April 16, 2024 • 55 mins
We are joined by multimedia artist Yéil Ya-Tseen Nicholas Galnin, who is from Sheetkʼá (Sitka, Alaska) and performs music as Ya Tseen. He is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, can be found on Sub-Pop Records, and has work featured around the world that is in sculpture, jewelry, video, and installation. His works speak to sovereignty, racial, social, and environmental justice, and for Landback initiatives. We talk about his path to becoming a multimedia artist while remaining rooted in Lingít identity, on demystifying the “complexities” of colonization when it comes to returning land, language, and objects to Indigenous peoples, and also his signing to Sub-Pop. He also shares advice for aspiring artists, and then zoomed off to catch a flight. See his work by following https://www.instagram.com/nicholasgalanin/?hl=en, and also read more about his musical releases at https://www.subpop.com/artists/ya_tseen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
They tried to colonizzs, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on brope and so to cut
you on klaya heen, well yeah he a car I
woo ok, I woo uncooked oots. Welcome to the tongue unbroken, folks.
(00:39):
The daylight has broken upon us again. One time Raven
was sitting in a tree and these people were dignating
for driftwood, and he says to them, send me something
to eat, send me something to eat. I might break
the daylight on you. So the daylight breaks like a
rope in ling it in the language, which is really fun.
And speaking of fun and exciting, we have an awesome
(01:03):
guest here today, Nicholas Glennin, an incredible artist, visionary and
a Guggenheim fellow who is en route to other countries.
So he's coming to us from an airport. So this
is gonna be a wild episode. We're trying to make
things work, make the stars line up for us. It's
(01:24):
exciting to sit down and have a conversation with you.
And could you tell the people who you are?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, she had seen you hotykwan Nicholas and.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
From Alaska.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Children in them and yeah, I'm out here just babbling
right now from my way to give some artist talks
in Venice. So I'll be out there for about a week,
living here.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In this basic and continue on. So pleasure to be
here and meet with you.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, that's awesome and it's cheeesh. And thinking of your journey,
like as an artist, I know you come from a
line of artists. Artwork is in your family when we
think about Northwest Coast native arts, and then you certainly
do a lot of stuff. So could you maybe talk
a little bit about how you got started and what
(02:24):
kinds of things really got you on track as far
as becoming your global name as far as Northwest Coast
arts coast surely.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, my journey, you know, everybody's journey is different. My
journey from a young age I was was set forward
in a lot of different ways. I think I come
from families of makers and artists in this space, so
that was highly relevant apparent to me in my time.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The tools, a language, a cultural connection.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Even if I was not at home tabbling around as
a youth when my parents separated and I was brought
away home brought back, there was always there's always a
connection there that I understood. I guess for me, it
became a parent of what I knew I wasn't supposed
to do in this world, and that became a pbvious
at a working age where I was trying to enter
(03:14):
the world work force. In certain ways, none of it,
senior elevant, are worth worthwhile for the time that we
have here to do what we have to do. That
was the best. That's the best way I can explain it,
the calling that I'm doing. And I was fortunate enough
to have mentors around me that are still very important
to me. I was at a young age where we're
(03:36):
meant to decide our next you know, our next journal
of this school system and these places, and that young age,
I was showing up there to these studios and wood
carving spaces and metal carving spaces and cultural spaces, and
I would need happy, happier than anything else is worked
to divide me a sense of fulfillment and power and joy.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And that's where I'm just that was a calling for me.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You can and you are from the community of Sitka. Well,
there's multiple paths that I certainly see you on, and
so one of them is an artist who's doing installations
and museums around the world and giving talks and doing
sometimes pieces that are something that maybe you think that
people would have made long time ago, like a totem
pole that was raised and I've seen several of those
(04:24):
that have gone up in a dugout canoe. But some
other things are sort of different. So like there's pieces
that are incorporating a wolf that's kind of standing up,
but then the back half of it is like sort
of like looks like a taxidermist that flatten it out
to get ready to put.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
On a wall.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And so some of the pieces sort of like are
pushing some of these boundaries as well in terms of
conversation and some of the best conversations I think that
I've seen, and in my opinion, the things that really
ring towards me is bringing the concept of land back
into these large public spaces. It's interesting to me because
I don't like this concept of sort of like living
(05:00):
in two worlds. I think that's really really simplified. But
when you're looking at stuff, some things are intended to
give a message. Some of the early works that I
think I first saw of yours was the Indians logo
that was the way that the baseball team would write
their name and it was being etched in stone and
stuff and then taking pictures of as if it's some
(05:21):
sort of petroglyph. And it was at a time when
I think we're calling attention to the use of Native
American imagery and names or not even names, but just
like chiefs and braves and stuff that are being used
in sports, and pushing these things for conversation. So it
seems like your work is always pushing people to have
conversations about subjects that are complex, whether those are how
(05:45):
do we do the works of our people today, or
how do we call attention to these types of things
that are that I think need to be talked about.
So when you sit down in your studio, how do
you think of like the next idea?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's a broad question, it's a good one.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I feel like I should clarify my studio as the world,
and I'm in it right now. So there's no clear
cut answer here. There's a lot of things that we
could talk about.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
We could talk.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
About my journey and process, like creative work is a
tool and a mechanism and a space.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Where I have sovereignty and power.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I have things the world tried to remove from us
as a form of tools and understanding.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I don't have them because I made them.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I have them because we provided for them those that
came before us, and I understand what that means. So
when we talk about pepeople in Stone, there's a lot
of work there right now. And yes it does talk
about mascots and slogans of misrepresentation.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Of our people.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
In that work, it talks about time. That piece talks
about time to talks about our understanding of land in space.
So I do work with I come back to you
and I've learned to understand navigation a place in this
conversation for me, Petriglaff, and that piece was a time
based piece that understands that I'm creating something on the
(07:12):
sidelinds of our home community and it'll change meanings five
thousand years from me right now in the forefront of
our understanding. Yes, very apparent, maybe political means of who's
changing the sports team's name. Power we represented and misrepresented.
But the power in that worked to me is that
in five thousand years is still indigenous art. And it
(07:34):
strips the trademark, it strips the logos and the corporate
and it strips the commercial mechanisms of whatever that logo
icon is and it becomes ours aga. So my work
navigates layers like seasons, that navigates the changes throughout these spaces.
It goes forward, indivision and features that are useful and
(07:57):
helpful at all front of our community. Every it goes
backwards and like understanding what we stand on where we
come from within that now called a continuance, I find
I feel like it's important to acknowledge it, recognize where
we come from. Geeesh.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And so that, yeah, that was a very broad question,
so let me narrow this one down. So one of
the most emotionally impactful pieces I think that I've seen
of yours was, you know, you're a metal engraver. You
work in jewelry. You do incredible stuff with metal. And
one thing I saw was an engraved pair of handcuffs.
(08:37):
And I'll just leave it at that and just say,
could you tell people what that was and why it exists?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Sure, a little preface Ingrady and I guess I keep
coming back to some of these spaces that come up
from So I was trained in that's a lifelong involvement
for me. It's not a pursuit of ego, not pursuit
of anything. It's a perceive of carrying the culture in
(09:04):
a way that were handed and caring it is best
we can and I would I would say the metal
work idea is similar in the understanding of it very
technical process takes years to like train and get understood
and the tools and the forms. In that process, I
understood and learned that there was things I didn't enjoy.
(09:28):
The sea in the world of how people perceived me
would love something shiny and beautiful people. I hate histories
that represent things that are unaddressed, or things that are
not acknowledged, and things that are not righted. And I felt
I felt a deep responsibility in my practice to tell
full stories. And some of the stories that I tell
(09:49):
my works include these things in the children's race that
was worn for me. They generate an emotional response from
viewers and a lot of a lot of different reasons,
as I suppose, one is the hard aspect of the material,
and the other is the scale. In the scale, it's
in a perspective the harm of the women and this
(10:09):
conversation and the horror historically that has still largely gone
on address as we watch boarding schools transform from being
an actual place of care and education to a place
of violence and places of burial for children as we
watch the harm of children that can happen today internationally,
(10:30):
there's imperials that were witnessing the work for me with
Cavlanian Indian children's bracelets, and it was a very direct
conversation of how a community loves to consume something that
they being goodic are beautiful or shining in this case
our jewelry and our our digital language of our culture,
(10:53):
yet failed to dive deeper and caring for the community
that has created this in the community what this comes from.
That's time and time represented day and day out in
our current situation in this world with how we're navigating institutions,
we're navigating government, our navigating violence, our communities, continuing things,
(11:15):
whether it's moment or children and all these things, and
this piece kind of exchanges things in an interesting way
where I engraved the designs and the shiny aspect that
people love, but it's engraved on an object that represents
the history, and so there's layers of entry to it.
And in this case it's a residential schools, not just
(11:36):
in our communities.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
But across across the US canaday and in other spaces.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So the work in the conversation that I view this
type of object is for me. It carries these things
so that we don't have to because you show up,
I show up, our mentors, our peers, our students, whoever.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
People go up and they are base with carrying these
conversations where they're inviting it, oftentimes to provide the work.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And for me, this object will do that work so
we don't have to and it relieves us and we
can do what we're able to do and need to
do beyond that from when it sits in an institution
or a space, they hold it and the a the
stories and do the work without you know, taking it
without without us carrying it on our backs.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah. Well, and the piece that we're talking about is
an engraved pair of child's handcuffs that are affiliated with
boarding schools and residential schools, which are we've talked about
on this show as places of tremendous suffering and horror.
And then just thinking of this juxtaposition of this really
(12:47):
beautiful engraving on this object that is such a terrifying
thing for indigenous peoples and probably is just honestly just
something a lot of people don't even know about or
think about who maybe aren't inous. And so there's a
couple other pieces that I think are really just amazing
and just sort of like as topics of conversations. There's
(13:08):
so much stuff that you do that I think is
we could do like a whole series of shows on
all of the impacts of these pieces, like a statue
of I think it was Captain Cook or a colonizer,
but it's sort of being extracted and it's really fitting
now because as people were starting to sort of question
the idea of statues, and you know, I remember I
was in New York City and it was Columbus Day,
(13:29):
and I thought, there's not a lot of conversations about
like Indigenous people's day, Like it is all Columbus Day
right here. And then there's a statue of him downtown.
And then yeah, I was in Hawaii at this place
called the Cook Monument, and that's the place where Captain
Cook he got it, you know, for trying to mess
with King Kamihimeha. And so like thinking of like these
(13:50):
conversation and it's more than just like a conversation piece.
It's pushing us to think critically about colonization and what
it means now, to stand up and to face it,
because colonization is not something that stopped or reversed itself,
like it's it's a part of an attempt to completely
annihilate languages and populations and cultures and ways of being
(14:13):
and connections to land and place and time. And so
some of the other pieces, I think there was this
amazing kind of let's see if I can even describe it,
taking a book and like the Bible, and making it
into the shape of a thing it mask. I don't
even know how you do that, or much less like
how you would envision that to look at a book
(14:34):
and say I can make a mask out of that,
which is so fascinating because it was the religion. So
one of the things that really happened in Alaska is
Alaska is governed by the military for a while and
then they blow up some several thing at villages, cake
Wrangle and Angoon, and they nearly destroy the villages. It's
probably the only instance of the United States Navy attacking
(14:58):
United States soil. And so shortly after that they said, okay,
the military can't govern Alaska. Let's let the churches govern Alaska.
So there's someone who was in Sika named Sheldon Jackson,
and he pulls out a map in Washington, DC with
a few other I'm imagining white guys who are also
religious leaders, and they divide Alaska into these chunks that
(15:21):
are now governed by religions, and what you could do
was determined by the person in charge. So some of
them were Catholic, some of the more Moravian, Salvation Army, Presbyterian, Episcopalian.
So they divided it up into the major religions of
the United States. And one of the things that they universally,
pretty much universally banned was dancing with masks. And then
(15:44):
I think the second thing was speaking your language. And
there were some regions that escaped the language portion, but
I think the mask dancing was fairly universal in terms
of banishing it outright. And so I remember one time
someone said to me, well, it's America. Doesn't everybody have
like all the same opportunities. I said, well, there's In
the nineteen seventies they passed a Freedom of Religion Act
(16:05):
for Native Americans, and there's a reason why you need
that act. So when you was it when you saw
a Bible and you thought I could make a mask
out of this, Like, how did you think of that
and how did you do it?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think it's a great place to start in some
of these conversations.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And for me, I was aware of that forced simulation,
that violence, and.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That you know, the what was removed.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
While being like heavily pressured in place into these ideas
and understanding the organizations for the simulation as a student
of the culture and the art forum and not as
a student that was trying to access the language. There
was nothing here I was studying with. I was studying
with generations of artists at the time. I think Lewis
(16:50):
Minari was studying with my uncle will to work with
my great grandfather George Benson. I was, and all of
our objects were everywhere else here from this conversation, I
was in the UK, in London, studying jewelry design and
silversmith in and all my off time and all my
free time while I was at home, while I was
(17:11):
doing anything else outside of school, I was reading heavily.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I was so.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Engaged in trying to get information about the culture and
my object are objects that became all right, all the
things that were moved that I would arrange my trips
around Europe. I was studying London, England, that would go
to places because of the music, because of the collections,
And I learned at a young age how to navigate
(17:35):
institution because of it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I knew her to contact to say how to get in.
I brought my camera, I went in and got out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That was all I was doing because I was trying
to access these things. And I was highly aware as
I sat through this also the information I had available
at home versus the information that I was reading. The
consumer and the academic scholars and the spaces and people
that were set writing these in these publications. None of
(18:06):
them were from our communities. None of them understood what
it meant to wake up and fish or hunt or
walk on the land, or to do something seasonally, or
to wait or nobody under said any of that. They
went through anthropological, physiological representations of homogenized hierarchy of knowledge
(18:29):
that was mind from our elders, and it was only
validated when it went to don Fast forward to my
time in Altaroa in New Zealand. I was aware of
these things. I didn't know what to do with. I
was demonstrating at Harbor at the Park. So I'm doing
my life mission work, which I would say my lifelong
work that I do is my cultural work with firing
(18:51):
and all that you don't arrive, we do it. We
do it your whole life. I mean, you share it
with people that you can share it with. I was
on that I started that, I begun that I'm still
there and in that space doing that work technique, I
realized the text I was reading and the people that
were writing it and the spaces and institutions and navigation
(19:12):
of it was not what we understand or see in
our community in the power structures of how and why,
And that's where that work came from. It became one
of my first There was actually a very specific moment
for me and my creative work that I felt the
frustration and the need desire to voice my experience now.
(19:33):
That moment was in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was young,
my first exhibition i'd ever been part of. James Hart
had invited me into the exhibition in which I later
learned my father was invited and said no.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Don't take me. Put Nickers in their feet and changed
everything for me.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
But I was in Vancouver and interfering with and people
with cameras and their fishing for this mystical information around
the world I was doing, and that's where I realized
that I'm not here to feed the narrative. I'm not
here to provide something that to shit their exhibition plans
or this or that. I need to speak for what
(20:11):
we're doing right now and what we experience right now.
And my work and the next work to follow was
that to which is what have we become? You know,
was taking a cut of thousands of pages of the
anthropological texts to begin with into form in things, and
it was potentially non indigenous form at first, because our
iconography is so strong and impactful that it tends to
(20:34):
let people active amantasized perspectives if we work with it.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Only so I chose to work with Gumeric Faith and
then my Face, and then.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Eventually I realized that it was that our elders needed
to be seen in this work and we needed to
include them in the culture. For me to include them
using our cultural imagery, because that is the generation of
imagery that has understanding and importance in all these things.
So that's where I started doing the indigenous forms in
(21:03):
the book format, and.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
One of them was the Viable.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Some of them were under Mount Saint Elias and Sonia
as a pological text, and that work still kind of
carries on. I don't think I'll do much more of
it because it's so intense in the process and literally
every page. And but it was looking at how our
work is homogenized, and I think about the work you do,
and I think about the work that we look at
and listen to and understand as we try to see
(21:28):
understanding culturally today, and we look at our mentors, and
not everyone was able to be critical of that in
the timeline of their life, of our what we're.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Represented in which way?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
But I think our generations are thinking more and more
able to because of the work that was done before.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, well, good of cheese, and we are here with
yet Kittsen, Nicholas Galannon, check out his work. We're going
to take a little break and we'll be right back.
Good to cheese.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The past.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Who's gone on the bye?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
My bylas By.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
With the birds really fled.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We only see whether the loss of the royal.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Because a bang bang on.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
The drum sect by.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
If you are listen say.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
If you are all, it will be change.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I don't know, long.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Time watch.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
When we won't want a mile now.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Very small for dance.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And the voice song allud Sere.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
That's where she show.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
If you are everything, say.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
If you are.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Can never be h.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
No Ah Kate you do as Kate, Naya aya touchin,
(25:27):
Yeah you do a sa artist dusta yeah aya saw
she Welcome back, folks. A mask is called ugh Kate,
and what it means is thing on dancing is kind
of how the the language works. And that was actually
a hard word for us to kind of track down
and to figure out and to sort of think about
(25:47):
that because when someone actively banishes a whole part of
your culture, like sometimes you have to do some reconstruction
and you have to do some figuring out. And you know,
a long time ago people danced with masks, and now
we see people dancing with masks again, and so it's
so wonderful to see some of these things coming back.
And some of the things I was thinking of is
we were doing some work in Sitka and I was
(26:10):
with Ethel McKinnon. Her think it name is Dostilla, and
she said, you know, you asked me what an artist
is called. I finally thought of it. She said, kujin kojuku,
and it translates as a person's hands really fit things together.
And it was such a neat concept too, because I know,
as an artist you are making things visually, you're making
(26:33):
things audio because you're also a musician. I'd like to
hear about that as well. But one other thing I
guess an entry point maybe to think about as well,
is these sort of ideas of juxtapositions. So one of
the things that I saw of yours that I think
was really fascinating and got me to think and challenged
me was these two takes of there's a song called
(26:55):
two Heye de shikak Tutan. Yeah, yeah, Cris Kate the
katesca to eat. I guess that's not what it's called.
That's the words for it. So in Sitka in nineteen
eighty one, there was a gathering of elders and kitch Nach.
George Davis said, in the whole series of speeches back
and forth with Charlie Joseph and lots of other elders,
(27:16):
they were talking a lot about what needs to be
done for the language, for the culture, for the songs,
and in one of his very impassioned and deep speeches,
he said, we will again open this box of wisdom
that they died off from and left it in our possession.
And then that was made into a song. And so
you made these two videos where someone is dancing to
(27:39):
that song but not in a way that we might expect.
And then there's another song which is something we might
not expect, and then we see someone who's sort of
thing it dancing. And I love this kind of stuff
because it's pushing us. It's pushing us to get out
of our comfort zones and think like, well, what is
this thing and what is that thing? And how do
these things fit together? So I think it's fun because
(27:59):
sometimes an artist does fit things together. But sometimes an
artist is like, these things don't fit together, and I'm
going to challenge you to think about why and so,
but I think they work. And so I guess the
question here is thinking about your music, and you have
sort of an identity as a musician, and then you
have multiple identities as an artist, especially as you think
(28:20):
of well I do art, that is these installations, like
there was one I think called the carver, and you know,
it's like a it's a white guy like with a carve,
with carving tools and stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
And it's called it's called white but yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, sorry, so white carver and so so some of
these pieces are like installations and museum pieces. And that
one was so fascinating too, because it's a full it's
a guy. It's like it's not like a sculpture of
it's somebody who's actually there. And so some of these
pieces are sort of pushing boundaries making music, making art.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
I could sorry, you've said a few things here.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I think I think we start with two ad that
was such a that was an old ward that was
done in two thousand and five, was released in two
thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I was a student in al Thrower and I was
working towards my master's degree with Robert Yankie. At that time,
I was just deeply you know, I was traveling. I
was in a space.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I was in a safe space with the Maori community
that I felt like they wanted me to succeed and explore.
In contrast to the space I was in Fire where
that Jew designed in London and I did not feel
I felt like I was not supposed to be there.
I felt like I was not supposed to like your
mentors were not rooting for you.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And then I saw it. So it's a very different,
like a big there was a lot happening for me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I remember the moment where I had the idea for
men as a word, and it was I think it
was just traveling through al Growa and I was ended
up someone with some friends and I saw dance floor.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I thought some music going. People were just in They
were deeply engaged with the music in such a way.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
The work came to me a little later after that,
because I think as an artist, we're always listening, always watching,
We're always working always, whether or not it's on clock
or intentional. It's like this, you're moving through life, but
you have these slippers that are open to the world.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
We have to receive the wars.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I came across the Dancer when I reached out to
David elsewhere and said, hey, I have this work going
to do a lot of my work does not abide
by what I mean by it doesn't mimic or trying
to like there doesn't wait for people to say that's work,
that's art.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
That's not art, but believe in the idea and it's
going to go forward. And this was one of those.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
It's a two channel video. Each video is like four
minutes five minutes. I love that aspect of creating because
everything we've done historically has been taken from us so deeply,
like mimicked by anthropologists or experts.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Are these folks?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Are that folks the point that it drives the market,
and the market says this is good. Native artist is bad.
And that's also problematic to me because I recognize that
our great grandsar were creating digitus native art and at
ceremonial art in an era where it was a words band.
It was not safe or it was not handed down
(31:16):
because the violence that we removed it and it didn't
look the same. It looked like that era of work.
And that's what happens when we break a link of
lineage of students and instructors and sharing that knowledge doesn't
sound the same to do that language.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
It doesn't. It doesn't like it. So these things are
aware of them.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
And for me, those words being opens contained wisdom that's
been left our care meant to me that we are
still full as people and culture and community amidst that
and what we open that end and how we should
decide to share it culturally is up to us, and
(31:57):
we get to lead the way, well we lead the
way we can't limit been taken from because they don't
know our next move. And that worked to me was
that it was the safe it's impactful and powerful because
it's Steve Brown's not going to create a dance video
like that.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I mean he can, but it's gonna what's it going
to do? These are where we have power of conversation
and like what we get to do and what we
don't like and who gets to do that, And this
to me was very intentional specifically in those things. So
I don't say that disrespectfully to Steve or then the
histories that we're navigating with our culture has been handled
(32:33):
and whose fears and who does not. I'm saying it
meaningfully as sovereign creative generations now that we get to
do that and the next generation to do that and
the next does. And that worked to me was the
calling that I took from that velosophy of that song,
and that translation I think stands through a lot of
(32:54):
the work I do still in that space.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, it's work without boundaries, it's work without limits, and
it's also work that sort of crosses over and just says,
you know, I continue to talk about on this show
like I don't exist in two worlds. I exist in
the world, and I bring everything I am into that
world and I see things and I think about things
and I can think about them in two languages at
(33:17):
the same time. And so to try and sort of
push through the limits, because sometimes colonization also sort of
says we're taking everything from you, and then you don't
get to do the things that we get to do.
And so to sort of embrace decolonization and to embrace
this idea of overcoming colonization, I think sometimes you have
to just take things back as well, which leads me
(33:39):
to my next thought, which is, you do a lot
of installation work in museums. I'm sure you do a
lot of talks at museums and universities, and museums and
universities have very complicated relationships with indigenous peoples. When I
think of museums, I think of them hiring people to
come to our villages once they figured out we would
go to these and I wou'd want to call them
(34:01):
fish camps. Like we had our home. We had a
big house that we all lived in in the winter,
and then we all had separate homes that we lived
in in the summer, sort of family based, smaller units
who would go out and put up food all summer long,
because you have to survive off that food in the winter.
And so you had multiple homes and multiple locations. And
one of the really complicated things is the Forest Service
(34:24):
has a track record of burning down the summer homes,
just like burning them down to saying you can't live there,
you can't live there. And the other complicated thing is
while we were out there in those summer homes, museums
and universities were sending people to the big houses to say, Okay,
those houses, no one's going to be there. You could
just say you found this abandoned house and just grab
(34:44):
a whole bunch of stuff and bring it back here
so we have it to display. And I know some
people feel like, I'm thankful they did it because now
we can look at these things. It's a complicated conversation
in the past, and the conversation I think we're having
today is, well, what now like I could, I could
name ten museums that have more in their collections than
(35:05):
any They have more finget items in their collections than
any single thing village.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
It's not complicated. It's complicated to the people that don't
want to give return land.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
It's complicated to them because they don't want to return
to they literally removed.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Our displaced different It's complicated for the institutions.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I don't want to send these objects to the communities
because of their own bureaucratic understandings of why we can
take it all back and bury it, burn it, let
it sit in the forest and return back to where
whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
It doesn't matter if it's at and it's a spiritual
object or if it's a remains of our ancestors, our
children's toy that was used for on that is just
as important as as other things in this conversation that
gets overlooked in the void in the language of Nagpra
and Agport says these specific things, why do you stop
(36:03):
it at land?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Why do you stop it at.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
An object that was for entertainment for Because if I
were to go do that right now in the society
under these under these laws, I would be it doesn't matter.
I'm not going to go I can go take something that.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It was a TV.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It was not spiritual for your people. It's not pretty
much charge. I just wanted to watch it and take
care of it, like whatever man he sings. I don't
even like romantics of it. But I think about these
terms of complicated now, especially as we witness Imperial Coronia
violence extend across the globe, and as we watched them
(36:40):
feed us the term complication.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It's complicated, and we witness the violence before our eyes
was not complicated.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Absolutely absolutely, And so as we sort of engage in
these conversations when we look at these museum collections and
these other things, I often come back to it's time
for everything to come back, time for everything to come
into our possession, because I think the world of like
curating and the museum's sort of culture would probably say, oh, well,
(37:08):
you guys aren't qualified to handle these objects and to
make sure that they're going to be preserved and they're
going to last. And then at the same time, the
anthropology view and the linguistic view is saying, well, you
guys aren't the pure thing. Get that existed long time ago.
You're not the high level whatever, right, And so it's
always these constant lies.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Driving in that I've heard that, I've seen that, I've
witnessed it, and I want to say really simply and clearly,
one we rosepier regardless.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
In twenty seventeen or eighteen year and we sent coopiers
that went in. You know, all of that work is
and this is.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Kind of from somebody who comes from this in the
continue room. We survived. That's how we survived. We survived
through that work. We survived through the length the elders,
the knowledge, the sharing, the speeches, dances, the songs, the
representation of stories that are held in each of those
that go up. And if they go up and they
(38:11):
return back to earth, it's not a preservation through arsenic
and through white gloves. And if we don't preserve this
is gone. No, we don't support the communities that create this.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
It's gone. That means us, that means you, that means
our children that are learning. That's how it leads.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It doesn't lead through the objects. Oh, we need to
have all access to those things. We get to have
all sovereign conversations. A priority of what and how we
care for ourselves in those spaces. There is never an
instance that any outside community should ever tell us what
is or what.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Is it for those things. And it lives as we
do this for it lives as I teach my daughter
how to carve wood.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I can carve what I can in my lifetime, and
it can return back to where it came from.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
That's not the preservation of it.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
There's objects. The preservation of it is mere teaching my
children and my apparentnesses. That's needed, and that's the understanding
of community and trust of these things. And I feel
like the news and has failed that forever. It's not
here for it. It's never been until they realize that
everything needs to go back to where it came from.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
That's all right. So when we talk about these objects
that are aoh or daily use things, these sometimes there
are sacred objects of it. And the only ones I
think who are qualified to overlook those things and to
have them in their possession is our people. If you
think about our land, the only ones who are qualified
to govern this land is our people. And so I
(39:45):
really appreciate these conversations where we are exposing colonial lies
that get you to believe like, oh, everyone would love to,
but this is really the best route. And so there's
all these different fields that have mastered ways to sort
of come up with more colonial babricationstions to try and
get us to believe that this is the way. So
we're going to take our second break, folks. We'll come
(40:05):
back and we'll wrap up our conversation with Ihetzin, who's
coming to us from the Seattle Airport. And I taught
a class there one time, and it's not an easy thing.
There's announcements, there's people, there's all kinds of busyness. So
I really appreciate you taking the time to be here
with us, little cheesh.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
To me.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
My time.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Mon I'm don the rediscar that's on the oscame seem
(41:52):
the passion way you started. Begin to you again, shouts soon.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Try land.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Snow me to fight to.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Shop in lovely lands. Stoot you dig ter, you love
(43:12):
adature after you wat you are always.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
At the cheeseca it towards the gul and nae stuk Addin.
So one of the messages I like to think about,
for you know, what's the purpose of me doing this
and what's the purpose of us sort of recording our voices.
And a big part of what I try to do
(45:18):
is give a message to those folks who try and
think about, well, what if I wanted to become some
global artists. And as you sort of grow up in
a smaller community and you're an indigenous person, sometimes it
doesn't always seem possible that well, I'll just go study
jewelry making in London, and I'll go get a master's
degree in arts in Altaoa and then I'll you know,
(45:39):
now I'm flying to Venice.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
And so some of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Seems like so far away from certain people, because like
when I grew up, it's not like people were telling me,
like you could do all of this stuff. You could
just do it, you could do it. And sometimes I
think for indigenous peoples, and I think a lot about
the young people, or I think about folks who are
just trying to just envision where they could go. I
think it's possible. I think it's so possible to do
so many different things. And part of my work is
(46:04):
to try and elevate people and trying to say, oh, is.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
That what you want to do?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Like here's some tools, let's let's go do the thing
and try and really be positive and be you know,
encourage folks to work hard and to sort of like
be finishers, to continually be open to feedback on how
you can improve yourself. So, in thinking about all the
incredible work that you are doing and that you have
done and that you'll continue to do, what advice do
(46:31):
you have for the next generation of artists that are
going to come after you.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah, that's good. It's a good question. It's an important question.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
I feel like I should start with my mentors were
extremely generous, and my path and my processes nobody else's and.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
You will.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
I was the first of my family that I know
to graduate from higher education. I came from my time
frame and a space where my parents but there was
no bad loans.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
It's for education.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
And we're learning now what student loans are to the
world in this time frame, and so we're navigating those.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
That particular errors.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And if I were to give advice to anybody that
I will try to try to some this up in
a reef format.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Where I'm speaking to my children in the senses, is
that like you or you can deal with it. You can.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This world is immense and we belong in this world
to you know, protispate as we like navigate it as
we see to contribute or to journey through it in
our time. Don't compare yourself to other people in that journey.
Don't compare yourself to you appears. Don't let those things
consume you. And I say this isnt on social media.
(47:49):
That heightens it the competitor of our other forms of
those and take risks. Do what you believe in, stand
by your convictions. And also you don't know that's okay,
you have time to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I will.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I will tell you right now. Everybody that I know
that goes here and we might have plans, they don't
go our way, d it.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
We do what we have to.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
We survive and we do it. If we're able to,
we're able to do what we enjoy one point when
we listen to that column. So I think those things
are really important.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Gonna cheese and yeah, as you sort of like you go.
And one of the things I think about a lot
is like finishing something is so crucial I think to
being creative because there's a lot of people who have
ideas and visions and you have the book that just
sits in your mind for a decade or more, or
you have this idea for carving a mask or doing
(48:44):
a bracelet, or learning how to do formline, or you know,
trying to sort of move into sculptural work or whatever
the thing is. Sometimes it's hard to sort of do
and to also it takes to be honest. It takes
courage to put yourself out there and people see what
you're making and let people hear the things that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
And so can I say something real quick in that
on the finishing things, I think it's really important for
myself to understand in this in this finish it's it's
taken some experience and time to think about it in
this way, but yes, finishing is important.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Taking yourself less seriously is also very important.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
There's nothing that we do that we get to de
side defines us the process, but what we can do
at that time and show up and be continually engaging
and growing and understanding that we're not going to be
there at any pot that you don't know, ry this
is it and show up every day he see the
(49:47):
seasons and the struggle, you know, enjoy and success and challenge.
All of that goes in you, So you can't stop
yourself before you've gotten started. Step on whether or not
you feel like you've succeeded.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
You have to just do. You have to grow.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
You have to understand that growing is in life throng.
It's not We're not gonna one day stop wrong. Welcome
if you introduce yourself to that. Welcome to that feeling,
because you have to be that and you have to
embrace it, and you have to say every day, I'm
gonna show up. And some days I feel confident and good,
(50:25):
some days I might not.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you've
got to go run, like right onto a plane. So
before you go, if you're in the Seattle airport, I
feel like there's a place that you could go to
go buy like maybe a CD or an album from
this really cool native musician from Sitka. Could you talk
about your music and what you do.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
It's funny, I'm going to see bag airport.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
And we signed a record deal sub Pop Records out
of Seattle, which pretty exciting for me because I grew up.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Listening to a lot of sub pop artists. The sound whatever.
Speaker 5 (51:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
We still have a pretty good catalog artists, and they
asked me to do some airport announcements. It's our last record.
You see something safe, if you see something, say something
like that. So I said, I'll do it if you
let me do a landing. Not that I agree that
landing noledgements are everything, but that was the first landing
maledgement a airport. So, and I don't know if they're
(51:23):
still playing it or not. I'm gonna we got to
release our next.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Record with them.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
I've been recording it for over a year, collaborating with
some artists and like bringing that, make sure to bring
that back. Music is important to me, and my father
was a musician and I understood the love and power
of music.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
That I still engage in different ways. It's a it's
a form of release, it's a form of freedom.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
A lot of the artwork that I do in the
world is something very direct and literal and can be
can be heavy in certain ways, but music, music can
carry that too. Music is also very free for me.
I get to be an experience human experiences. I express
them in a way that the art world doesn't try
to load me up with their conceptions of what I
should or shouldn't be making and I appreciate that. But
(52:10):
the band is Yatsi and the project has been going
for a few years. It's very experimental.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
It's what it needs to be.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I enjoy the discovery and the expression of that process.
I like to step in the music to be. I
think it's a spaceship where I escape all of these
levels and power in different races, in a different race
and a different way while I creating that space.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And it's highly collaborative. Music is amazing. It's very there.
The big alchemy that happens in music for.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Me, and that's when we bring people together and we
share ideas over space and time and know livy and
songs so and I know are people come from songs,
So I understand.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
The power and it's so fabulous to watch and to see,
like I think, you have a vintage synthesizer collection that
is growing, and you know, and then you get to
try all these new things and say, well, I could
take this thing, and you know again, like continuing to
think about you never know where the next project's gonna
come from. You're gonna play some sort of sound and
(53:12):
you're gonna think, wait, that sound could go with this sound,
or you're gonna sort of walk and you're going to
see something and say that that could be this next
sort of installation in this project. So definitely, if you're
out there, listen to this check out yet seen, check
out Yet chet Seen Nicholas Kalanin and his work all
around the world. I hope you have wonderful safe travels
(53:33):
and that everything that you're doing is just so impactful
to me and to other people. And so I really
appreciate the conversations. To think of in this community where
I live, ak quan Ani, which is on the map
known as Juno Alaska, they used to have signs that
they say no Indians or dogs allowed. And then you
(53:54):
took that and made it into a neon signs that
are out in the woods and the beautiful back drop
of our land, and to think about these things that
existed and that we used to see. So for all
you up and coming artists and established artists and musicians,
keep doing what you're doing. I think about thinking people
all the time. My grandpa would go tie up a boat,
(54:15):
go catch a fish, go play music, go boxing, And
he never limited himself to like just doing one thing,
and so to like be yourself and take yourself into
all these different areas, and when people try to present
you with the endless limitations of colonization, rejected. Just reject
it instantaneously and just think about what you might need,
(54:36):
what you want, and what you might be inheriting from
previous generations and leaving for future generations. This has been
the Tongue Unbroken, coming to you from aka quan Ani
and the Seattle the Sea Tac International Airport and this
is a project of the Next Up Initiative the iHeartMedia Network.
Check out other podcasts from the Next Up Initiative and
(55:00):
check out more Indigenous voices, artwork, musicians. Yeah oh way,
then a cheese A cheese
They tried to colonizzs, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on brope and so to cut
you on klaya heen, well yeah he a car I
woo ok, I woo uncooked oots. Welcome to the tongue unbroken, folks.
(00:39):
The daylight has broken upon us again. One time Raven
was sitting in a tree and these people were dignating
for driftwood, and he says to them, send me something
to eat, send me something to eat. I might break
the daylight on you. So the daylight breaks like a
rope in ling it in the language, which is really fun.
And speaking of fun and exciting, we have an awesome
(01:03):
guest here today, Nicholas Glennin, an incredible artist, visionary and
a Guggenheim fellow who is en route to other countries.
So he's coming to us from an airport. So this
is gonna be a wild episode. We're trying to make
things work, make the stars line up for us. It's
(01:24):
exciting to sit down and have a conversation with you.
And could you tell the people who you are?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, she had seen you hotykwan Nicholas and.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
From Alaska.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Children in them and yeah, I'm out here just babbling
right now from my way to give some artist talks
in Venice. So I'll be out there for about a week,
living here.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In this basic and continue on. So pleasure to be
here and meet with you.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, that's awesome and it's cheeesh. And thinking of your journey,
like as an artist, I know you come from a
line of artists. Artwork is in your family when we
think about Northwest Coast native arts, and then you certainly
do a lot of stuff. So could you maybe talk
a little bit about how you got started and what
(02:24):
kinds of things really got you on track as far
as becoming your global name as far as Northwest Coast
arts coast surely.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, my journey, you know, everybody's journey is different. My
journey from a young age I was was set forward
in a lot of different ways. I think I come
from families of makers and artists in this space, so
that was highly relevant apparent to me in my time.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The tools, a language, a cultural connection.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Even if I was not at home tabbling around as
a youth when my parents separated and I was brought
away home brought back, there was always there's always a
connection there that I understood. I guess for me, it
became a parent of what I knew I wasn't supposed
to do in this world, and that became a pbvious
at a working age where I was trying to enter
(03:14):
the world work force. In certain ways, none of it,
senior elevant, are worth worthwhile for the time that we
have here to do what we have to do. That
was the best. That's the best way I can explain it,
the calling that I'm doing. And I was fortunate enough
to have mentors around me that are still very important
to me. I was at a young age where we're
(03:36):
meant to decide our next you know, our next journal
of this school system and these places, and that young age,
I was showing up there to these studios and wood
carving spaces and metal carving spaces and cultural spaces, and
I would need happy, happier than anything else is worked
to divide me a sense of fulfillment and power and joy.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And that's where I'm just that was a calling for me.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You can and you are from the community of Sitka. Well,
there's multiple paths that I certainly see you on, and
so one of them is an artist who's doing installations
and museums around the world and giving talks and doing
sometimes pieces that are something that maybe you think that
people would have made long time ago, like a totem
pole that was raised and I've seen several of those
(04:24):
that have gone up in a dugout canoe. But some
other things are sort of different. So like there's pieces
that are incorporating a wolf that's kind of standing up,
but then the back half of it is like sort
of like looks like a taxidermist that flatten it out
to get ready to put.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
On a wall.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And so some of the pieces sort of like are
pushing some of these boundaries as well in terms of
conversation and some of the best conversations I think that
I've seen, and in my opinion, the things that really
ring towards me is bringing the concept of land back
into these large public spaces. It's interesting to me because
I don't like this concept of sort of like living
(05:00):
in two worlds. I think that's really really simplified. But
when you're looking at stuff, some things are intended to
give a message. Some of the early works that I
think I first saw of yours was the Indians logo
that was the way that the baseball team would write
their name and it was being etched in stone and
stuff and then taking pictures of as if it's some
(05:21):
sort of petroglyph. And it was at a time when
I think we're calling attention to the use of Native
American imagery and names or not even names, but just
like chiefs and braves and stuff that are being used
in sports, and pushing these things for conversation. So it
seems like your work is always pushing people to have
conversations about subjects that are complex, whether those are how
(05:45):
do we do the works of our people today, or
how do we call attention to these types of things
that are that I think need to be talked about.
So when you sit down in your studio, how do
you think of like the next idea?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's a broad question, it's a good one.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I feel like I should clarify my studio as the world,
and I'm in it right now. So there's no clear
cut answer here. There's a lot of things that we
could talk about.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
We could talk.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
About my journey and process, like creative work is a
tool and a mechanism and a space.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Where I have sovereignty and power.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I have things the world tried to remove from us
as a form of tools and understanding.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I don't have them because I made them.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I have them because we provided for them those that
came before us, and I understand what that means. So
when we talk about pepeople in Stone, there's a lot
of work there right now. And yes it does talk
about mascots and slogans of misrepresentation.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Of our people.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
In that work, it talks about time. That piece talks
about time to talks about our understanding of land in space.
So I do work with I come back to you
and I've learned to understand navigation a place in this
conversation for me, Petriglaff, and that piece was a time
based piece that understands that I'm creating something on the
(07:12):
sidelinds of our home community and it'll change meanings five
thousand years from me right now in the forefront of
our understanding. Yes, very apparent, maybe political means of who's
changing the sports team's name. Power we represented and misrepresented.
But the power in that worked to me is that
in five thousand years is still indigenous art. And it
(07:34):
strips the trademark, it strips the logos and the corporate
and it strips the commercial mechanisms of whatever that logo
icon is and it becomes ours aga. So my work
navigates layers like seasons, that navigates the changes throughout these spaces.
It goes forward, indivision and features that are useful and
(07:57):
helpful at all front of our community. Every it goes
backwards and like understanding what we stand on where we
come from within that now called a continuance, I find
I feel like it's important to acknowledge it, recognize where
we come from. Geeesh.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And so that, yeah, that was a very broad question,
so let me narrow this one down. So one of
the most emotionally impactful pieces I think that I've seen
of yours was, you know, you're a metal engraver. You
work in jewelry. You do incredible stuff with metal. And
one thing I saw was an engraved pair of handcuffs.
(08:37):
And I'll just leave it at that and just say,
could you tell people what that was and why it exists?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Sure, a little preface Ingrady and I guess I keep
coming back to some of these spaces that come up
from So I was trained in that's a lifelong involvement
for me. It's not a pursuit of ego, not pursuit
of anything. It's a perceive of carrying the culture in
(09:04):
a way that were handed and caring it is best
we can and I would I would say the metal
work idea is similar in the understanding of it very
technical process takes years to like train and get understood
and the tools and the forms. In that process, I
understood and learned that there was things I didn't enjoy.
(09:28):
The sea in the world of how people perceived me
would love something shiny and beautiful people. I hate histories
that represent things that are unaddressed, or things that are
not acknowledged, and things that are not righted. And I felt
I felt a deep responsibility in my practice to tell
full stories. And some of the stories that I tell
(09:49):
my works include these things in the children's race that
was worn for me. They generate an emotional response from
viewers and a lot of a lot of different reasons,
as I suppose, one is the hard aspect of the material,
and the other is the scale. In the scale, it's
in a perspective the harm of the women and this
(10:09):
conversation and the horror historically that has still largely gone
on address as we watch boarding schools transform from being
an actual place of care and education to a place
of violence and places of burial for children as we
watch the harm of children that can happen today internationally,
(10:30):
there's imperials that were witnessing the work for me with
Cavlanian Indian children's bracelets, and it was a very direct
conversation of how a community loves to consume something that
they being goodic are beautiful or shining in this case
our jewelry and our our digital language of our culture,
(10:53):
yet failed to dive deeper and caring for the community
that has created this in the community what this comes from.
That's time and time represented day and day out in
our current situation in this world with how we're navigating institutions,
we're navigating government, our navigating violence, our communities, continuing things,
(11:15):
whether it's moment or children and all these things, and
this piece kind of exchanges things in an interesting way
where I engraved the designs and the shiny aspect that
people love, but it's engraved on an object that represents
the history, and so there's layers of entry to it.
And in this case it's a residential schools, not just
(11:36):
in our communities.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
But across across the US canaday and in other spaces.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So the work in the conversation that I view this
type of object is for me. It carries these things
so that we don't have to because you show up,
I show up, our mentors, our peers, our students, whoever.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
People go up and they are base with carrying these
conversations where they're inviting it, oftentimes to provide the work.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And for me, this object will do that work so
we don't have to and it relieves us and we
can do what we're able to do and need to
do beyond that from when it sits in an institution
or a space, they hold it and the a the
stories and do the work without you know, taking it
without without us carrying it on our backs.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah. Well, and the piece that we're talking about is
an engraved pair of child's handcuffs that are affiliated with
boarding schools and residential schools, which are we've talked about
on this show as places of tremendous suffering and horror.
And then just thinking of this juxtaposition of this really
(12:47):
beautiful engraving on this object that is such a terrifying
thing for indigenous peoples and probably is just honestly just
something a lot of people don't even know about or
think about who maybe aren't inous. And so there's a
couple other pieces that I think are really just amazing
and just sort of like as topics of conversations. There's
(13:08):
so much stuff that you do that I think is
we could do like a whole series of shows on
all of the impacts of these pieces, like a statue
of I think it was Captain Cook or a colonizer,
but it's sort of being extracted and it's really fitting
now because as people were starting to sort of question
the idea of statues, and you know, I remember I
was in New York City and it was Columbus Day,
(13:29):
and I thought, there's not a lot of conversations about
like Indigenous people's day, Like it is all Columbus Day
right here. And then there's a statue of him downtown.
And then yeah, I was in Hawaii at this place
called the Cook Monument, and that's the place where Captain
Cook he got it, you know, for trying to mess
with King Kamihimeha. And so like thinking of like these
(13:50):
conversation and it's more than just like a conversation piece.
It's pushing us to think critically about colonization and what
it means now, to stand up and to face it,
because colonization is not something that stopped or reversed itself,
like it's it's a part of an attempt to completely
annihilate languages and populations and cultures and ways of being
(14:13):
and connections to land and place and time. And so
some of the other pieces, I think there was this
amazing kind of let's see if I can even describe it,
taking a book and like the Bible, and making it
into the shape of a thing it mask. I don't
even know how you do that, or much less like
how you would envision that to look at a book
(14:34):
and say I can make a mask out of that,
which is so fascinating because it was the religion. So
one of the things that really happened in Alaska is
Alaska is governed by the military for a while and
then they blow up some several thing at villages, cake
Wrangle and Angoon, and they nearly destroy the villages. It's
probably the only instance of the United States Navy attacking
(14:58):
United States soil. And so shortly after that they said, okay,
the military can't govern Alaska. Let's let the churches govern Alaska.
So there's someone who was in Sika named Sheldon Jackson,
and he pulls out a map in Washington, DC with
a few other I'm imagining white guys who are also
religious leaders, and they divide Alaska into these chunks that
(15:21):
are now governed by religions, and what you could do
was determined by the person in charge. So some of
them were Catholic, some of the more Moravian, Salvation Army, Presbyterian, Episcopalian.
So they divided it up into the major religions of
the United States. And one of the things that they universally,
pretty much universally banned was dancing with masks. And then
(15:44):
I think the second thing was speaking your language. And
there were some regions that escaped the language portion, but
I think the mask dancing was fairly universal in terms
of banishing it outright. And so I remember one time
someone said to me, well, it's America. Doesn't everybody have
like all the same opportunities. I said, well, there's In
the nineteen seventies they passed a Freedom of Religion Act
(16:05):
for Native Americans, and there's a reason why you need
that act. So when you was it when you saw
a Bible and you thought I could make a mask
out of this, Like, how did you think of that
and how did you do it?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think it's a great place to start in some
of these conversations.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And for me, I was aware of that forced simulation,
that violence, and.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That you know, the what was removed.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
While being like heavily pressured in place into these ideas
and understanding the organizations for the simulation as a student
of the culture and the art forum and not as
a student that was trying to access the language. There
was nothing here I was studying with. I was studying
with generations of artists at the time. I think Lewis
(16:50):
Minari was studying with my uncle will to work with
my great grandfather George Benson. I was, and all of
our objects were everywhere else here from this conversation, I
was in the UK, in London, studying jewelry design and
silversmith in and all my off time and all my
free time while I was at home, while I was
(17:11):
doing anything else outside of school, I was reading heavily.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I was so.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Engaged in trying to get information about the culture and
my object are objects that became all right, all the
things that were moved that I would arrange my trips
around Europe. I was studying London, England, that would go
to places because of the music, because of the collections,
And I learned at a young age how to navigate
(17:35):
institution because of it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I knew her to contact to say how to get in.
I brought my camera, I went in and got out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That was all I was doing because I was trying
to access these things. And I was highly aware as
I sat through this also the information I had available
at home versus the information that I was reading. The
consumer and the academic scholars and the spaces and people
that were set writing these in these publications. None of
(18:06):
them were from our communities. None of them understood what
it meant to wake up and fish or hunt or
walk on the land, or to do something seasonally, or
to wait or nobody under said any of that. They
went through anthropological, physiological representations of homogenized hierarchy of knowledge
(18:29):
that was mind from our elders, and it was only
validated when it went to don Fast forward to my
time in Altaroa in New Zealand. I was aware of
these things. I didn't know what to do with. I
was demonstrating at Harbor at the Park. So I'm doing
my life mission work, which I would say my lifelong
work that I do is my cultural work with firing
(18:51):
and all that you don't arrive, we do it. We
do it your whole life. I mean, you share it
with people that you can share it with. I was
on that I started that, I begun that I'm still
there and in that space doing that work technique, I
realized the text I was reading and the people that
were writing it and the spaces and institutions and navigation
(19:12):
of it was not what we understand or see in
our community in the power structures of how and why,
And that's where that work came from. It became one
of my first There was actually a very specific moment
for me and my creative work that I felt the
frustration and the need desire to voice my experience now.
(19:33):
That moment was in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was young,
my first exhibition i'd ever been part of. James Hart
had invited me into the exhibition in which I later
learned my father was invited and said no.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Don't take me. Put Nickers in their feet and changed
everything for me.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
But I was in Vancouver and interfering with and people
with cameras and their fishing for this mystical information around
the world I was doing, and that's where I realized
that I'm not here to feed the narrative. I'm not
here to provide something that to shit their exhibition plans
or this or that. I need to speak for what
(20:11):
we're doing right now and what we experience right now.
And my work and the next work to follow was
that to which is what have we become? You know,
was taking a cut of thousands of pages of the
anthropological texts to begin with into form in things, and
it was potentially non indigenous form at first, because our
iconography is so strong and impactful that it tends to
(20:34):
let people active amantasized perspectives if we work with it.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Only so I chose to work with Gumeric Faith and
then my Face, and then.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Eventually I realized that it was that our elders needed
to be seen in this work and we needed to
include them in the culture. For me to include them
using our cultural imagery, because that is the generation of
imagery that has understanding and importance in all these things.
So that's where I started doing the indigenous forms in
(21:03):
the book format, and.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
One of them was the Viable.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Some of them were under Mount Saint Elias and Sonia
as a pological text, and that work still kind of
carries on. I don't think I'll do much more of
it because it's so intense in the process and literally
every page. And but it was looking at how our
work is homogenized, and I think about the work you do,
and I think about the work that we look at
and listen to and understand as we try to see
(21:28):
understanding culturally today, and we look at our mentors, and
not everyone was able to be critical of that in
the timeline of their life, of our what we're.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Represented in which way?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
But I think our generations are thinking more and more
able to because of the work that was done before.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, well, good of cheese, and we are here with
yet Kittsen, Nicholas Galannon, check out his work. We're going
to take a little break and we'll be right back.
Good to cheese.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The past.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Who's gone on the bye?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
My bylas By.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
With the birds really fled.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We only see whether the loss of the royal.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Because a bang bang on.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
The drum sect by.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
If you are listen say.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
If you are all, it will be change.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I don't know, long.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Time watch.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
When we won't want a mile now.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Very small for dance.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And the voice song allud Sere.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
That's where she show.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
If you are everything, say.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
If you are.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Can never be h.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
No Ah Kate you do as Kate, Naya aya touchin,
(25:27):
Yeah you do a sa artist dusta yeah aya saw
she Welcome back, folks. A mask is called ugh Kate,
and what it means is thing on dancing is kind
of how the the language works. And that was actually
a hard word for us to kind of track down
and to figure out and to sort of think about
(25:47):
that because when someone actively banishes a whole part of
your culture, like sometimes you have to do some reconstruction
and you have to do some figuring out. And you know,
a long time ago people danced with masks, and now
we see people dancing with masks again, and so it's
so wonderful to see some of these things coming back.
And some of the things I was thinking of is
we were doing some work in Sitka and I was
(26:10):
with Ethel McKinnon. Her think it name is Dostilla, and
she said, you know, you asked me what an artist
is called. I finally thought of it. She said, kujin kojuku,
and it translates as a person's hands really fit things together.
And it was such a neat concept too, because I know,
as an artist you are making things visually, you're making
(26:33):
things audio because you're also a musician. I'd like to
hear about that as well. But one other thing I
guess an entry point maybe to think about as well,
is these sort of ideas of juxtapositions. So one of
the things that I saw of yours that I think
was really fascinating and got me to think and challenged
me was these two takes of there's a song called
(26:55):
two Heye de shikak Tutan. Yeah, yeah, Cris Kate the
katesca to eat. I guess that's not what it's called.
That's the words for it. So in Sitka in nineteen
eighty one, there was a gathering of elders and kitch Nach.
George Davis said, in the whole series of speeches back
and forth with Charlie Joseph and lots of other elders,
(27:16):
they were talking a lot about what needs to be
done for the language, for the culture, for the songs,
and in one of his very impassioned and deep speeches,
he said, we will again open this box of wisdom
that they died off from and left it in our possession.
And then that was made into a song. And so
you made these two videos where someone is dancing to
(27:39):
that song but not in a way that we might expect.
And then there's another song which is something we might
not expect, and then we see someone who's sort of
thing it dancing. And I love this kind of stuff
because it's pushing us. It's pushing us to get out
of our comfort zones and think like, well, what is
this thing and what is that thing? And how do
these things fit together? So I think it's fun because
(27:59):
sometimes an artist does fit things together. But sometimes an
artist is like, these things don't fit together, and I'm
going to challenge you to think about why and so,
but I think they work. And so I guess the
question here is thinking about your music, and you have
sort of an identity as a musician, and then you
have multiple identities as an artist, especially as you think
(28:20):
of well I do art, that is these installations, like
there was one I think called the carver, and you know,
it's like a it's a white guy like with a carve,
with carving tools and stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
And it's called it's called white but yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, sorry, so white carver and so so some of
these pieces are like installations and museum pieces. And that
one was so fascinating too, because it's a full it's
a guy. It's like it's not like a sculpture of
it's somebody who's actually there. And so some of these
pieces are sort of pushing boundaries making music, making art.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
I could sorry, you've said a few things here.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I think I think we start with two ad that
was such a that was an old ward that was
done in two thousand and five, was released in two
thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I was a student in al Thrower and I was
working towards my master's degree with Robert Yankie. At that time,
I was just deeply you know, I was traveling. I
was in a space.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I was in a safe space with the Maori community
that I felt like they wanted me to succeed and explore.
In contrast to the space I was in Fire where
that Jew designed in London and I did not feel
I felt like I was not supposed to be there.
I felt like I was not supposed to like your
mentors were not rooting for you.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And then I saw it. So it's a very different,
like a big there was a lot happening for me.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I remember the moment where I had the idea for
men as a word, and it was I think it
was just traveling through al Growa and I was ended
up someone with some friends and I saw dance floor.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I thought some music going. People were just in They
were deeply engaged with the music in such a way.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
The work came to me a little later after that,
because I think as an artist, we're always listening, always watching,
We're always working always, whether or not it's on clock
or intentional. It's like this, you're moving through life, but
you have these slippers that are open to the world.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
We have to receive the wars.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I came across the Dancer when I reached out to
David elsewhere and said, hey, I have this work going
to do a lot of my work does not abide
by what I mean by it doesn't mimic or trying
to like there doesn't wait for people to say that's work,
that's art.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
That's not art, but believe in the idea and it's
going to go forward. And this was one of those.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
It's a two channel video. Each video is like four
minutes five minutes. I love that aspect of creating because
everything we've done historically has been taken from us so deeply,
like mimicked by anthropologists or experts.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Are these folks?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Are that folks the point that it drives the market,
and the market says this is good. Native artist is bad.
And that's also problematic to me because I recognize that
our great grandsar were creating digitus native art and at
ceremonial art in an era where it was a words band.
It was not safe or it was not handed down
(31:16):
because the violence that we removed it and it didn't
look the same. It looked like that era of work.
And that's what happens when we break a link of
lineage of students and instructors and sharing that knowledge doesn't
sound the same to do that language.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
It doesn't. It doesn't like it. So these things are
aware of them.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
And for me, those words being opens contained wisdom that's
been left our care meant to me that we are
still full as people and culture and community amidst that
and what we open that end and how we should
decide to share it culturally is up to us, and
(31:57):
we get to lead the way, well we lead the
way we can't limit been taken from because they don't
know our next move. And that worked to me was
that it was the safe it's impactful and powerful because
it's Steve Brown's not going to create a dance video
like that.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I mean he can, but it's gonna what's it going
to do? These are where we have power of conversation
and like what we get to do and what we
don't like and who gets to do that, And this
to me was very intentional specifically in those things. So
I don't say that disrespectfully to Steve or then the
histories that we're navigating with our culture has been handled
(32:33):
and whose fears and who does not. I'm saying it
meaningfully as sovereign creative generations now that we get to
do that and the next generation to do that and
the next does. And that worked to me was the
calling that I took from that velosophy of that song,
and that translation I think stands through a lot of
(32:54):
the work I do still in that space.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, it's work without boundaries, it's work without limits, and
it's also work that sort of crosses over and just says,
you know, I continue to talk about on this show
like I don't exist in two worlds. I exist in
the world, and I bring everything I am into that
world and I see things and I think about things
and I can think about them in two languages at
(33:17):
the same time. And so to try and sort of
push through the limits, because sometimes colonization also sort of
says we're taking everything from you, and then you don't
get to do the things that we get to do.
And so to sort of embrace decolonization and to embrace
this idea of overcoming colonization, I think sometimes you have
to just take things back as well, which leads me
(33:39):
to my next thought, which is, you do a lot
of installation work in museums. I'm sure you do a
lot of talks at museums and universities, and museums and
universities have very complicated relationships with indigenous peoples. When I
think of museums, I think of them hiring people to
come to our villages once they figured out we would
go to these and I wou'd want to call them
(34:01):
fish camps. Like we had our home. We had a
big house that we all lived in in the winter,
and then we all had separate homes that we lived
in in the summer, sort of family based, smaller units
who would go out and put up food all summer long,
because you have to survive off that food in the winter.
And so you had multiple homes and multiple locations. And
one of the really complicated things is the Forest Service
(34:24):
has a track record of burning down the summer homes,
just like burning them down to saying you can't live there,
you can't live there. And the other complicated thing is
while we were out there in those summer homes, museums
and universities were sending people to the big houses to say, Okay,
those houses, no one's going to be there. You could
just say you found this abandoned house and just grab
(34:44):
a whole bunch of stuff and bring it back here
so we have it to display. And I know some
people feel like, I'm thankful they did it because now
we can look at these things. It's a complicated conversation
in the past, and the conversation I think we're having
today is, well, what now like I could, I could
name ten museums that have more in their collections than
(35:05):
any They have more finget items in their collections than
any single thing village.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
It's not complicated. It's complicated to the people that don't
want to give return land.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
It's complicated to them because they don't want to return
to they literally removed.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Our displaced different It's complicated for the institutions.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I don't want to send these objects to the communities
because of their own bureaucratic understandings of why we can
take it all back and bury it, burn it, let
it sit in the forest and return back to where
whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
It doesn't matter if it's at and it's a spiritual
object or if it's a remains of our ancestors, our
children's toy that was used for on that is just
as important as as other things in this conversation that
gets overlooked in the void in the language of Nagpra
and Agport says these specific things, why do you stop
(36:03):
it at land?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Why do you stop it at.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
An object that was for entertainment for Because if I
were to go do that right now in the society
under these under these laws, I would be it doesn't matter.
I'm not going to go I can go take something that.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It was a TV.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It was not spiritual for your people. It's not pretty
much charge. I just wanted to watch it and take
care of it, like whatever man he sings. I don't
even like romantics of it. But I think about these
terms of complicated now, especially as we witness Imperial Coronia
violence extend across the globe, and as we watched them
(36:40):
feed us the term complication.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It's complicated, and we witness the violence before our eyes
was not complicated.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Absolutely absolutely, And so as we sort of engage in
these conversations when we look at these museum collections and
these other things, I often come back to it's time
for everything to come back, time for everything to come
into our possession, because I think the world of like
curating and the museum's sort of culture would probably say, oh, well,
(37:08):
you guys aren't qualified to handle these objects and to
make sure that they're going to be preserved and they're
going to last. And then at the same time, the
anthropology view and the linguistic view is saying, well, you
guys aren't the pure thing. Get that existed long time ago.
You're not the high level whatever, right, And so it's
always these constant lies.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Driving in that I've heard that, I've seen that, I've
witnessed it, and I want to say really simply and clearly,
one we rosepier regardless.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
In twenty seventeen or eighteen year and we sent coopiers
that went in. You know, all of that work is
and this is.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Kind of from somebody who comes from this in the
continue room. We survived. That's how we survived. We survived
through that work. We survived through the length the elders,
the knowledge, the sharing, the speeches, dances, the songs, the
representation of stories that are held in each of those
that go up. And if they go up and they
(38:11):
return back to earth, it's not a preservation through arsenic
and through white gloves. And if we don't preserve this
is gone. No, we don't support the communities that create this.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
It's gone. That means us, that means you, that means
our children that are learning. That's how it leads.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It doesn't lead through the objects. Oh, we need to
have all access to those things. We get to have
all sovereign conversations. A priority of what and how we
care for ourselves in those spaces. There is never an
instance that any outside community should ever tell us what
is or what.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Is it for those things. And it lives as we
do this for it lives as I teach my daughter
how to carve wood.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I can carve what I can in my lifetime, and
it can return back to where it came from.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
That's not the preservation of it.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
There's objects. The preservation of it is mere teaching my
children and my apparentnesses. That's needed, and that's the understanding
of community and trust of these things. And I feel
like the news and has failed that forever. It's not
here for it. It's never been until they realize that
everything needs to go back to where it came from.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
That's all right. So when we talk about these objects
that are aoh or daily use things, these sometimes there
are sacred objects of it. And the only ones I
think who are qualified to overlook those things and to
have them in their possession is our people. If you
think about our land, the only ones who are qualified
to govern this land is our people. And so I
(39:45):
really appreciate these conversations where we are exposing colonial lies
that get you to believe like, oh, everyone would love to,
but this is really the best route. And so there's
all these different fields that have mastered ways to sort
of come up with more colonial babricationstions to try and
get us to believe that this is the way. So
we're going to take our second break, folks. We'll come
(40:05):
back and we'll wrap up our conversation with Ihetzin, who's
coming to us from the Seattle Airport. And I taught
a class there one time, and it's not an easy thing.
There's announcements, there's people, there's all kinds of busyness. So
I really appreciate you taking the time to be here
with us, little cheesh.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
To me.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
My time.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Mon I'm don the rediscar that's on the oscame seem
(41:52):
the passion way you started. Begin to you again, shouts soon.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Try land.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Snow me to fight to.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Shop in lovely lands. Stoot you dig ter, you love
(43:12):
adature after you wat you are always.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
At the cheeseca it towards the gul and nae stuk Addin.
So one of the messages I like to think about,
for you know, what's the purpose of me doing this
and what's the purpose of us sort of recording our voices.
And a big part of what I try to do
(45:18):
is give a message to those folks who try and
think about, well, what if I wanted to become some
global artists. And as you sort of grow up in
a smaller community and you're an indigenous person, sometimes it
doesn't always seem possible that well, I'll just go study
jewelry making in London, and I'll go get a master's
degree in arts in Altaoa and then I'll you know,
(45:39):
now I'm flying to Venice.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
And so some of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Seems like so far away from certain people, because like
when I grew up, it's not like people were telling me,
like you could do all of this stuff. You could
just do it, you could do it. And sometimes I
think for indigenous peoples, and I think a lot about
the young people, or I think about folks who are
just trying to just envision where they could go. I
think it's possible. I think it's so possible to do
so many different things. And part of my work is
(46:04):
to try and elevate people and trying to say, oh, is.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
That what you want to do?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Like here's some tools, let's let's go do the thing
and try and really be positive and be you know,
encourage folks to work hard and to sort of like
be finishers, to continually be open to feedback on how
you can improve yourself. So, in thinking about all the
incredible work that you are doing and that you have
done and that you'll continue to do, what advice do
(46:31):
you have for the next generation of artists that are
going to come after you.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah, that's good. It's a good question. It's an important question.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
I feel like I should start with my mentors were
extremely generous, and my path and my processes nobody else's and.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
You will.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
I was the first of my family that I know
to graduate from higher education. I came from my time
frame and a space where my parents but there was
no bad loans.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
It's for education.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
And we're learning now what student loans are to the
world in this time frame, and so we're navigating those.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
That particular errors.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And if I were to give advice to anybody that
I will try to try to some this up in
a reef format.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Where I'm speaking to my children in the senses, is
that like you or you can deal with it. You can.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This world is immense and we belong in this world
to you know, protispate as we like navigate it as
we see to contribute or to journey through it in
our time. Don't compare yourself to other people in that journey.
Don't compare yourself to you appears. Don't let those things
consume you. And I say this isnt on social media.
(47:49):
That heightens it the competitor of our other forms of
those and take risks. Do what you believe in, stand
by your convictions. And also you don't know that's okay,
you have time to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I will.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I will tell you right now. Everybody that I know
that goes here and we might have plans, they don't
go our way, d it.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
We do what we have to.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
We survive and we do it. If we're able to,
we're able to do what we enjoy one point when
we listen to that column. So I think those things
are really important.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Gonna cheese and yeah, as you sort of like you go.
And one of the things I think about a lot
is like finishing something is so crucial I think to
being creative because there's a lot of people who have
ideas and visions and you have the book that just
sits in your mind for a decade or more, or
you have this idea for carving a mask or doing
(48:44):
a bracelet, or learning how to do formline, or you know,
trying to sort of move into sculptural work or whatever
the thing is. Sometimes it's hard to sort of do
and to also it takes to be honest. It takes
courage to put yourself out there and people see what
you're making and let people hear the things that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
And so can I say something real quick in that
on the finishing things, I think it's really important for
myself to understand in this in this finish it's it's
taken some experience and time to think about it in
this way, but yes, finishing is important.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Taking yourself less seriously is also very important.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
There's nothing that we do that we get to de
side defines us the process, but what we can do
at that time and show up and be continually engaging
and growing and understanding that we're not going to be
there at any pot that you don't know, ry this
is it and show up every day he see the
(49:47):
seasons and the struggle, you know, enjoy and success and challenge.
All of that goes in you, So you can't stop
yourself before you've gotten started. Step on whether or not
you feel like you've succeeded.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
You have to just do. You have to grow.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
You have to understand that growing is in life throng.
It's not We're not gonna one day stop wrong. Welcome
if you introduce yourself to that. Welcome to that feeling,
because you have to be that and you have to
embrace it, and you have to say every day, I'm
gonna show up. And some days I feel confident and good,
(50:25):
some days I might not.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you've
got to go run, like right onto a plane. So
before you go, if you're in the Seattle airport, I
feel like there's a place that you could go to
go buy like maybe a CD or an album from
this really cool native musician from Sitka. Could you talk
about your music and what you do.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
It's funny, I'm going to see bag airport.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
And we signed a record deal sub Pop Records out
of Seattle, which pretty exciting for me because I grew up.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Listening to a lot of sub pop artists. The sound whatever.
Speaker 5 (51:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
We still have a pretty good catalog artists, and they
asked me to do some airport announcements. It's our last record.
You see something safe, if you see something, say something
like that. So I said, I'll do it if you
let me do a landing. Not that I agree that
landing noledgements are everything, but that was the first landing
maledgement a airport. So, and I don't know if they're
(51:23):
still playing it or not. I'm gonna we got to
release our next.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Record with them.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
I've been recording it for over a year, collaborating with
some artists and like bringing that, make sure to bring
that back. Music is important to me, and my father
was a musician and I understood the love and power
of music.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
That I still engage in different ways. It's a it's
a form of release, it's a form of freedom.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
A lot of the artwork that I do in the
world is something very direct and literal and can be
can be heavy in certain ways, but music, music can
carry that too. Music is also very free for me.
I get to be an experience human experiences. I express
them in a way that the art world doesn't try
to load me up with their conceptions of what I
should or shouldn't be making and I appreciate that. But
(52:10):
the band is Yatsi and the project has been going
for a few years. It's very experimental.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
It's what it needs to be.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I enjoy the discovery and the expression of that process.
I like to step in the music to be. I
think it's a spaceship where I escape all of these
levels and power in different races, in a different race
and a different way while I creating that space.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And it's highly collaborative. Music is amazing. It's very there.
The big alchemy that happens in music for.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Me, and that's when we bring people together and we
share ideas over space and time and know livy and
songs so and I know are people come from songs,
So I understand.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
The power and it's so fabulous to watch and to see,
like I think, you have a vintage synthesizer collection that
is growing, and you know, and then you get to
try all these new things and say, well, I could
take this thing, and you know again, like continuing to
think about you never know where the next project's gonna
come from. You're gonna play some sort of sound and
(53:12):
you're gonna think, wait, that sound could go with this sound,
or you're gonna sort of walk and you're going to
see something and say that that could be this next
sort of installation in this project. So definitely, if you're
out there, listen to this check out yet seen, check
out Yet chet Seen Nicholas Kalanin and his work all
around the world. I hope you have wonderful safe travels
(53:33):
and that everything that you're doing is just so impactful
to me and to other people. And so I really
appreciate the conversations. To think of in this community where
I live, ak quan Ani, which is on the map
known as Juno Alaska, they used to have signs that
they say no Indians or dogs allowed. And then you
(53:54):
took that and made it into a neon signs that
are out in the woods and the beautiful back drop
of our land, and to think about these things that
existed and that we used to see. So for all
you up and coming artists and established artists and musicians,
keep doing what you're doing. I think about thinking people
all the time. My grandpa would go tie up a boat,
(54:15):
go catch a fish, go play music, go boxing, And
he never limited himself to like just doing one thing,
and so to like be yourself and take yourself into
all these different areas, and when people try to present
you with the endless limitations of colonization, rejected. Just reject
it instantaneously and just think about what you might need,
(54:36):
what you want, and what you might be inheriting from
previous generations and leaving for future generations. This has been
the Tongue Unbroken, coming to you from aka quan Ani
and the Seattle the Sea Tac International Airport and this
is a project of the Next Up Initiative the iHeartMedia Network.
Check out other podcasts from the Next Up Initiative and
(55:00):
check out more Indigenous voices, artwork, musicians. Yeah oh way,
then a cheese A cheese
Host
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
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