The Center for Native Arts and Cultures: Convenings on Land Rematriation

Organized by the Center for Native Arts and Cultures in collaboration with the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, this project convenes a two-day open working group to reflect on a process of land rematriation that led to the creation of the Center for Native Arts and Cultures, and to envision how from this process the Center will advance a commitment to mobilizing networks of Indigenous artists, culture bearers, and Native-led arts organizations. These in-person group discussions are supported by an accompanying reader, a video work entitled Never Settle: The Program by New Red Order, live performance works by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Allison Akootchook Warden, a document collection and archive presentation, as well as supplemental programs organized by Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Educators.

The Center for Native Arts and Cultures was founded in 2021 as the headquarters of the non-profit Native Arts and Cultures Foundation after taking up the transfer of ownership of the historically registered Yale Union Laundry Building, a two-story commercial structure and surrounding land parcel, in the city of Portland, Oregon, which was previously owned by an artist-run space called Yale Union. This working group serves as a contribution to a larger series of internal focus groups currently being convened by the Center for Native Arts and Cultures to gather input on its organizational capacity and structural conditions as it situates operations, exhibitions, and educational programs in the newly acquired building. While acknowledging the land that this particular building sits on, working responsibly in various local level contexts to reflect the history of previous Native tribes and peoples who inhabited the land for the purposes of use rather than ownership has always been crucial to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Additionally, efforts around the transfer of Yale Union to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation reflect a broader “Land Back” movement to address ongoing historical inequities in the US and beyond.

The Künstlerhaus Stuttgart seeks to engage in knowledge sharing with respect to the Center for Native Arts and Cultures’ specific interests in Indigenous approaches to artistic production, organizational capacity, and governance arrangements, as well as decolonial education that includes learning in water rights, reparations, and land use justice. Germany is yet another site from which these discussions must necessarily take place. There is little question that current German land law has been shaped through German colonial empire and its patrician city-state colonial encounters in the global context. Germany has a long complex history of implementing laws to seize property and assert land ownership. This confiscatory history of legal-economic structures ratified by Germany and the broader European colonial venture has fundamentally altered the management of land and related resources globally. And it must be recognized how these fundamental changes extend to the lived social relations, economic conditions, and cultural practices imbricated with Indigenous and existing forms of land use. This project focuses on a specific set of lived questions and material challenges that the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and its Center for Native Arts and Cultures is confronting, but which are also part of the research, education, and outreach efforts today that emphasize rebuilding, restitution, and reparations efforts of Indigenous peoples worldwide as they seek to strengthen internal governance capacities and realize political, economic, and community development objectives.

Contributors include: Maile Andrade, Natalie Diaz, Healoha Johnston, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Joy Harjo, Flint Jamison, Brandy Nālani McDougall, New Red Order, and Allison Akootchook Warden. With representatives from the Center for Native Arts and Cultures: Lulani Arquette, Reuben Tomás Roqueñi, and Gabriella Tagliacozzo.     

The working group and accompanying reader are organized and edited by Healoha Johnston, Director of Cultural Resources, and Curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Arts and Culture at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with Eric Golo Stone, Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

Never Settle: The Program by New Red Order, on view: February 17–April 2, 2023

Working Group Reader launch and performance by Tiokasin Ghosthorse: March 31, 7pm
Working Group Session 1: April 1, 1–4pm
Working Group Session 2: April 2, 1–4pm
Performance by Allison Akootchook Warden: April 2, 5pm

Full program details may be found here.