On Friday evening I resisted my urge to go home and gorge on chocolate in front of Netflix, and instead went to the Indigenous New Media Symposium at The New School. The speakers were Dr Jessica Metcalfe of Beyond Buckskin, Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations, Chase Iron Eyes and Jarrett Martineau. Clayton Thomas-Muller’s flight had trouble landing; he came in right at the end, after having sent us a video from the plane.
The evening was nothing short of incredible. I’ve not often experienced being present to the world literally shifting in front of my eyes, yet this was my experience of the symposium. I don’t want to erode the significance of the event by sentimentalizing it; nonetheless, more than once I was reminded that 50 years earlier Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was on the very same stage as part of an extraordinary lecture series. My thanks to the organizers and particularly the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement, and Thelma Young for giving me the heads up. Check out Young’s Runway in the Factory project, too.
These conversations are not comfortable and they are inevitable. Unimaginable possibilities for new ways of being, collaborating and existence become available through them. When I moved to the US four years ago, the first book I read was Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. These conversations are more present in Australia, where I lived for 14 years, and coming here I wanted to understand the state of things. As was noted more than once on Friday, we are living extraordinary times; from my short time here I’m clear on that. I’ve posted on cultural appropriation in fashion before, and the response has been mixed. Raising these issues makes some angry. Perhaps that alone highlights the necessity of the discussion.
You can watch the symposium here. The presentations by Metcalfe and Keene are a must for anybody working in American fashion. All of the presentations are a must for a global citizen. Chase Iron Eyes spoke of connecting with, being one with the natural world. It is no accident that I spend most of each summer in a Finnish forest. That recharging allows me to spend the rest of the year in New York City. It allows me to do the work I do. And you can do that connecting and recharging right here in the city, by breathing in Central Park, by composting your food scraps (use this resource), by growing your own herbs, through guerrilla gardening. While the symposium was necessarily focused, we must recognize the global language it spoke, and the global themes it interrogated. Thank you once again to the speakers and organizers.
