Native Americans

Monument Honoring Virginia Native Tribes Awaits Ceremony

VCU CNS | March 5, 2018

Topics: monument, Native Americans, state Capitol, Virginia Native tribes

After years of planning and several months of construction, a monument honoring the lives, legacy, and achievements of Native American tribes in Virginia has been completed and now stands on the grounds of the state Capitol.

State officials are planning a ribbon cutting for the monument on April 17.

“I think everyone who has seen it is very much in awe and approves of what has been installed,” said Christopher K. Peace, R-97th District, vice chairman of the Virginia Indian Commemorative Commission.

The monument, titled “Mantle,” gets its name from Powhatan’s Mantle, a deerskin cloak said to be worn by the Native American chief; and its spiral shape was inspired by the nautilus, the self-replicating living fossil. Commission member Frances Broaddus-Crutchfield said the design symbolizes the endurance of Native American tribes.

“We wanted natural materials but also something that would endure, and that’s how we came up with stone,” Broaddus-Crutchfield said. “Once you get to the center of it, there’s a meditation area with an infinity pool where all the rivers in Virginia are engraved in the granite, all of which have Indian names.”

After reviewing submissions from several artists, Broaddus-Crutchfield said the commission appointed Mohawk installation artist Alan Michelson to create “Mantle.”

“We interviewed various artists, and Alan Michelson was the one who had the concept that we thought best represented what we were aiming for, which was the walkway,” Broaddus-Crutchfield said.

Here is how Michelson described the monument on the commission’s website:

“[Mantle] requires the visitor to neither look up nor look down, but invites one to enter—from the east—and participate in it. It is not conceived as a static monument to be venerated but an active one to be experienced by moving off the everyday grid and into the American Indian circle.”

Funding for “Mantle” came from the Running Strong for Indian Youth Foundation as well as private contributions and other fundraising efforts.

“The Capitol Square Preservation Council and the Virginia Capitol Foundation have been masterful in the fundraising efforts — the most generous of which has come from members of our own commission,” Peace said.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony, planned for the morning of April 17, will be open to the public, Peace said at the commission’s meeting on Friday. Gov. Ralph Northam and leaders of Virginia’s Native American tribes are expected to attend.

“The goal of the event is to officially commemorate this tribute,” commission member Colleen Dugan Messick said. “It’s important for us to have everyone who has been involved in “Mantle” since the very beginning there.”

While the monument has brought praise, one Virginia tribal leader said he is more focused on daily challenges.

“We have a good relationship with the state, but our focus is, now being a federally recognized tribe, working on economic development for our members, to help in education, healthcare, and housing,” said Brad Brown, the assistant chief of the Pamunkey Nation. “This monument does nothing to enhance our tribes or help our tribes.”

But Karenne Wood, a member of the Monacan Indian Nation and director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities said in an interview that “Mantle” is an important and unique tribute to all Native Americans.

“I think it’s a huge deal. In the past, the only acknowledgment of Native people in Virginia has been honoring Pocahontas, who has had a complicated history in Virginia,” Wood said. “This monument acknowledges the past and present of all Native people, and all of their ongoing contributions and stories, and it will be able to tell a much more interesting history.”

Story and Photos By: Yasmine Jumaa via Capital News Service

Review: Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival Gives Powerful Platform to Native Amercian filmmakers & Artists

Madelyne Ashworth | November 22, 2017

Topics: French Film Festival, Native American Film Festival, Native Americans, The Byrd Theatre

In a beautiful manifestation of native culture through film, The Pocahontas Reframed: Native American Storytellers Film Festival conveyed the importance of traditional storytelling in a world oversaturated with instantaneous information.

This past weekend, veterans of the French Film Festival, as well as some new collaborators, pulled together Richmond’s newest annual film festival in a free, three-day event at the Byrd Theatre. With 13 films and three performances, Richmonders were able to experience Native American culture, music, language, and customs.

Each day of the festival was dedicated to a particular theme, beginning Friday with films that focus on retrospection of Native American history, including the documentary “Seasons” which explores the development of Earth’s forests, as well as a 1930 silent film titled, “The Silent Enemy,” which was accompanied by the Byrd’s famous Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

Saturday’s films explored stereotypes and misconceptions of Native American peoples and culture. Some of the films presented were “Reel Injun,” a documentary about the portrayal of native peoples in American film, as well as a narrative film titled, “Neither Wolf Nor Dog,” depicting the relationship between an aging Lakota elder and the white writer he chose to help him write a book.

Finally, Sunday’s films were either entirely about or written and directed by Native American women. I had the pleasure of attending two of the films and one performance this day, starting with a moving performance from Mohawk musician Elizabeth Hill, who sang original songs that combine traditional Native American music and stories with folk, blues, and country. She also performed several traditional Mohawk songs, whose tribal sounds and language evoked a nostalgic sadness from the audience. Hill, who is from Six Nations of the Grand River, Canada, wrote the score for the film, “Kissed by Lightning,” which was screened earlier that day.

Following her performance, the documentary “First Daughter and the Black Snake” tells the struggle of Winona LaDuke, a Native American environmentalist, economist, and writer who fought and continues to fight against crude oil pipelines disrupting her Ojibwe community’s sacred wild rice beds. The film was a particularly poignant choice as many communities across the country, including those in Virginia, are fighting their own pipeline battles.

The second film I was able to see was a narrative film about the true-life story of Mary Thompson Fisher, or “Te Ata,” her stage name as well as the name of the film. Fisher was a Broadway performer raised in the Chickasaw culture and became one of the most well-known Native American performers of all time. Although the film itself was low-budget, the story kept in line with the theme of the day as well as the festival.

Overall, the films chosen were meaningful and educational, and created a platform for Native American filmmakers to share their work, whereas there hasn’t been a Native American film festival on the East Coast. Now named the premiere Native American film festival, this annual event is sure to stick.

In partnership with Peter Kirkpatrick, co-founder of the French Film Festival, the Byrd Theatre’s general manager Todd Schall-Vess, and experienced sales executive Brad Brown, Native American director and actor George Aguilar was instrumental in organizing and creating this festival. Aguilar normally resides in Paris, but traveled to Richmond this weekend to support the festival.

The festival was sponsored this year by film director and producer Francis Ford Coppola, as well as Virginia’s 2019 Commemoration, ‘American Evolution.’ The 2019 Commemoration examines the continued impact from the 1619 collision of three cultures in Virginia: Virginia Indian, English and African. It explores the untold stories that have had an enduring impact on 400 years of history in both Virginia and the United States.

The Pocahontas Reframed: Native American Storytellers Film Festival Premieres Tonight

Madelyne Ashworth | November 17, 2017

Topics: Byrd Theatre, Native American Film Festival, Native Americans, Virginia native americans

In a celebration of native peoples and indigenous culture, Richmond will be hosting The Pocahontas Reframed: Native American Storytellers Film Festival (PRNASFF) this coming weekend.

The three-day free event will be held at the Byrd Theatre will feature multiple films and performances all focusing on Native American peoples, culture, language, and customs. Named the premiere East Coast Native American Film Festival, the event will be attended by producers, directors, and actors from the international and Native American film community, including the actors, directors, and producers of the featured films themselves. These individuals will be present for the duration of the weekend to discuss their films with audience members, with question-and-answer sessions after each film.

“There really has not been a really good Native American Film Festival on the East Coast,” said Brad Brown, PRNASFF Board of Directors member. “There have been a couple, but they haven’t lasted. This was really the idea {of} Peter Kirkpatrick.”

Kirkpatrick, in addition to being the co-founder of the French Film Festival, is a professor of Native American film at VCU. In collaboration with Native American director George Aguilar, Byrd Theatre General Manager Todd Schall-Vess, and Brown, the group began creating this new festival.

“There needs to be a really good Native American film festival here in Richmond because of our history, including the history of the first contact with the Pamunkey tribe with the English in 1607,” Brown explained.

Those present will include George Aguilar, a PRNASFF director and International Native American Actor, Peter Kirkpatrick, and Pierre William Glenn, a cinematographer representing the Cannes International Film Festival.

All 16 films, as well as several featured performances, were written, directed, enacted and produced by Native Americans, presented in an effort to share and educate the Richmond community and surrounding communities on Native American history and culture. All films shown on Sunday are either written by or are specifically about Native American women.

“Every Emotion Costs”, a film by Darlene Naponse, centers around a woman named Quilla and her sister, June, as they return home to bury their mentally ill mother. “From medications to love, addiction revels in the characters’ lives, edifying their own personal rituals, pain, lust, and disappointment.”

“First Daughter and The Black Snake”, is another woman-focused film, which is a documentary that follows Winona LaDuke to prevent crude oil pipelines from destroying her Ojibwe community’s wild rice beds.

The performances will include Native American musicians as well as a sketch comedy group.

“There are so many good Native filmmakers, and their films just don’t get the exposure that Hollywood movies get,” Brown said. “We really wanted to give them more exposure to the public. We also wanted to not only include films, but we have musicians and comedians and artists. It’s Native American storytellers. It’s not just about film, it’s about how we tell stories in Native culture. We wanted to bring that to the public and try to expose some of the stereotypes and misconceptions about Native Americans for the public.”

The festival is sponsored by film director and producer Francis Ford Coppola, as well as Virginia’s 2019 Commemoration, ‘American Evolution.’ The 2019 Commemoration examines the continued impact from the 1619 collision of three cultures in Virginia: Virginia Indian, English and African. It explores the untold stories that have had an enduring impact on 400 years of history in both Virginia and the United States.

The festival begins tonight, Nov. 17 and will conclude Sunday, Nov. 19 with a final film at 5 p.m. There is no charge for tickets, but seating is limited. You can see the entire schedule of films here.

VMFA’s Hear My Voice exhibit spotlights current & historical Native American art

Madelyne Ashworth | August 24, 2017

Topics: Native American art, Native Americans, vmfa

Upstairs at the VMFA, contemporary art is meeting traditional Native American crafts as the new exhibition “Hear My Voice: Native American Art of the Past and Present” opens a dialogue between Native American culture and the outside world.

Kay WalkingStick (Native American, Cherokee, b. 1935)
Four Directions/Stillness, 1994

The project, which is two years in the making, was curated by Dr. Johanna Minich, the assistant curator for Native American art. She hopes the exhibit will open a conversation about current, living, breathing native peoples and their artwork as the exhibit makes its way through Virginia, beginning at the VMFA this past Saturday.

“Native Americans are still here and still producing art,” Minich said. “A lot of people talk about Native Americans in the past tense, but they are still here, and I feel this exhibit really highlights that.”

Rather than following the more common chronological gallery style that so often accompanies Native art, Minich broke this exhibit into three larger themes that combine old and new. These three themes set up the artists against different conversations: community, nature, and the outsider. Objects in this exhibit range from 400 A.D. to present day.

“Other exhibitions have tried to show this broad range, and the typical way of showing that is this chronological notion, where you have the whole history of a particular people then at the end you have the contemporary work,” Minich said. “I feel that there’s this psychological break between historic and contemporary, so with this mash-up, I’m hoping that people will understand that these broad themes, like communicating nature or your community, are things that native people have always understood.”

Throughout the exhibit, six different ‘sound showers’ have been installed that play recordings of six artists who talk about their work. As part of the exhibit’s effort to create open dialogues, the recordings are first to allow patrons to actually hear the voices of these artists as well as provide insight into their work and process.

“Even today, these historic pieces really carry that Native voice into modern times,” Minich said. “The more we learn about the past, the more these objects really make sense. This was a person who actually created a thing with a purpose and a story to tell, and that person is still here.”

Alongside Native American staples of VMFA’s permanent collection, such as the Crow war shirt or carved rattles, works like that of Virgil Ortiz are displayed alongside them. Ortiz owns a fashion and jewelry line in New York, but also spends his time making traditional Cochiti Pueblo pottery at his home in New Mexico. “It’s been a really good experience to learn how all of these people respond to the modern world,” Minich said.

Minich hopes that by seeing these contemporary works which branch outside of what white America stereotypically believe is Native art, it will spark conversations about what it means to be Native American and how that identity has been embraced and developed.

“I have actually had people come up and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that there were still native people,’” Minich said. “Granted, some of these groups have become much smaller, and some of them have actually expanded and their culture has grown. As a person living in America, it really behooves us to learn about that part of our history.”

Works in this exhibition have been drawn from the VMFA’s permanent collection as well as private collections, the Fralin Museum of Art at UVA and the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, among others. In 2018, the exhibit will travel to the Museum of the Shenandoah valley in Winchester and will finish its state-wide tour at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke.

Throughout the exhibit’s duration, which will last until November 26, the VMFA will host a variety of events that focus on “Hear My Voice.” Events will be held from October 12 to October 14, including the ‘Hear My Voice Artist Panel’ in which three of the artists, Molly Murphy Adams, Jeremy Frey, and Virgil Ortiz, will visit the museum to talk about their work and answer audience questions. There will also be a college night and a basket weaving demonstration over that weekend.

“I think this exhibit opened at a time where we need to be reminded that dialogue and communication are paramount to our success as human beings, to be part of something that is bigger than just us, to be part of a community and to be part of an outside experience,” Minich said.