The project centers around Amerindigenous people and within this second volume of the Zine, the project focuses on Amerindigeniety in the Global world with a focus on Berlin. Within the zine, which has four themes I am publishing my research I conducted while in Berlin, Germany during my study abroad program in Summer 2019.
IndiGenus American is a transmedia art project focusing on stories of and by Amerindigenous people. I hope this work helps:
- Reconnect the dots created by imposed colonial borders that often legally dictate us as different
- Help reclaim Amerindigenous history by affirming the contributions we have given to the rest of the world that often get misattributed
- Help inspire change and foster critical thinking within our communities.
Each volume consists of four threaded themes that tie the project together: Land, Herstory, People, and Future.
In this Volume I draw from Decolonizing Methodology by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, an Indigenous researcher, which I read for my Senior Thesis with professor Kate Eichhorn.
Besides this book in my Senior Thesis, this volume focuses on my trip to Berlin, Germany in the summer of 2019 as I studied at Freie University to create a Kaberet solo performance on being Amerindigenous, under-documented and a transgender woman in the 21st Century. Outside of this performance art creation, I dedicated my summer to: researching Germany and the country’s infatuation and fetishist history with Amerindigenous people and culture; interviews with Omaha Nation elders who visited Berlin to see ancestral artifacts; an interview with Monika Zessnik, the curator of American Ethnology at The National Ethnological Museum, on repatriating the country’s vast collection of stolen Amerindigenous artifacts previously housed in Dahlem; and my experience of being Amerindigenous outside of Turtle Island.
With help from this grant, I will have enought money to print and pay for postage. I am printing 50 copies, a small release that while help in submitting it to be archived at several zine archives through out the United States. I am also sending it off to several Amerindigenous social media influencers like: @ndn.o, @mikayla.luna, @florcyx, and several others. I am really excited to continue working on this project as I want to also implement new forms of media like QR codes and AR markers to make the zine more interactive. As I am keeping things under wraps I am submitting only the backs of each zine tabloid to keep the information from getting out yet.
All graphics and art by me and all quotes are from Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith.
