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Relational Possibilities: A Remix of Aesthetic Forms Through Indigeneity and Blackness

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Imagine blending images and knowledge from our plant relations with artistic expressions. Our land and water relations remember how we treat them with sewage, chemicals, and trash, and they influence the artistic expressions and world’s of Black Philadelphia artists like Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954). The Black Walnut (Juglans Nigra) is a perennial stone fruit tree native to Eastern North America and Philadelphia, PA. This tree relation gives us food, medicine, dye, herbicide, and antibacterial uses. [12] [13]

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1. The Museum As Meta(phor) Imagine cultural heritage institutions, like art galleries and museums, as spaces responsive to community agendas. Image technologies freeing our ancestors. Cultural heritage institutions and their mandates to collect, keep, preserve, restrict, and make accessible are settler colonial work horses. Most cultural heritage collections worldwide are in some way shaped and connected to the colonial collecting project. [11] Information and data professionals call and are called to decolonize - to dismantle structures of power in their buildings, thoughts, and work.
2. Oh, To Be A Visitor Imagine choosing your geography. You control your life. You are in the driver's seat. African-Americans migrated from the South to major cities (e.g. Philadelphia, Detroit) in two historical waves: the first great migration (1910-1940) and the second great migration (1940s - 1970). [17] Between 1952 and 1972 the Bureau of Indian Affairs genocidal Voluntary Relocation Program provided one-way transportation and a few hundred dollars to Indigenous peoples to move to a major U.S. city (e.g. Los Angeles, Chicago) with empty promises of housing and jobs. [15] Today, more than two-thirds of Native Americans live in cities, not on reservations.[16] [16] Max Nesterak, “Uprooted,” APM Reports, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/11/01/uprooted-the-1950s-plan-to-erase-indian-country#:~:text=In%20the%201950s%2C%20the%20United,Country%20are%20still%20felt%20today. [17] National Archives and Records Administration, “American Indian Urban Relocation,” last updated March 3, 2023, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/indian-relocation.html [18] “Great Migration (African American),” Wikipedia, accessed November 14, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)#:~:text=Between%201910%20and%201930%2C%20the,part%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.
3. Listen Imagine blending images and knowledge from our plant relations with artistic expressions. Our land and water relations remember how we treat them with sewage, chemicals, and trash, and they influence the artistic expressions and world’s of Black Philadelphia artists like Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954). The Black Walnut (Juglans Nigra) is a perennial stone fruit tree native to Eastern North America and Philadelphia, PA. This tree relation gives us food, medicine, dye, herbicide, and antibacterial uses. [12] [13]
4. These Are The Green Trees Our Future Ancestors Will Inherit Imagine waking up and being able to breathe. Imagine seeing “trees” with trunks made of metal and concrete and leaves of green smog. The settler state treats our Black and Indigenous communities in the U.S. as hazardous waste landfills, disposal facilities, sites of industrial air pollution, and locations for “modern” infrastructure like oil pipelines and dams. Environmental justice research shows that the settler state targets communities with a majority of Black and Indigenous populations for these national projects. [4] [5] [6] Genocidal forced relocations and removals (1492 - Present) of Indigenous communities have long-term environmental impacts: increased wildfire risk, extreme heat, less precipitation, loss of subsistence foods and medicinal plants. [3] [6] [2] Justin Worland, “Why The Larger Climate Movement is Finally Embracing the Fight Against Environmental Racism,” Time, July 9, 2020, https://time.com/5864704/environmental-racism-climate-change/ [3] Rachel Treisman, “How Loss of Historical Lands Makes Native Americans More Vulnerable to Climate Change,” NPR, November 2, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051146572/forced-relocation-native-american-tribes-vulnerable-climate-change-risks [4] “Environmental Justice History,” United States Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.energy.gov/lm/environmental-justice-history#:~:text=In%201982%2C%20a%20small%2C%20predominately,of%20toxic%20waste%20along%20roadways [5] Ken Ward Jr., “How Black Communities Become ‘Sacrifice Zones’ for Industrial Air Pollution,” ProPublica, December 21, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/how-black-communities-become-sacrifice-zones-for-industrial-air-pollution [6] Danielle C. Buffa et al. “Understanding Constraints to Adaptation Using a Community-Centred Toolkit,” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 37820220391. 20220391. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0391
5. The Four OGs Imagine if founders and leaders of the American Indian Movement (1968 - 1978), Dennis Banks and Russell Means, sat next to Civil Rights Movement (1954 - 1968) leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Imagine everything everywhere in the nation happening all at once. The settler state treats our Black and Indigenous community elders, leaders, and human rights activists as radicals. Racial unrest, environmental consequences of industrialization, and federal policies terminating tribes after World War II created the perfect storm for Black and Indigenous communities to take power over settler state narratives of sexual violence, oppression, erasure, police brutality, and white supremacy. [7] [8] The settler state is complicit in the widespread missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls epidemic [9] [10] and instituting a police state responsible for the murders of countless people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. [7] “American Indian Movement (AIM),” Minnesota Historical Society Library, Gale Family Library, accessed November 14, 2023, https://libguides.mnhs.org/aim [8] “American Indian Movement: Black and Brown Power,” University of Georgia [Digital Exhibit], accessed November 14, 2023, https://digilab.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/civil-rights-digital-history-p/black-brown-power [9] “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” Native Hope, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw [10] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, “Our Mandate, Our Vision, Our Mission,” accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/mandate/
6. Into the Unknown (But It's Only You That Doesn't Know) Imagine colonizing the colonizers. Black and Indigenous peoples serve at higher rates in the settler state’s military than other populations. [14] And yet the settler state has positioned Black and Indigenous peoples against each other - from the American Indian Wars (1866-1891) when our Indigenous communities fought for their sovereignty and land, all-Black regiments “Buffalo Soldiers,” to the socioeconomic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. [15]
7. The New New Kids on Our Block

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Love Between

how to colonize the colonizers
A Poem by Dana Reijerkerk
how to colonize the colonizers?
the cowrie-shelled woman smiles
somewhere in the space between
she prays with the river who says
don’t be part of the story, make the story
because we wear our pain and
our pain wears us

The past, present, and future of our city communities in the United States exist within colonization’s ongoing violence - a perpetual state of lived aftermath to stolen lands, white supremacy, genocide, slavery, and anthropogenic climate change. Settler colonialism expects to REPLACE, OVERWRITE, OWN Indigenous peoples, cultures, histories, lands, resources, and kinships. [1] Indigeneity and Blackness are coded as complex, intertwined politics in the settler colonial state. To be Indigenous and to be Black is political.
I reject that narrative. You are on Native Land. Race is a social construct. Human beings can not be divorced from our relations in our worlds. Everything that we are and imagine circles back and forth, overlaps and runs parallel, grows and dies. The geographies of our lives and under our feet and above our heads connects us to others.
Indigenous and Black communities thrive in the spaces between Indigenous and Black identities, cultures, and histories. Imagine a future reality beyond the settler state with me using Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) where Black and Indigenous communities converge and diverge - all disruptions of the hegemonic white supremist colonial narratives of racism, oppression, and colorism.

[1] Shreya Shah, “What is Settler Colonialism,” The Indigenous Foundation, accessed November 13, 2023, available at https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/what-is-settler-colonialism

[2] Justin Worland, “Why The Larger Climate Movement is Finally Embracing the Fight Against Environmental Racism,” Time, July 9, 2020, https://time.com/5864704/environmental-racism-climate-change/

[3] Rachel Treisman, “How Loss of Historical Lands Makes Native Americans More Vulnerable to Climate Change,” NPR, November 2, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051146572/forced-relocation-native-american-tribes-vulnerable-climate-change-risks

[4] “Environmental Justice History,” United States Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.energy.gov/lm/environmental-justice-history#:~:text=In%201982%2C%20a%20small%2C%20predominately,of%20toxic%20waste%20along%20roadways

[5] Ken Ward Jr., “How Black Communities Become ‘Sacrifice Zones’ for Industrial Air Pollution,” ProPublica, December 21, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/how-black-communities-become-sacrifice-zones-for-industrial-air-pollution

[6] Danielle C. Buffa et al. “Understanding Constraints to Adaptation Using a Community-Centred Toolkit,” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 37820220391. 20220391. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0391

[7] “American Indian Movement (AIM),” Minnesota Historical Society Library, Gale Family Library, accessed November 14, 2023, https://libguides.mnhs.org/aim

[8] “American Indian Movement: Black and Brown Power,” University of Georgia [Digital Exhibit], accessed November 14, 2023, https://digilab.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/civil-rights-digital-history-p/black-brown-power

[9] “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” Native Hope, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw

[10] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, “Our Mandate, Our Vision, Our Mission,” accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/mandate/

[11] Dana Reijerkerk, “Open Access Mandates and Indigenous Materials: Ways to Ethically Collaborate.” In What’s emerging in the field? Essays from the MCN 2020 VIRTUAL Scholarship Program Recipients (Museum Computer Network, 2021), available at https://publications.mcn.edu/2020-scholars/.

[12] “Alain LeRoy Locke,” Wikipedia, accessed November 14, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_LeRoy_Locke

[13] Philadelphia Orchard Project, “Plant Spotlight: Black Walnut (Juglans Nigra),” accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.phillyorchards.org/2018/10/17/plant-spotlight-black-walnut/

[14] “Black Americans in the U.S. Army,” U.S. Army, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.army.mil/blackamericans/timeline.html

[15] “Many Lenses: Buffalo Soldiers: Legend and Legacy,”Smithsonian Institute, accessed November 14, 2023, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/buffalo-soldiers

[16] Max Nesterak, “Uprooted,” APM Reports, accessed November 14, 2023, https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/11/01/uprooted-the-1950s-plan-to-erase-indian-country#:~:text=In%20the%201950s%2C%20the%20United,Country%20are%20still%20felt%20today.

[17] National Archives and Records Administration, “American Indian Urban Relocation,” last updated March 3, 2023, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/indian-relocation.html

[18] “Great Migration (African American),” Wikipedia, accessed November 14, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)#:~:text=Between%201910%20and%201930%2C%20the,part%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.