Indigeneity in the 21st Century

What is it like to come from two “opposing” tribes? How do you stay connected to your ancestral lands when they have been heavily urbanized? How can we combat anti-Blackness in our communities? How do we honor all of our many religious, ethnic, and racial identities? What do Indigenous identities look like in the 21st Century?

This panel, moderated by Sharen Kickingwoman and featuring Mercedes Dorame, JaNae Collins, Denae Shanidiin, Sam Slater, and Kohar Avakian, will explore these questions and discuss the contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples in so-called North America with multiple and intersecting cultural backgrounds. These artists, activists, students, and more will reflect on the beauty and complexity of being Native in 2020.

If you have any questions you want to pose to the panelists, please email info@thechapterhouse.org before the event.

---

Panelists

Sharen Kickingwoman

Moderator | i: @sharensworld

Sharen hails from the Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, and Cree tribes and is proud to call Montana home. A Stanford alum, she cares about all things Indigenous justice, equity, and Native education. In her free time, you can catch her on the powwow trail, basketball court, in the mountains, or hopefully on the beach.

Mercedes Dorame

Panelist | mercedesdorame.com

Born in Los Angeles, California, Mercedes received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA. She calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of visibility and ideas of cultural construction as an outcomes of the need to tie one’s existence to the land. Dorame also acts as a cultural resource consultant on sites where her Tongva ancestors and items are being excavated. This work carries a heavy weight of responsibility and has fueled her artistic exploration and passion for visibility for the tribe. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Triton Museum, The Allen Memorial Art Museum, The de Saisset Museum, The Montblanc Foundation Collection, and The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum.

JaNae Collins

Panelist | i: @janaedawnnn

JaNae is a Native American actress living in Hollywood, CA. She has appeared in titles such as Longmire, Fukry, and is the lead character in the yet to be released "In You We Trust." She has lived in Hollywood since 2013 and recently begun her PADI divemaster training with ambitions to start an all Native, volunteer SCUBA team to recover missing indigenous people that have passed away in the water. She is enrolled at the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes but is also Apsaalooke (Crow).

Denae Shanidiin

Panelist | i: @denaeshanidiin

Denae, Diné and Korean artist, is born to the Diné (Navajo) Nation. She is Honágháahnii, One-Walks-Around Clan, born to the Korean race on her Father’s side. Kinłichíi’nii, the Red House People is her Maternal Grandfather’s Clan and the Bilagáana, White People, is her Paternal Grandfather’s Clan. Shanidiin’s work responds to her own identity as an Indigenous woman and artist. Her photography work reveals her Diné ancestry through intimate family portraits in urban settings and on her homeland. Shanidiin’s projects reveal the importance of Indigenous spirituality and sovereignty. Her work brings awareness to many contemporary First Nation issues including Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.

(Photo credit: @russelalbertdaniels)

Sam Slater

Panelist | i: @navashmu

Sam is Diné from Round Rock, Arizona. He is Kiiyaa’áanii nilí, Naayízí Diné’e yishchiin. Sam is a moccasin maker and silversmith with a strong passion for Navajo cultural arts education. He is currently a senior at Columbia University, studying Native studies and education.

Kohar Avakian

Panelist | i: @kavakian9 | t: @kavakian9

Kohar is a Black, Nipmuc, and Armenian scholar from Worcester, MA and a Ph.D. student in Yale University’s American Studies program. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017 with a B.A. in History, modified with Native American Studies, where she completed a senior thesis on the history of legal whiteness in the U.S., focusing on the case study of Armenian refugees in Worcester––the first Armenian community in America, on the ancestral land of the Nipmuc Nation, her tribe. For her doctoral research, Kohar is interested in situating the history of Armenian racial formation within a wider framework of settler colonialism, slavery, and Asian exclusion. While she primarily draws from historical photography and oral history research methods, she also seeks to interrogate archival silences and create space for alternative modes of knowing and being in the face of such absences. Her work strives to explore the palimpsestic histories of her Armenian, Black, and Native ancestors in order to illuminate the intersections of race, indigeneity, and genocide in the United States and beyond.