Black feminist theory, firsthand site-specific research, and ethical social practice techniques, which become solo and collaborative site sensitive performances, objects, installations, and films. In our conversation Tsedaye shares with us about her experiences in building and sustaining her art practice which focuses primarily on intersectional feminism, reproductive health and migration. She shares how her personal history as a mother, the daughter of Ethiopian refugees, a doula and a sanctuary builder nourish and guide her creative expression. “I am Building worlds that have not existed yet, for myself and for others. I want to be as expansive and imaginative as possible - to me that is freedom.” - Tsedaye Makonnen Music: Tew Ante Sew by GIGI Broken Boxes opening song by India Sky Artist Website: https://www.tsedaye.com Photograph of Tsedaye Makonnen taken by performance artist Ayana Evan Tsedaye Makonnen is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, researcher and cultural producer. Tsedaye's practice is driven by Black feminist theory, firsthand site-specific research, and ethical social practice techniques, which become solo and collaborative site sensitive performances, objects, installations, and films. Her studio primarily focuses on intersectional feminism, reproductive health and migration. Tsedaye's personal history is as a mother, the daughter of Ethiopian refugees, a doula and a sanctuary builder. In 2019 she was the recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. In 2021 her light sculptures were acquired by the Smithsonian NMAFA for their permanent collection, she has also exhibited these light sculptures at the National Gallery of Art and UNTITLED Art Fair. In 2023, she will be showing these light installations in traveling exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bard Graduate Center and the Walters Art Museum. She is the current recipient of the large-scale Landmark Public Art Commission for Providence, RI where she will create a permanent installation of her renowned light sculptures. In the Fall 2022 she performed at the Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh's ‘Loophole of Retreat' and was the Clark Art Institute's Futures Fellow. In 2021 she published a book with Washington Project for the Arts titled ‘Black Women as/and the Living Archive' based on Alisha B. Wormsley's ‘Children of Nan'. In 2021, she exhibited at Photoville & NYU's Tisch, the Walters Art Museum as a Sondheim Prize Finalist, CFHill gallery in Stockholm, Sweden and 1:54 in London. In 2022 she exhibited at Artspace New Haven in CT and The Mattress Factory and much more. Other exhibitions include Park Avenue Armory, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Art Dubai, and more. She has performed at the Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami, Art on the Vine (Martha's Vineyard), Chale Wote Street Art Festival (Ghana), El Museo del Barrio, Fendika Cultural Center (Ethiopia), Festival International d'Art Performance (Martinique), Queens Museum, the Smithsonian's, The Momentary and more. Her work has been featured in Artsy, NYTimes, Vogue, BOMB, Hyperallergic, American Quarterly, Gagosian Quarterly and Transition Magazine. She is represented by Addis Fine Art and currently lives between DC and London.

In this episode we hear from artist Natalie Ball who dives right in sharing critical artworld survival insight gleaned from a life changing studio visit by artist Willie T. Williams while she was attending Yale School of Art. Among a long list of support tactics Willie imparted, the artist emplored Natalie to find a means to sustain a studio practice beyond sales, and as an artist, to always be in control of your work and process. Natalie also shares vulnerable truths from her experience as a Black Indigenous artist navigating both the Native artworld and the larger contemporary artworld. We chat about higher education and how it has been as a pathway of respite as Natalie navigated motherhood from a young age. We talk about the journey Natalie experienced having a child with a chronic illness and how she took a 5 year hiatus from art, stepping into a focused world of love and care for family back home on her territory. We talk about this current moment in time for Natalie - unpacking the need for administrative support in order to create the time to make the work and how art school does not always provide the tangible insight on how an artist can build this support into their career. Material and place informs Natalie's work most - from her studio practice to motherhood to work on her territory - everything is connected. She uplifts play and joy as critical components to her practice, noting the courage and intention it takes to create this response to a harsh world. Through her work and life, Natalie asserts that art is power and holds the ability to transform our way of thinking. In her practice she boldly asks her audience to open their hearts and minds to new ways of seeing, presenting a call to “Come with me!”. Natalie Ball was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Indigenous, Race & Ethnic Studies & Art from the University of Oregon. She furthered her education in Aotearoa (NZ) at Massey University where she attained her Master's degree with a focus on Indigenous contemporary art. Ball then relocated to her ancestral Homelands in Southern Oregon/Northern California to raise her three children. In 2018, Natalie earned her M.F.A. degree in Painting & Printmaking at Yale School of Art. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation's Oregon Native Arts Fellowship 2021, the Ford Family Foundation's Hallie Ford Foundation Fellow 2020, the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant 2020, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2019, and the Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Award 2018. Natalie Ball is now an elected official serving on the Klamath Tribes Tribal Council. Artist Website: www.natalieball.com Music Featured: Damn Right by Snotty Nose Rez Kids Broken Boxes intro track by India Sky

In this episode we hear from Diné and Xicana sound artist Autumn Chacon who uses her activism, art practice and community involvement to communicate as a contemporary storyteller both locally and internationally. Autumn starts the conversation with reflection on the term Artist and how claiming this identity allows for a breaking of the rules institutional working environments do not allow. We talk about sound and noise art, the complications of being a conceptual artist, and Anarchism as a way to force understanding. We learn how Autumn became an activist at a young age, informed by her parents and their generations' advocacy and frontline work. Autumn shares her cultural relationship to sound and waveforms and how she has committed her life's work to the deconstruction of ownership and forced regulations - which she carries out in all facets of her artistic practice. We look at the global solidarity that was formed at Standing Rock during the NODAPL action and Autumn reflects on her time in the movement. Autumn breaks down a global performative action she organized with other Indigenous women in order to block funding for extractive industry and which has been formatted and used in actions globally. We end our conversation with Autumn's work as a pirate radio engineer and we learn how broadcast transmission plays an important role in her art practice - breaking the boundaries of how art is accessed in institutional spaces. She pays homage to the long lineage and power of “illegal” broadcasting and reflects how pirate radio forces us to ask an important question: ‘Who do you ask permission to, and why?' Autumn's sovereign communication tactics and long standing work as a sound artist and broadcast engineer continues on from a long line of activists who have used waveform as a critical tool for survival and communication during resistance. Autumn urges us to bring front and center an awareness of an ongoing silent struggle for our rights - reminding us to pay attention. End track: Glory Horse by Tenderizor Broken Boxes Podcast intro music by India Sky

In this episode of Broken Boxes we hear recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger in conversation with Cassils, a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils's art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils's work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment. In the conversation, Cassils speaks to recent and landmark projects including Monument Push, a multi pronged experiential work and reaction to Trans violence, and In Plain Sight, a national activation responding to policed migration and created in collaboration with dozens of artists across the nation. They speak to the larger ideas that shape their practice, including how their work explores the violence, resilience, strength and vulnerability of the body. They unpack the ethos behind their collaboration with other community members, how the audience becomes archive in their practice, and the importance of restructuring systems of care in large projects to actively dismantle the notion that those directly impacted should shoulder the burden alone. They see a desperate need to uplift complexity and productive disagreement to move us forward collectively and share how they exercise this communication model as an educator. Cassils reminds us of the potential of art, that within the space of making, our agency cannot be taken. Cassils ends the conversation reading an excerpt from a powerful essay by James Baldwin regarding the artist's responsibility to ”...drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question that the answer hides.” Cassils has had recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC; Institute for Contemporary Art, AU; Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; Bemis Center, Omaha; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands.They are the recipient of the National Creation Fund, a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts, a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist, a Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Capital Award. Cassils is an Associate Professor in Sculpture and Integrated Practices at PRATT Institute. Featured Song: Yoko Ono "Walking On Thin Ice" Dj's Transition Edit https://www.cassils.net

This episode marks 9 years of the independently produced archival broadcasting project Broken Boxes. For this special anniversary episode, creator and producer Ginger Dunnill is interviewed by Artist and friend Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski. This is the first time Ginger has ever been interviewed on the project and the conversation provides a deeper look into the intentions of Broken Boxes, Ginger's journey as an artist and her reflections on the very ideas she often draws out from those who participate in the project. In celebration of Broken Boxes 9 year trajectory, recently featured artist and friend India Sky composed new intro music for the podcast to carry us into the next year. Following the conversation is an excerpt from a DJ mix created by Miss Ginger from a recent Southwest tour. Gratitude to Amaryllis for making space for us to turn the tables on the conversation. Launched in 2014 by Artist Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes was created to transmit ideas between working Artists. The project shares the lived experiences and world building strategies of contemporary Artists in order to archive collective strength while considering how Art and imagining may unbind us from collective social trauma. This long-form interview podcast reflects the vulnerability and strength of the Artist while acknowledging the many variations of an Artist's practiced values including those of the activist, advocate, disruptor or culture activator. Broken Boxes maintains that complexity is resilience. By actively practicing long term alliance through communication strategy, this work amplifies Artists at the forefront of global and regional impact who are creating new ways to see our existence through Art, organizing and advocacy. This project promotes deeper understanding, healing and solidarity as we move collectively towards witnessing each other and the world in new ways. “I strive in all I do to build a living archive in celebration of our interconnection as complex and vibrant humans working together to witness each other heal and thrive as we activate the Artworld. I am inspired to create work and amplify artists' stories which center intersection and complexity within the human experience. Throughout my practice I am committed to sharing and learning with my peers how our stories intersect, how we can maintain solidarity for one another and how we can practice tangible acts of care and respect while acknowledging there are many expansive community values existing in tandem.” - Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes Podcast Broken Boxes creator and Artist Ginger Dunnill centers human complexity and intersection through sound composition, performance, broadcasting and advocacy driven communication efforts in order to create a living archive of solidarity. For over two decades she has produced experiential artwork and organized numerous exhibitions and social engagement projects globally, activating transformative justice practices through long term acts of respect, relationship building and accountability in the Arts. As a practicing artist, Ginger has exhibited internationally at institutions such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, Smack Mellon, Washington Project for the Arts and Io Deposito in Italy, among others. She is currently touring as a DJ and continues to produce large scale projects in collaboration with other artists. Ginger is interviewed by Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski. Amaryllis is a Queer Puerto Rican American artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Raised between multiple cities and rural communities across America in a constantly shifting landscape, her practice explores themes of hybridity, mythology and sexuality. Utilizing drawings, video, sculpture, performance and installation, her work is a visual language paying attention to the spaces in-between categories, and revering those that know the trouble and pleasure there. Amaryllis has exhibited both nationally and internationally and earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art, a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, she is a Joan Mitchell Fellow and a Creative Capital Awardee.

Broken Boxes met up with musician and composer Laura Ortman during her Artist Residency at the Institute of American Indian Arts for this episode where we chatted about her long love affair with the violin, how music has supported her in navigating the ups and downs in life and the value of the violin in contributing to collaboration and transcending art mediums. Laura reflects on how she stays centered while constantly traveling as a practicing artist and she speaks about being DIY to a fault, how she is learning to accept support from community, grants and residencies along the way. She shares about her upcoming album and the components she put forward in creating the record, including songwriting and archival field recordings. We hear a bit about a recent performance at SITE Santa Fe - which was days away when we recorded this broadcast - and where she performed a site specific performance on artist Pedro Reyes' Disarm Violin, an instrument made from decommissioned gun parts. She spoke to the importance of long term collaborative relationships as a way to sustain community connections and combat isolation and offered some sound advice to not throw away ideas that don't resonate in the moment, to be patient with the process, and come back to a work that isn't quite fitting in the now. As we spoke, the artists' effect pedals and violin were set up around us and we ended the broadcast with Laura sharing a powerful live mini performance session. Laura Ortman, a member of the White Mountain Apache tribe, is a musician and composer who creates across multiple platforms, including albums, live performance, field recordings, and video works. As a soloist, Ortman performs on amplified and Apache violin, vocals, piano, electric guitar, and keyboard. She has performed and presented work nationally and internationally at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2021); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019); the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, Toronto, Canada (2017, 2011); Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada (2017); and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2009). Ortman is a 2022 recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship. Listen to Laura's work on Bandcamp: https://thedustdiveflash.bandcamp.com

In this episode we hear from multidisciplinary artist India Sky whose art practice of music, moving image, installation, dance and performance investigates the invisible forces of ancestry, power and spirit that shape her experience, and engages radical imagination as a source for transformation, communion, homecoming, liberation, and survival. Her work as a stage and video/film director, producer, choreographer and performer is guided by her passion for world making and her practice of creating and contributing to platforms that uplift Black, queer and femme voices. India received a BA in Theater with a minor in Media Arts from Antioch College in 2008 and an MA in Artist Film and Moving Image from Goldsmiths University of London in 2020. In our conversation, India shares about the journey to her debut album, Somewhere Over The Mystic Moon, which will be available everywhere February 5th 2023. We also chat about how she has activated music and performance throughout her life, how she accesses pole dancing as a conduit between worlds and holds deep respect for the craft as an endurance practice. We learn of her reverence for the ancestors from the disco era, her foundational work with Queer and BIPOC Circus Arts and India unpacks how she continues to engage somatic therapy through her art, tending to the vulnerability inherent in performance while finding joy and empowerment in the work. Our conversation also expands to acknowledging the body as a guide for understanding self, how creativity is a way to connect with a power that is beyond self and that our perception of the world is our own. In ending our conversation India shares resources around African cosmogram, Afro Surrealism, the incredible Queer and Black Femme art and music scene in Oakland and she gifts a bit of knowledge on how utilizing the moon cycle can act as an accountability mechanism to check into our intentions monthly. Learn more about India Sky and her work and music on her website: https://indiaskydavis.com Song Featured: Dark Symphony from Over The Mystic Moon by India Sky

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. In this almost 3 hour long episode and the fourth conversation between Harjo and Luger on Broken Boxes, the artists speak on hunting, vulnerability, taxes, land, fatherhood, facing becoming celebrity, growing up poor, fathers and their love language, the familiarity with relatives in prison, Reservation Dogs Season 2, Sterlin's uncle Marty's laugh, taking the time to call your friends and check in, Film Noir, Cannupa's hats, fashion, ghosts, the art world, normalizing therapy to control inner chaos, writing versus directing, confronting the darkness in life, alcohol consumption, the Gotham Awards, and artmaking and what part of the process brings the most joy and what is the hardest point in the creative journey. Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin's latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX.  Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental and situational installations and durational performance and often initiates community participation and social collaboration. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent.  Featured Song: Can't Wait by Labrys

In this episode of Broken Boxes we talk about the life and current projects of Cherokee/Muscogee artist and composer Elisa Harkins. From her experience of being an adopted child to surviving a near fatal bike accident, Elisa shares both foundational and vulnerable life experiences which gave her strength as an artist. Elisa also reflects on grad school, noting artists who inspired her through insight and mentorship. We speak on how she has used language as a tool in her practice and as a way to access belonging and participation in community. She walks us through Radio III, a collaborative performance project which recently toured Europe. In closing, Elisa reminds us that as we strive to do things in a good way as creatives, we should also not be afraid to take a chance on bold ideas that push our comfort levels. Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to use the Cherokee language in a pop song. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, The Heard Museum, and MoMA. In 2020, She created an online Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee (Creek)/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, IN, and streaming from OK#1 in Tulsa, OK. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a limited edition double LP, which can be found on Harkins' Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Song Featured: Deadly by Elisa Harkins

Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a U.S. citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. As an acknowledgment to his past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging to undocumented communities and the cancer community. In This episode of Broken Boxes Guadalupe Maravilla speaks with Cannupa Hanska Luger about the current creation story of Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus being reworked into a new healing sound work. The artist reflects how this bus' artwork journey is becoming so much more including multiple communities involvements, several countries and even a volcano. We hear how migration routes are reflected throughout the visual language of Guadalupe's practice, including the autobiographical nature of the artist's own migration story as a child. Guadalupe unpacks a bit on how he strives to create sustainable micro economies through his artmaking process and we hear about how his art practice also becomes a vessel of support for new asylum seekers arriving in NYC, while in tandem the artworks provide sound healing for those recovering from trauma, including centering healing for cancer survivors. Rounding out the conversation Guadalupe shares how maintaining wellbeing for mind, spirit and body through daily ritual aids in the strength needed to continue to carry the work and support forward, and emplores us to find time in our daily life to nurture inner health. Please visit the following link to donate to Guadalupe's efforts in supporting new asylum seekers arriving in NYC. gofund.me/396e7d27 Artist website: https://www.guadalupemaravilla.com Artist IG: https://www.instagram.com/guadalupe__maravilla/ Song featured: La Democracia by the artist Very Be Careful

Broken Boxes is thrilled to present a very special conversation with the prolific artist Caledonia Curry, known globally as SWOON. In speaking with Broken Boxes producer Ginger Dunnill during the opening of Seven Contemplations at CONTAINER in Santa Fe, NM, Callie reflects on how art has been a healing practice for her throughout life. She talks about her pivot from art school to street art, in a time before the genre's fame in the global art market and untangles the complexity of being a woman artist in male dominated spaces of that time, while giving credit to the continued brilliance of the next generation who are teaching us the expanse of the gender spectrum. We end our conversation with notes on the impact of accessing and valuing experiences of artists who came before, such as a mentor of hers, Judy Chicago. In closing, Callie offers a bit of fearless inspiration, imploring us as artists to always “follow the impulse” in order to unlock the next gift and adventure. About the artist: Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork.Through intimate portraits, immersive installations and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity by mobilizing her artwork to fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in toward a more just and equitable world. She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing the conceptual limits of the genre and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists. Her recent work has been focused on the relationship of trauma and addiction. Through community partnerships that center compassion and the transformative power of art, Curry draws on her personal history growing up in an opioid addicted family as a catalyst for connection and healing. Over the past 10 years, she has founded and developed collaborative multi-year projects in Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Komye, Haiti, that address crises ranging from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic. She is currently developing a full length narrative movie which will bring together drawing, immersive installation, stop motion animation and her collaborative work, with the traditions of storytelling through film. Website: https://swoonstudio.org IG: https://www.instagram.com/swoonhq/ SWOON's Seven Contemplations retrospective exhibition is now on view at the new art space, CONTAINER in Santa Fe, NM. Special thanks to Tonya Turner Carroll and Michael Carroll for supporting us with space to conduct this interview in the gallery. Song featured on this episode: What They Call Us by Fever Ray

In this episode we hear interdisciplinary artist Christine Howard Sandoval in conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger. Christine breaks down the importance of research within her current practice and how her family have become an integral part of her work as she uncovers deeper relationship to her ancestors' pathways throughout California. She reflects on the complexity of connection, disconnection and reconnection to land that we all face today and how she uses performance, video surveillance documentation and large scale earthen paintings to expand upon these notions of belonging. Christine implores us to examine the future of art and education and to trust our own speed and trajectory as we navigate the artworld, reminding us that culture is not static. More about the artist: Christine Howard Sandoval is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam First Nations and is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University (Vancouver, BC). She is an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation in Bakersfield, CA. Howard Sandoval's work has exhibited nationally and internationally including: The Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo (Brazil), The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Oregon Contemporary (Portland, OR), The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, CA), Designtransfer, Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin, Germany), El Museo Del Barrio (New York, NY), and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY). Howard Sandoval's work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the ICA San Diego (2021) and Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (2019), during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Howard Sandoval has been awarded numerous residencies including: UBC Okanagan, Indigenous Art Intensive program (Kelowna, BC), ICA San Diego (Encinitas, CA), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM), Triangle Arts Association (New York, NY). She is represented by parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles. Photo credit: Rachel Topham Photography Featured song: Journey In Satchidananda by Alice Coltrain

In this episode we get into conversation with artist, educator & creative strategist Kate Deciccio who shares how her practice is a space to unpack the ways whiteness, colonization and the prison industrial complex have harmed our collective imagination. Kate also presents tangible ways we may heal and be nourished collectively by collaborative processes of building through community led abolition and also in personal accountability to whiteness through practices such as somatics. Kate DeCiccio is an Oakland based artist, educator & creative strategist. Her work centers portraiture for counter narrative, community storytelling & cultural strategy on behalf of abolition and collective liberation. DeCiccio is from Central Massachusetts where she grew up on occupied Nipmuc territory on her family's 4th generation farm. She is the 3rd generation of her Polish and Italian ancestors and descends from 11 generations of English colonizers. Before working as an artist full time DeCiccio was a mental health and substance abuse counselor and taught art at San Quentin Prison, St Elizabeths Forensic Psychiatric hospital & Leadership High School. The intersections of creativity, mental illness, addiction and ancestral investigation have been driving themes in her art practice since she was a teenager. DeCiccio is committed to repairing the harm of her inherited legacy and working to heal our collective imagination by learning how to stand squarely in truth, accountability, renewed resilience and unknown possibility. She is currently working on a body of work called Anatomy of the Colonial Fetish & Cynical Pilgrim, stay tuned! DeCiccio is a Co-Director at Performing Statistics, a project that supports youth organizers to close youth prisons across the country. Her collaborations include work with The People's Paper Coop, The Painted Desert Project, 826 National, Critical Resistance, Survived and Punished, Planting Justice and Dear Frontline. She's been commissioned by Amplifier Foundation to create work on behalf of The Women's March, The Science March and March For Our Lives. Her work has been featured in news and media sources including The Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, The Daily Show, LA Times and Navajo Times. She's exhibited at Galeria de La Raza, The Mission Cultural Center, The United States of Women, US Botanic Garden, Betti Ono Gallery, INTO ACTION, Interference Archive and Politicon. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress and The Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Song featured: September Song by Agnes Obel Learn more about the work of Kate DeCiccio: www.katedeciccio.com IG: @k8deciccio What's happening at Performing Statistics: www.performingstatistics.org IG: @performingstatistics Additional resources: On Somatics: Book: My Body My Earth, Dr Ruby Gibson Book: My Grandmothers Hands, Resma Menakem https://generativesomatics.org On Abolition: https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com https://criticalresistance.org/abolish-policing/ https://www.commonjustice.org

In this conversation Sterlin Harjo and Cannupa Hanska Luger reflect on the process and outcome of Sterlin's journey in creating the hit television series Reservation Dogs, now in its second season. They also talk about creating through a pandemic, lifting up independent filmmakers, swinging for the fences, the actors from Reservation Dogs and their character breakdowns, the latest custom hat by Cannupa, Indigenous film crews, with a little cameo by Sterlin's son Ayo and so much more. Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin's latest project Reservation Dogs, Season 2 now streaming on FX. This is the third conversation between Sterlin & Cannupa for the podcast - check our archive to listen to the first two conversations. Also check out Sterlin's podcast ‘The Cuts' where Sterin chats with the creative team from Reservation Dogs and many other creative peers, including Tiaka Waititi. Song featured: Letters On The Marquee by Vincent Neil Emerson

For this episode recurring host Cannupa Hanska Luger speaks with our dear friend and powerhouse artist and activist Tanya Aguiñiga about the cochineal beetle, clay as a healing practice for immigrant detainment camps, Indigenous solidarity and Tanya's ongoing work with AMBOS: Art Made Between Opposite Sides.Tanya Aguiñiga is an artist, designer, and craftsperson, who works with traditional craft materials like natural fibers and collaborates with other artists and activists to create sculptures, installations, performances, and community-based art projects. Drawing on her upbringing as a binational citizen, who daily crossed the border from Tijuana to San Diego for school, Aguiñiga's work speaks of the artist's experience of her divided identity and aspires to tell the larger and often invisible stories of the transnational community.Support the work Tanya is doing with AMBOS which stands for Art Made Between Opposite Sides, or donate directly to the AMBOS Ceramics program, which Tanya speaks of in this podcast.AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides): http://www.ambosproject.comDonate to AMBOS Ceramics program: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/ambosLearn More about Tanya's work: http://www.tanyaaguiniga.comMusic Featured: For The Young by Kindness

In this episode we speak with Mexican American Ceramic and Multidisciplinary artist Kristy Moreno who is a current long-term resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (The Bray). “My current body of work examines the systems and bonds between social, political, and personal narratives. These narratives intersect to embody forms of relativity, healing and resilience. By producing these physically paused moments, I introduce a space for reflection which investigates the journey of my personal point of view, individual habits and character.” - Kristy Moreno Kristy Moreno was born in the city of Inglewood, California and often found herself creating doodles of her favorite cartoons. Moving to Orange County inspired her to become involved in the art communities of Santa Ana, leading her to collaborate with group collectives including We Are Rodents and Konsept. She then attended Santa Ana College where she found an interest in ceramics that led her to transfer to California State University, Chico to pursue a BFA degree. Her work now spans across mediums to bring awareness and visibility to an abundant future where mutual aid is possible. Website: https://kristymorenoart.weebly.com IG: @kristy.moreno https://www.instagram.com/kristy.moreno/?hl=en Song Featured: Mar Iguana by É Arenas

In this episode recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger gets into conversation with Joseph M. Pierce, a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University where he teaches and researches about Queer Studies, Indigenous Studies and Latin American Studies. Joseph is also a writer and an artist who often collaborates with other Queer, Trans and 2spirit Indigenous Kin on curation and performance work. In this conversation Joseph and Cannupa speak about the points of connection within community through time, focusing on the realms of storytelling and speculative fiction that weave us together in continuum.   More about the Artist: Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, 19 th century literature and culture, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and hemispheric approaches to citizenship and belonging. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” His work has been published recently in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and has also been featured in Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Koori of Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Ways to engage with Joseph's work: Joseph M. Pierce website: https://www.josephmpierce.com Dayunisi's Turn: https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/el-giro-de-dayunisi/ Knowledge of Wounds: www.knowledgeofwounds.com Joseph and SJ Norman in conversation about their collaborative practice: https://movementresearch.org/publications/critical-correspondence/sj-norman-in-conversation-with-joseph-m-pierce Featured Song: Performing Life from Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ by Elisa Harkins

In this episode we hear from New York-based narrative artist, producer, and curator Evan Starling-Davis who excavates the everyday stories pushed beneath the margins of our society. Navigating his lens as a Black and queer digital-age griot, Evan's work breaches the hard facts, personal truths, and surreal realities we bury ourselves in. His artistic practice is situated within art immersion, mindfulness pedagogy, and experiential technology, and is heavily guided by the Black Speculative Arts Movement (Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism specifically). Evan Starling-Davis is in conversation with artist Cannupa Hanska Luger who is a recurring host with Broken Boxes and who often accesses speculative fiction in his practice from the perspective of an Indigenous person of the Great Plains of North America. This episode was recorded at Colgate University in Hamilton New York as a part of a recent artist residency. Special thanks to Nick West, Curator of Picker Art Gallery for the introductions to Evan Starling-Davis and for organizing a studio on campus to record this conversation. Artist Bio: Evan Starling-Davis is a New York-based narrative artist, producer, and curator, excavating the everyday stories pushed beneath the margins of our society. Navigating his lens as a Black and queer digital-age griot, Evan's work breaches the hard facts, personal truths, and surreal realities we bury ourselves in. A doctoral candidate of Literacy Education at Syracuse University with a focus in extended reality (XR) technology, Starling-Davis researches and facilitates arts-based literacy and social justice projects and interventions for Black communities in the US. His artistic practice is situated within art immersion, mindfulness pedagogy, and experiential technology, and is heavily guided by the Black Speculative Arts Movement (Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism specifically). To create new pathways for Black imagination and media literacy to flourish, Evan combines motivational design, multimedia arts, and immersive technology in striking new ways. Exploring immersive technologies as tools of healing (such as virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality) his most recent project, Hidden Fragments Breathing, models the radical potential immersive art exposure has to transform literacy in Black communities across the Rust Belt. As a curator with meticulous attention-to-detail, Starling-Davis has managed public humanities projects and community-based art experiences from conception to completion. His interdisciplinary projects have been featured in art galleries, museums, and theaters internationally. More recently, he has been selected as a 2020-2021 Humanities NY Public Humanities Fellow, a 2019-2020 Louise B. and Bernard G. Palitz Art Scholar, and a 2018-2019 Syracuse University McKean Scholar. Music Featured: Saffron by MF DOOM from Metal Fingers Presents: Special Herbs Vol. 1 & 2

Mario Ybarra, Jr., is a visual and performance artist, an educator and an activist who combines street culture with fine art in order to produce what he calls “contemporary art that is filtered through a Mexican American experience in Los Angeles.” Mario has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, ICA Boston, LACMA, MOCA Detroit, the Tate and the Whitney Biennial, among others. He was a featured speaker at the Creative Summit in New York, and Art Pace San Antonio and has taught at Williams College, UCLA, Otis, CalArts, Skowhegan and the Alternative School. His work with Slanguage studio, a project Mario founded with his partner Karla Diaz 20 years ago, has been an influential and oftentimes the sole provider of arts in his community. Slanguage has been based out of an old bakery shop in Wilmington Ca, out of a warehouse in Long beach Ca, out of LAX art in Hollywood, and has seen many changes and iterations. What does not change is a lifetime commitment to their community with contribution to the careers of many young artists, curators and organizers practicing in the artworld and affecting change today. This conversation is presented by artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, a recurring host who is leading the Spring/Summer sessions of the podcast for 2022. This episode was produced by Ginger Dunnill for Broken Boxes Podcast. Follow Mario's work on IG @mario_ybarra_jr and Slanguage Studio @slanguagestudio Music featured: Young, Gifted and Brown by Joe Bataan

Chip Thomas, aka jetsonorama, is a photographer, public artist and physician who has been working in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation since 1987. There he coordinates the Painted Desert Project which he describes as a community building dialog which manifests as a constellation of murals painted by artists from the Navajo Nation as well as from around the World. Thomas' own public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted onto structures along the roadside primarily on the Navajo Nation. His motivation is to reflect back to the community and the love they've shared with him over the years. Thomas was a 2018 Kindle Project gift recipient and in 2020 he was one of a handful of artists chosen by the UN to recognize the 75th anniversary of the UN's founding. Selected artists are to generate work that contributes to the envisioning and shaping of a more resilient and sustainable future. The UN writes “…Right now we are facing the greatest health challenge to the human race in a century. COVID-19 has revealed that a virus can affect not only our physical health but also our ability to cope with the psychological impact in its wake.” Thomas spent 2021 working collaboratively to create art that is a community based response to the pandemic. Find out more about Chip's work on social media @jetsonorama Music featured: "To Never Forget the Source" by Sons of Kemet

This is the final episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

This is the second episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

This is the first episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

In this conversation, artists Léuli Eshrāghi and Cannupa Hanska Luger untangle topics of Indigenous futures, science fiction, belonging, and the possibilities of language. Léuli Eshrāghi is a curator and artist of Sāmoan, Persian and Guangdong heritage with a few Marshallese, English and German ancestors, living and working in Mparntwe/Alice Springs for the past year. Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist based in New Mexico, USA. He is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, and European heritage. The written version of this peer to peer conversation is featured in the 2021 Festival Book the 22nd annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival which took place online October 19-24, 2021 celebrating Indigenous storytelling in film, video, audio, and digital and interactive art. The 2021 Festival Book brings together voices from imagineNATIVE's international community. Through essays, personal reflections, conversations, and poems, the Festival Book give readers insight into the overarching curatorial theme Fall Camp, Official Selected works in Audio, Digital + Interactive, and Film + Video, and Guest-Curated programs in Film at the online 2021 Festival. Purchase the publication which features this peer to peer conversation and so much more at https://store.imaginenative.org/collections/publications-collection/products/2021-festival-book-pre-sale The recorded conversation presented here was edited and produced by Broken Boxes Podcast with permission from the artists and imagineNATIVE. Music featured: Suplex by Halluci Nation Special thanks to Nikki Little and Vanessa Martin of imagineNATIVE for making this artist intersection possible.

This bonus episode features a reworked live DJ set by DJ Miss Ginger at The Art Of Indigenous Resistance exhibition and concert at Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA, May 2017. "This mix is dedicated to all people who are awake and consciously fighting extractive industry, patriarchy, colonialism and standing up to protect our Mother Earth in whatever way you are able. This Mixtape Rework is dedicated to our brother Wake Self, Rest In Power." Interludes featured are recordings of various water protectors onsite at Oceti Sakowin Camp gathered by Ginger Dunnill in 2016. Music featured by: The Water Song (artist unknown) Alas Kinnie Starr Sacred Stone live onsite freestyle (anonymous) Aisha Fukushima Angel Haze Rebel Diaz Mob Bounce A Tribe Called Red Saul Williams Tanya Tagaq Legends & Lyrics Nneka Buffy Sainte Marie interview excerpt Aceyalone Wake Self Audiopharmacy Mr. Lif Trevor Hall Lyla June Kumu Hina Chant onsite at Mauna Kea (rework by DJ Miss Ginger) All MP3s and other audio files presented this Broken Boxes episode are the property of the artists and/or companies who own the copyrights to them. Broken Boxes asserts no claim to the copyrights on such material, which is presented here for educational, critical and non-commercial use. If you are the owner of the copyrights to any material featured on this episode and do not wish for it to be so featured, please notify us and we will remove it immediately. Image credit: Image: DJ MISS GINGER. Photo by The Werewulf Micah Wesley, 2017

This bonus episode features a reworked live DJ set by DJ Miss Ginger at The Art Of Indigenous Resistance exhibition and concert at Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA, May 2017. "This mix is dedicated to all people who are awake and consciously fighting extractive industry, patriarchy, colonialism and standing up to protect our Mother Earth in whatever way you are able. This Mixtape Rework is dedicated to our brother Wake Self, Rest In Power." Interludes featured are recordings of various water protectors onsite at Oceti Sakowin Camp gathered by Ginger Dunnill in 2016. Music featured by: The Water Song (artist unknown) Alas Kinnie Starr Sacred Stone live onsite freestyle (anonymous) Aisha Fukushima Angel Haze Rebel Diaz Mob Bounce A Tribe Called Red Saul Williams Tanya Tagaq Legends & Lyrics Nneka Buffy Sainte Marie interview excerpt Aceyalone Wake Self Audiopharmacy Mr. Lif Trevor Hall Lyla June Kumu Hina Chant onsite at Mauna Kea (rework by DJ Miss Ginger) All MP3s and other audio files presented this Broken Boxes episode are the property of the artists and/or companies who own the copyrights to them. Broken Boxes asserts no claim to the copyrights on such material, which is presented here for educational, critical and non-commercial use. If you are the owner of the copyrights to any material featured on this episode and do not wish for it to be so featured, please notify us and we will remove it immediately. Image credit: Image: DJ MISS GINGER. Photo by The Werewulf Micah Wesley, 2017

In this conversation artist April Holder and I talk about motherhood, naming the narrow lens of social media, the accessible art of printmaking, dismantling the myth of loneliness, allowing our community, including cis men, to practice vulnerability as an act of repair, and to never back down from being the complex multi-dimensional people we all are. April reminds us all that no matter how much we ‘do it the right way', haters gonna hate and love will find its way to us, and she asks us to remember that we shape our own reality and gives us the task to LOVE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! I first met April Holder smoking cigs outside of a warehouse on the southside of Santa Fe, NM in the early 2000's at the Humble art space. She had purple or blue or green hair, a leather jacket studded up and sharp biting wit that is so rare these tender days, it was everything we could do to not spend the whole evening laughing when there was a show to put on. I was invited there as a DJ to play a set by fellow local DJ the Werewulf Micah Wesley, also an incredible painter. Little did I know that That time would become many times and a lifelong building of friendship and family would result, Including April. Today, we are witnessing our children become best friends, we are growing and inviting changed world views and better behaviours, we are supporting each other's goals and work and hearing the pain and evolution of being in community that can't always appreciate or understand us or our growth as weird ass boss babe in between spaces human type beings. April is on fire, always reflecting back the idea that love is truly what will move us forward collectively and I am proud to call her a sister. April Holder is a Sac and Fox, Wichita and Tonkawa woman, whose ancestral lands run through Oklahoma and was born and raised in Shawnee. April's artistic practice is a celebration of Indigenous women, an honoring of the land and animals, and the critical connections between. As an Indigenous woman, a mother and an artist, April recognizes the responsibility she has to create a healthy space for women like herself to thrive far into the future. April's focus is in painting and printmaking, and she carries an understanding that the creative process itself can have an environmental impact. She strives to lessen this by using recycled materials such as fabric, household objects and thread; all found or sourced from thrift stores. April's work presents a visual interpretation of the vulnerable and strong stories of Indigenous women, such as herself, while creating connection, continuum and a healthy way forward for her communities to reclaim their power. Follow April on Instagram @aeon_fluxus Final track on this episode is the song POWERFUL by Am-Mer-Ah-Su

In this conversation artist April Holder and I talk about motherhood, naming the narrow lens of social media, the accessible art of printmaking, dismantling the myth of loneliness, allowing our community, including cis men, to practice vulnerability as an act of repair, and to never back down from being the complex multi-dimensional people we all are. April reminds us all that no matter how much we ‘do it the right way', haters gonna hate and love will find its way to us, and she asks us to remember that we shape our own reality and gives us the task to LOVE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! I first met April Holder smoking cigs outside of a warehouse on the southside of Santa Fe, NM in the early 2000's at the Humble art space. She had purple or blue or green hair, a leather jacket studded up and sharp biting wit that is so rare these tender days, it was everything we could do to not spend the whole evening laughing when there was a show to put on. I was invited there as a DJ to play a set by fellow local DJ the Werewulf Micah Wesley, also an incredible painter. Little did I know that That time would become many times and a lifelong building of friendship and family would result, Including April. Today, we are witnessing our children become best friends, we are growing and inviting changed world views and better behaviours, we are supporting each other's goals and work and hearing the pain and evolution of being in community that can't always appreciate or understand us or our growth as weird ass boss babe in between spaces human type beings. April is on fire, always reflecting back the idea that love is truly what will move us forward collectively and I am proud to call her a sister. April Holder is a Sac and Fox, Wichita and Tonkawa woman, whose ancestral lands run through Oklahoma and was born and raised in Shawnee. April's artistic practice is a celebration of Indigenous women, an honoring of the land and animals, and the critical connections between. As an Indigenous woman, a mother and an artist, April recognizes the responsibility she has to create a healthy space for women like herself to thrive far into the future. April's focus is in painting and printmaking, and she carries an understanding that the creative process itself can have an environmental impact. She strives to lessen this by using recycled materials such as fabric, household objects and thread; all found or sourced from thrift stores. April's work presents a visual interpretation of the vulnerable and strong stories of Indigenous women, such as herself, while creating connection, continuum and a healthy way forward for her communities to reclaim their power. Follow April on Instagram @aeon_fluxus Final track on this episode is the song POWERFUL by Am-Mer-Ah-Su

In this episode we get into conversation with the one and only Oriana Lee. I first engaged with Oriana in Santa Fe, NM while doing sound production for Wise Fool New Mexico several years back. I produced a track for one of Oriana's live rap performances and ever since then we have continued to support each other's creativity in various ways within our community. For this conversation, Oriana breaks down her love for Hiphop, what it is like to be a life coach, we also decode identity politics a bit and Oriana reminds us that the most important thing you can do in this life is to “trust yourself”. Oriana Lee identifies as an interdisciplinary artist of African descent, currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shaped heavily by Black American culture, Lee's artistic lens is primarily rooted in Hiphop principles - peace, love, unity, and having fun. Artistic activism around human rights gently threads through Lee's creations with traditional African culture often infused through patterns, symbols, and storytelling. Lee's contemporary art practice includes music, literature, performance, visual arts, recycled/upcycled art, installation art, and circus arts. At the end of our conversation we here a track that Oriana recorded with her son for her recent solo exhibition, the song is titled Success by Physique & Olee from the 1010 Freestyle EP (2021) For more info, visit, www.orianalee.love /IG: @oriana1ee

In this episode we get into conversation with the one and only Oriana Lee. I first engaged with Oriana in Santa Fe, NM while doing sound production for Wise Fool New Mexico several years back. I produced a track for one of Oriana's live rap performances and ever since then we have continued to support each other's creativity in various ways within our community. For this conversation, Oriana breaks down her love for Hiphop, what it is like to be a life coach, we also decode identity politics a bit and Oriana reminds us that the most important thing you can do in this life is to “trust yourself”. Oriana Lee identifies as an interdisciplinary artist of African descent, currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shaped heavily by Black American culture, Lee's artistic lens is primarily rooted in Hiphop principles - peace, love, unity, and having fun. Artistic activism around human rights gently threads through Lee's creations with traditional African culture often infused through patterns, symbols, and storytelling. Lee's contemporary art practice includes music, literature, performance, visual arts, recycled/upcycled art, installation art, and circus arts. At the end of our conversation we here a track that Oriana recorded with her son for her recent solo exhibition, the song is titled Success by Physique & Olee from the 1010 Freestyle EP (2021) For more info, visit, www.orianalee.love /IG: @oriana1ee

In this episode we hear from artist Dakota Camacho. They speak to us through song and story about depth in relationship to land, community and in what ways they practice their art. They speak on mindfulness in social media, protocol, witnessing elders and self, of accountability, how to embrace challenges as gifts, and so much more. Dakota is an exceptional human being whom I feel very blessed to have met in this life and I am grateful to be able to share this conversation with you all. About the artist: Dakota Camacho is a Matao/CHamoru artist born & raised in Coast Salish Territory who creates indigenizing processes by weaving languages of altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer. Exploring the overlap between integrity, ancestral/indigenous lifeways, true love, and accountability, guiya (they) activates a Matao worldview to make offerings towards inafa'maolek (Balance and harmony with all of life). Camacho has presented yo'ña (their) work on five continents and throughout Oceania. Guiya is a Nia Tero Pacific Northwest Artist Fellow, Western Art's Alliance - Native Launchpad Artist and the recipient of The New England Foundation of the Arts, National Dance Project Award, The National Performance Network's Creation Fund. Camacho holds a Masters of Arts in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor of Arts in Gender & Women's Studies as a First Wave Urban Arts and Hip Hop Scholar. Camacho is a chanter, adjunct instructor, and core researcher for I Fanlalai'an Oral History Project based at the University of Guåhan. Yo'ña (their) work enacts spaces for multiple worlds, ways of knowing, being, and doing to speak to each other while unearthing embodied pathways towards collective liberation https://www.dakotacamacho.com IG @infinatedakota Music Featured: Following our conversation we will hear a very special unreleased song by Dakota Camacho titled Fangoggue, exclusively presented for this Broken Boxes episode.

In this episode we hear from artist Dakota Camacho. They speak to us through song and story about depth in relationship to land, community and in what ways they practice their art. They speak on mindfulness in social media, protocol, witnessing elders and self, of accountability, how to embrace challenges as gifts, and so much more. About the artist: Dakota Camacho is a Matao/CHamoru artist born & raised in Coast Salish Territory who creates indigenizing processes by weaving languages of altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer. Exploring the overlap between integrity, ancestral/indigenous lifeways, true love, and accountability, guiya (they) activates a Matao worldview to make offerings towards inafa'maolek (Balance and harmony with all of life). Camacho has presented yo'ña (their) work on five continents and throughout Oceania. Guiya is a Nia Tero Pacific Northwest Artist Fellow, Western Art's Alliance - Native Launchpad Artist and the recipient of The New England Foundation of the Arts, National Dance Project Award, The National Performance Network's Creation Fund. Camacho holds a Masters of Arts in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor of Arts in Gender & Women's Studies as a First Wave Urban Arts and Hip Hop Scholar. Camacho is a chanter, adjunct instructor, and core researcher for I Fanlalai'an Oral History Project based at the University of Guåhan. Yo'ña (their) work enacts spaces for multiple worlds, ways of knowing, being, and doing to speak to each other while unearthing embodied pathways towards collective liberation https://www.dakotacamacho.com IG @infinatedakota Music Featured: Following our conversation we will hear a very special unreleased song by Dakota Camacho titled Fangoggue, exclusively presented for this Broken Boxes episode.

In this podcast we feature a timely and pointed conversation with dear friend, water protector, artist and current law school student Amber Morning Star Byars. The topics we discuss in this episode range from healing ancestral trauma, survival, the Resist Line3 camps, Land Back initiatives, tribal law, art, wellness, mental health and self care; all of which need continued attention as we work towards a healthy relationship to our planet. Amber Morning Star Byars is an artist, advocate, storyteller, and law student from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amber is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a descendant of the Chickasaw Nation. She received a BA in Indigenous Liberal Studies and an AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018 and is a current student at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. After graduating law school in the spring of 2022, Amber will continue to advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples, specifically in the areas of Land Back, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and environmental protection. In the middle of our conversation we shared an audio reading of an article Amber wrote about her reflections from the Line3 pipeline resistance at Red Lake River in Northern Minnesota, while she was on the frontlines this year. The article titled I Am The River, was first published via AllCreation.org as part of their Fall Equinox 2021 collection, Sacred Relationship. At the end of my conversation with Amber, we here the song “Silt and Clay” by singer/songwriter Adam Horowitz. Land Back, Front Line and Tribal Law Resources: Rebecah Nagle work and her podcast, This Land https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/ Nick Estes and the Red Nation podcast http://therednation.org Winona LaDuke and Honor The Earth https://www.honorearth.org Stopline3.org For info and then donate to legal fund http://Stopline3.org Water Protectors Legal collective https://waterprotectorlegal.org IG @resist_line_3 Well Being, Spiritual and Mental Health Books: THE EXTENDED MIND: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul The Body Keeps the Score by Vessel Vanderclock The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life by Edith Eger Breath by James Nester We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner The Book of Secrets by Depak Chopra Leadership Books: Think Again by Adam grant Dare To Lead by Brene Brown Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

In this podcast we feature a timely and pointed conversation with dear friend, water protector, artist and current law school student Amber Morning Star Byars. The topics we discuss in this episode range from healing ancestral trauma, survival, the Resist Line3 camps, Land Back initiatives, tribal law, art, wellness, mental health and self care; all of which need continued attention as we work towards a healthy relationship to our planet. Amber Morning Star Byars is an artist, advocate, storyteller, and law student from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amber is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a descendant of the Chickasaw Nation. She received a BA in Indigenous Liberal Studies and an AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018 and is a current student at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. After graduating law school in the spring of 2022, Amber will continue to advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples, specifically in the areas of Land Back, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and environmental protection. In the middle of our conversation we shared an audio reading of an article Amber wrote about her reflections from the Line3 pipeline resistance at Red Lake River in Northern Minnesota, while she was on the frontlines this year. The article titled I Am The River, was first published via AllCreation.org as part of their Fall Equinox 2021 collection, Sacred Relationship. At the end of my conversation with Amber, we here the song “Silt and Clay” by singer/songwriter Adam Horowitz. Land Back, Front Line and Tribal Law Resources: Rebecah Nagle work and her podcast, This Land https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/ Nick Estes and the Red Nation podcast http://therednation.org Winona LaDuke and Honor The Earth https://www.honorearth.org Stopline3.org For info and then donate to legal fund http://Stopline3.org Water Protectors Legal collective https://waterprotectorlegal.org IG @resist_line_3 Well Being, Spiritual and Mental Health Books: THE EXTENDED MIND: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul The Body Keeps the Score by Vessel Vanderclock The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life by Edith Eger Breath by James Nester We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner The Book of Secrets by Depak Chopra Leadership Books: Think Again by Adam grant Dare To Lead by Brene Brown Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

This is a special Bonus Episode, presented as a poem stitched together with music and memory, story and reflection. I am a sound artist and this is how I feel most comfortable to share a bit of my own story, who I am on this planet, how I maintain community, connection to land and assert ally-ship to the various communities who I love and who love me. This episode was the first broadcast to open a series of 18 episodes presented by Broken Boxes for Radio Coyote and aired March, 2021. You can hear the full series archive at Radiocoyote.org. Ku`e loosely translates from Hawaiian language to mean, “To Oppose, Resist: Stand Different”. My life I have always been different, it used to feel like a point of trauma, not belonging, but now as I grow older, I feel like this understanding of relationship to self and land is what makes me so strong. I am proud of who I am and where I come from. This broadcast is the memory of home. The land I was born in/with/for and the people and locations and songs that informed my being on the planet. In the middle of the pacific ocean, the water and the land of Hana on the island of Maui, Hawai'i. This broadcast is my memory of that place, it is a vulnerable love story. Kumu Kama, a teacher of mine from my youth used to say “You have to honor the land, songs and dance of where you are from in order to honor the that of others you may want to support and be in community with.” Thank you to my family and friends for sharing your memories of home transmitted here in a mixtape format to set up this series. Music featured in this episode: Artist: Olomana  Song: Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u  Artist: Hapa Song: Lei Pikake Artist: Paula Fuga Song: Loloiwi Audio recording from the late Kanaka Maoli activist Haunani Kay Trask. This excerpt is from a speech Trask gave On the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1993, where Trask famously spoke in front of Iolani Palace. Artist: Composed by Hinaleimoana Wong Song: Kū Haʻaheo E Kuʻu Hawaiʻi Thank you to my dad, my hanai sister Pamakani Pico and my dear friends Christy Werner and Angelica Belmont who contributed to this episode by sharing stories from home!

This is a special Bonus Episode, presented as a poem stitched together with music and memory, story and reflection. I am a sound artist and this is how I feel most comfortable to share a bit of my own story, who I am on this planet, how I maintain community, connection to land and assert ally-ship to the various communities who I love and who love me. This episode was the first broadcast to open a series of 18 episodes presented by Broken Boxes for Radio Coyote and aired March, 2021. You can hear the full series archive at Radiocoyote.org. Ku`e loosely translates from Hawaiian language to mean, “To Oppose, Resist: Stand Different”. My life I have always been different, it used to feel like a point of trauma, not belonging, but now as I grow older, I feel like this understanding of relationship to self and land is what makes me so strong. I am proud of who I am and where I come from. This broadcast is the memory of home. The land I was born in/with/for and the people and locations and songs that informed my being on the planet. In the middle of the pacific ocean, the water and the land of Hana on the island of Maui, Hawai'i. This broadcast is my memory of that place, it is a vulnerable love story. Kumu Kama, a teacher of mine from my youth used to say “You have to honor the land, songs and dance of where you are from in order to honor the that of others you may want to support and be in community with.” Thank you to my family and friends for sharing your memories of home transmitted here in a mixtape format to set up this series. Music featured in this episode: Artist: Olomana  Song: Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u  Artist: Hapa Song: Lei Pikake Artist: Paula Fuga Song: Loloiwi Audio recording from the late Kanaka Maoli activist Haunani Kay Trask. This excerpt is from a speech Trask gave On the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1993, where Trask famously spoke in front of Iolani Palace. Artist: Composed by Hinaleimoana Wong Song: Kū Haʻaheo E Kuʻu Hawaiʻi Thank you to my dad, my hanai sister Pamakani Pico and my dear friends Christy Werner and Angelica Belmont who contributed to this episode by sharing stories from home!

This episode presents a candid and vulnerable reflection into the experience of one family of creatives and how they are making it work. Creatives and life partners, Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Producer Ginger Dunnill speak about their journey together for over a decade, making art, producing content and always being ‘one step closer to almost being done'. The focus of their conversation is on the last two+ years; navigating the pandemic, travel, making art and caring for family. This episode is shared in a hope to offer insight to others who may feel overwhelmed by the pressure to participate in the artworld in a sustainable way for mental and physical wellbeing. About the artists: Multi-disciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger communicates stories of 21st century Indigeneity through social collaboration, performance and monumental installations which incorporate ceramic, steel and fiber. He exhibits, lectures and produces projects globally. www.cannupahanska.com Broken Boxes Podcast creator and host Ginger Dunnill centers collaboration to create a living archive in support of intersectionality. She has organized exhibitions and social engagement projects globally, activating transformative justice practices. www.brokenboxespodcast.com Music: Tears Of Fire, Glad As Knives, 2011

This episode presents a candid and vulnerable reflection into the experience of one family of creatives and how they are making it work. Creatives and life partners, Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Producer Ginger Dunnill speak about their journey together for over a decade, making art, producing content and always being ‘one step closer to almost being done'. The focus of their conversation is on the last two+ years; navigating the pandemic, travel, making art and caring for family. This episode is shared in a hope to offer insight to others who may feel overwhelmed by the pressure to participate in the artworld in a sustainable way for mental and physical wellbeing. About the artists: Multi-disciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger communicates stories of 21st century Indigeneity through social collaboration, performance and monumental installations which incorporate ceramic, steel and fiber. He exhibits, lectures and produces projects globally. www.cannupahanska.com Broken Boxes Podcast creator and host Ginger Dunnill centers collaboration to create a living archive in support of intersectionality. She has organized exhibitions and social engagement projects globally, activating transformative justice practices. www.brokenboxespodcast.com Music: Tears Of Fire, Glad As Knives, 2011

This episode we hear from Afro-Indigenous photographer Jeremy Dennis who shares insight, concept and approach around their practice. Jeremy also describes a myriad of exciting projects they have going on including Ma's house, an old family home on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, NY that he and his family have been renovating. Learn about all the projects mentioned on this episode and how to support the work at www.jeremynative.com Music/Samples featured on this episode:  Zero 7- Futures (feat Jose Gonzales) Excerpt recording from James Baldwin, Why We Need Artists