Native Americans make up only around 0.4 percent of characters in prime-time television and popular films, according to a recent study; even fewer can be found behind the camera lens. In conjunction with the INDIgenesis film series, four voices in Indigenous film—filmmakers Sky Hopinka, Adam Khalil, and Alex Lazarowich, and the Sundance Institute’s Hud Oberly—consider what it means for Native people to bring their own stories and worldviews to film audiences.
Now screening online, the third presentation of works selected for the INDIgenesis film series includes a range of films, from a nonfiction piece about two-spirit pride to a timely futuristic short about a Navaho woman in the aftermath of a global virus. Originally intended to play onsite in our Bentson Mediatheque, this series of shorts features works by Alexandra Lazarowich, Morningstar Angeline, and others.
INDIgenesis Online—Watch the Revitalization Short Films Program
Now screening online, Revitalization—part of the INDIgenesis showcase of Native films—presents three powerful short works by Indigenous filmmakers portraying personal stories of healing through cultural revitalization.
New Postcommodity Codex Investigates Land, Systemic Violence, and Minnesota History
Taking its title from the GPS coordinates for Bdote, the birthplace of the Dakota people, Postcommodity's newest artwork is a codex, a pictographic story, examining the Twin Cities's past and present in terms of its relationship to migration, violence to the land, and Indigenous sovereignty. A Walker Reader exclusive, 44.8968° N, 93.1501° W continues thinking by the Indigenous collective from its 2017 Artist Op-Ed, a poetic examination of migration, "nativism," and the year 2043, when whites in the United States are projected to become a statistical minority.
"I believe that fashion makes people happy; it allows people to let others know about themselves by the way they look and dress. Hairstyles, makeup, fragrance, tattoos: it’s more than just clothing," says designer Delina White of IAmAnishinaabe. This lookbook—showcasing fashions and models featured in our June Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion show—celebrates designs that honor Native tradition, diversity, and nonconformity as imagined through the Anishinaabe term Niizho-Manidoog: the sacred embodiment of two genders.
Delina White: Celebrating Gender Nonconformity in Indigenous Fashion
"As Natives, we are underrepresented. It’s my philosophy to represent all people in our community." In advance of Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion, a June 13 showcase of designs by Delina White of IAmAnishinaabe, Minneapolis-based, Lakota-born non-binary artist Juleana Enright caught up with the White to chat about the future of Indigenous fashion and the inspiration behind this gender-fluid collection.
