Diary of a Native Femme(nist)

Kimberly Robertson (Mvskoke)

Opening Reception

Saturday, May 4th, 2024

5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Exhibition runs May 4 - June 30, 2024

The Chapter House is pleased to present Diary of a Native Femme(nist), a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Kimberly Robertson. The works on view draw from her embodied experiences as a Mvskoke woman born, raised, living, and working on unceded California Indian lands and are heavily informed by Native feminist theories and practices. Robertson utilizes high-femme aesthetics to address the myriad forms of violence Native femmes experience under settler colonialism and cisheteropatriarchy while also encouraging viewers to consider the radical practice of making joy and laughter in service of collective healing and liberation. 

Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at California State University, Long Beach, and an artist. Her scholarship and creative practices center Native feminisms, the sexual and gendered violence of settler colonialism, ceremony, storytelling, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities.  She has published in journals such as Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society and Wicazo Sa Review, as well as peer-reviewed anthologies such as Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness and Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. Her creative practices currently include screen printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making.  Her artworks have been exhibited in numerous community, university, public, and private galleries as well as peer-reviewed monographs and anthologies. She is also an active member of the Los Angeles Indian community and facilitates beading circles and art-making workshops both locally and nationally.

Join The Chapter House next Saturday, April 8, 2023 from 2 - 4 PM PDT in Highland Park at 4628 York Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90041 for some sunshine, yummy piccaddillies, and juicy convos. And by juicy convos we mean we want to hear from y’all about what type of events and programming you’d like to see in the coming year and to share what we have coming up.

Event is free, open to all, and will be outdoors/indoors. In an effort to continue to protect our community, masks are required when *indoors* and while not enjoying refreshments.

The Chapter House and Junior High present a night of Native poetry, music and art on October 20 from 6-9 PM PDT to celebrate TCH’s upcoming exhibition “BLACKLIST ME,” a virtual exhibit co-curated by poet Kinsale Drake. Featured pieces in the exhibit engage with histories of Native music, memory, protest, and the politics of censorship/blacklisting.⁠

Enjoy FREE performances, talks, zines, and vendors in the space! All ages are welcome. Performers include Pamela J. Peters, Emily Clarke, Kelly Caballero, Nanibaah, Solange Aguilar, and more.⁠ ⁠ Please come masked and with your Covid vaccination card or a negative Covid test. No registration required, admission is free and all are welcome!

Our REZidency at Transformative Arts is coming to a close! Come on down to grab a piccadilly and see the exhibition one last time. No registration is required and admission is always free!

On Monday, August 29, 6 - 7:30 PM, meet us at Transformative Arts for "Native Plants, Healing, and Us" - a plant workshop led by Thanh Mai of Moon Baby Medicine. 🌱🪴

This workshop is an introduction to native and medicinal plants, their role(s) in the environment and our communities, and the ongoing impacts of colonialism, ranching, and city development. There will be an introduction to native plant medicine, details about specific native plants, and some of the many health benefits they provide. We will focus on so-called southern California, from Tovaangar to Syuxtun.

Despite mass agriculture, water and soil depletion, and many invasive species, native plants continue to grow - through concrete, between highways, below cemented riverbeds. Most of these plants have adapted over time, filtering out more pollutants, developing waxier roots to retain water during drought, and so on. These plants serve as both remedies and reminders, that we are able to tend to our healing and the land around us.

Participants will be given fresh herbal tea during the workshop, as well as dried loose-leaf tea to take home.

The workshop is free and all are welcome! To protect our community, we are limiting space to 15 participants so sign up now to reserve a spot. We will also be checking COVID vaccination cards and/or a negative COVID test at the door and ask all participants wear masks while indoors. ⁠

ABOUT THANH MAI

[Thanh] Mai (pronouns: they/them) of @MoonBabyMedicine is a plant tender based in Tovangaar. Thanh grows, dries, and prepares blends of medicinal teas as a way of [re]connecting with the plant traditions + exchanges in their lineage. They work specifically with plants of the southeast Asian + Pasifika diaspora, and Chumash + coastal Natives of Southern California. Thanh encourages folks to learn about the native plants + traditions in their area and support Indigenous-led land work.

Thanh created Moon Baby Medicine to provide herbal mutual aid and learning opportunities. Thanh provides medicinal teas to @DignityandPowerNow, which distributes care kits to families with incarcerated loved ones. They hope to work with farms, cooperatives, apothecaries, land trusts, and businesses to encourage land rematriation and uninhibited space for Native plants.

Come on down to Transformative Arts Saturday 8/27 for a Poetry Workshop led by Kinsale Drake! Learn to write poems about memory and music. We will be writing tribute poems to an artist, song, or genre that we particularly admire. Themes align with BLACKLIST ME, The Chapter House’s upcoming exhibition.

The workshop is free and all are welcome! To protect our community, we are limiting space to 15 participants so sign up now to reserve a spot. We will also be checking COVID vaccination cards and/or a negative COVID test at the door and ask all participants wear masks while indoors. ⁠

ABOUT KINSALE DRAKE

Kinsale is a writer and narrator whose work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Yale Literary Magazine, TIME, NPR, Torrey House Press, Abalone Mountain Press, LACMA, NYU Gallatin, and elsewhere. She previously served as a National Student Poet; she currently edits Changing Wxman Collective. She is an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, and the winner of the J. Edgar Meeker Prize for Poetry, the Academy of American Poets College Prize, and the Young Native Playwrights Award.

She is currently working on a poetry collection about genealogies of Native music, blacklisting, censorship, erasure, and survivance; her favorite musician is Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Join us Friday, August 26 for “Beading, Land Acknowledgement, and Restoration”, a hands-on beading workshop led by Kimberly Robertson (Mvskoke). ⁠This is an in-person event at Transformative Arts at 410 S Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Each participant will be gifted a bead kit at no cost. We will bead collectively to operationalize Indigenous knowledge and connect to our ancestors and community. We will be making keychains that include a variety of materials but we also believe our beading practices should respect the local ancestral stewards on whose lands we bead. To do this, we often work with materials offered by the land in a sustainable manner and this particular project will feature acorns to honor the Tongva lands we occult in downtown Los Angeles.⁠

No prior experience with beading is necessary to participate. If you have access to some, please bring a small pair of scissors and a small pair of jewelry pliers. If you don’t have them, we will have some on hand.⁠

The workshop is free and all are welcome! To protect our community, we are limiting space to 15 participants so sign up now to reserve a spot. We will also be checking COVID vaccination cards and/or a negative COVID test at the door and ask all participants wear masks while indoors. ⁠

ABOUT KIMBERLY ROBERTSON

Kimberly Robertson (She/Her/Hers) is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and an artivist, scholar, teacher, and mother who works diligently to employ Native feminist theories, practices, and methodologies in her hustle to fulfill the dreams of her ancestors and to build a world in which her daughters can thrive. Robertson is an Indigenous anti-violence advocate who has received trainings and certifications from Sacred Circle, the former National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women as well as the current National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. Robertson is also an active member of the Los Angeles Indian community and is currently the co-creative director for Meztli Projects’ Ready to Rise Initiative.

Robertson earned an MA in American Indian Studies and a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012. She is currently an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Her scholarship and creative practices: center Native feminisms, the ideas and practices of ceremony, storytelling, intersecting subjectivities, dislocation, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities; focus on Indigenous resistance to sexual and gendered violence; and include screen-printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making.

Join The Chapter House and Lauren Nicole as she leads you through an intuitive painting workshop, where participants learn more about their personal connections to artistic elements and the emotions they evoke.

The workshop is free, all supplies will be provided, and all are welcome! To protect our community, we are limiting space to 15 participants so sign up now to reserve a spot. We will also be checking COVID vaccination cards and/or a negative COVID test at the door and ask all participants wear masks while indoors.

ABOUT LAUREN NICOLE

Lauren Nicole (LN) is a Southern California-based artist, who works in a variety of styles and mediums, primarily focusing on painting and writing. Her emotive, vibrant, and colorful work centers around freedom of expression and emotions, which can be seen in her signature LongNeck (LN) portraits.

Combining elements of her Indigenous heritage (Tongva, Chumash); beadwork, and Native plant relatives are commonly incorporated into her work. Lauren encourages viewers to expand their view of what Native and Indigenous art and storytelling look like. Her work has been shown at The Muckenthaler Cultural Center, The Potocki Center for the Arts, and La Gallerie Numerique.

Held in Barnsdall Park, this workshop is an introduction to growing in pots, growing at home, and 'gardening' with limited resources. For folks who have been cut off from land-tending, farming, and other traditional lifeways, it can be intimidating to start. We will discuss sprouting seeds, working with limited spaces, and connecting with plants. 

Attendees will be given several (sprouted) corn seedlings and biodegradable peat pots. A limited number of grow-bags will be available as well. 

This workshop will be part of an ongoing urban gardening series, followed by digital talk spaces, in-person seed swaps, and more. 

Workshop will be held in an outdoor space. Masks are highly encouraged and folks will be able to attend while also social distancing. 

Attendance is limited to 30 guests. Admission is free! Please register ahead of time by clicking the link below.

Join The Chapter House for a Wellness Workshop in Alhambra Park on Sunday December 12 from 12 PM to 1:30 PM. Facilitated by Deoné Newell (Diné), we will practice mindfulness and breathwork.

Breathwork will begin promptly at 12:15 PM. Please refrain from eating 2 hours prior to breathwork beginning. We'll have snacks and Navajo tea available after breathwork!

Please bring a water bottle, a yoga mat, a blanket, and an open mind. We ask everyone who attends mask up when appropriate and physically distance.

We recommend a donation of $10 for this event! Financial assistance is available as well, just shoot us an email at info@thechapterhouse.org. Space is limited so sign up ASAP!

It’s been an amazing REZidency, y’all. Come celebrate the closing of our very first pop-up this Thursday November 11 from 2 to 5 pm PT at Transformative Arts’s DTLA space. We’ll finish up our remixed Halloween costume art, learn more about Native California plants and their uses from @moonbabymedicine, and be serving up piccadillies and Navajo tea. 

The support that we’ve gotten this month has been incredible. We are so grateful to our collaborators, Transformative Arts, and all our friends, new and old. The community that we’ve continued to grow is beautiful. This may be the end of our REZidency, but it is only the beginning of more to come! 

Admission is always free and all are welcome! Come masked and with proof of vaccination and/or a negative COVID test from the last 2 days. Register below!

Join us downtown this Saturday November 6 for a Native Wellness and Empowerment Workshop. Led by Deoné Newell and featuring performances by Kelly Caballero and Isabel Trevino, we will experience the healing power of breathwork, mindfulness, spoken word, and empowerment practices embodied through the Native lens.

Halloween is lots of fun...except when it’s “dressing up” as someone else’s culture. This is not only racist and hurtful, but it perpetuates dehumanization and misrepresentation. ⁠
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Are you too tired of seeing these costumes and feel like destroying them and what they represent? Come down to Transformative Arts Saturday, 10/30, and do just that! Join us from 1 - 4 pm as we discuss racist costuming, how it affects us, and how we create change as we deconstruct and repurpose these mass produced costumes and create something new and beautiful, as a community. All supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring your own, and/or any costumes you feel like repurposing. Once the artwork is done, it will be displayed on the wall in the space. ⁠
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Our cultures are not costumes, they are beautiful, strong and thriving--as are we! ✊🏽

All in-person events will follow COVID safety guidelines, including mandatory masking, physical distancing, and proof of vaccination and/or negative COVID test within the last two days. These precautions are to ensure the safety and health of all staff and visitors.

Admission is always free and all are welcome. Register in advance below!

Portraits + BYOP Saturday! Come through to have your portrait taken by Oliverio Rodriguez and Emma Robbins at TCH’s REZidency at Transformative Arts Come in whatever you want--traditional clothes, regalia, or your tracksuit :-). Everyone who has their photo will have the choice to participate in a community portrait project and will be able to take home a printed photo.

It’s also BYOP circle time! Bring Your Own Project to work on with others, or come and work on something with the materials that we’ll have on hand (free of charge).

Admission is always free and all are welcome! Don’t forget to come masked and with proof of vaccination and/or a negative COVID test from the last 2 days.

Register via the button below!

In this hands-on workshop, Kimberly Robertson (Mvskoke) and Olivia Espericueta (Descendant of La Jolla Band of Luiseño) will explore the ways in which beading circles and workshops can serve as an Indigenous method to activate our people's well-being and help us heal from historical and ongoing injustices.

Each participant will be gifted a bead kit and we will bead collectively to operationalize Indigenous knowledge and connect to our ancestors and community. We will be making keychains that include a variety of materials but we also believe our beading practices should respect the local ancestral stewards on whose lands we bead. To do this, we often work with materials offered by the land in a sustainable manner and this particular project will feature acorns to honor the Tongva lands we occult in downtown Los Angeles.

No prior experience with beading is necessary to participate. If you have access to some, please bring a small pair of scissors and a small pair of jewelry pliers. If you don’t have them, we will have some on hand.

Admission is always free and all are welcome! Register via the link below.

TONGVALAND / LOS ANGELES — Opening on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, October 11, 2021 and closing November 11, 2021 in Native American Heritage Month, Transformative Arts will host The Chapter House for a REZidency at their location on Tongvaland, or Downtown Los Angeles. This collaboration marks The Chapter House’s first in-person arts events, including musical performances, workshops and demos, artist talks and panels, and a raffle. This residency will celebrate the community of Indigenous Peoples, allies, and accomplices The Chapter House has cultivated through online programming over the past year in Transformative Arts’ physical space. This is the first step for The Chapter House towards opening a permanent brick and mortar space in Tongvaland/Los Angeles. 

The Chapter House is an Indigenous arts space that celebrates individual and shared Indigenous cultures, and explores the complexities of the 21st Century Indigenous experience. Over the past year, The Chapter House’s online programming has included panel and community discussions, the exhibition but when you come from water, concerts, artist lectures, poetry readings, and community craft nights and workshops. 

Founded by curator jill moniz, Transformative Arts is both an arts nonprofit and a physical space intended to nurture participation in the arts and to develop Visual Literacy that contributes to sustainable communities worldwide. With a focus on freedom, equity, accessibility and diasporic narratives, Transformative Arts nurtures local arts projects that make art accessible through collectivity and collaboration, by and for LA communities.

Through the month-long exhibition and in-person and online programming, The Chapter House will provide a space for Indigenous artists to showcase work, to include and educate non-Indigenous people on Indigenous art, issues, and movements, and to welcome those who may not normally experience white cube arts spaces. 

Please join us October 11th from 12 pm - 5 pm PDT for some amazing art by Indigenous artists, an opening prayer and land acknowledgment, an introduction to The Chapter House and Transformative Arts, a Métis Weaving Workshop (all supplies provided!), a BYOP (Bring Your Own Project—bring something you’re working on for an art making circle, we’ll also have some supplies present) Session, a concert by Gabe Colhoff from 1876, Ch’il Gohwéhí (Navajo tea) and piccadillies! Please register ahead of time below and feel free to choose one or both sets of events!

Admission is always free and all are welcome. All in-person events will follow COVID safety guidelines, including mandatory masking, physical distancing, and proof of vaccination and/or negative COVID test within the last two days. These precautions are to ensure the safety and health of all staff and visitors.