rss@news.abolish.capital [bot]
Sandra Hale Schulman
ICT
The latest: Renowned filmmaker curates a powwow, Cree siblings create together, Los Angeles mountain lion memorialized in bronze
FILM: Dancers featured in powwow documentary
A documentary film, “Powwow People,” by Sky Hopinka, is built from the rhythms and relationships of contemporary powwows.
Instead of observing from the outside, the filmmaker organized the powwow itself, inviting select dancers, singers, vendors, and community members into the making of the film.
Shot over a single day, the film follows four figures: an organizer who runs the event, an emcee who calls out the moments, a non-binary dancer trying to navigate tradition and identity, and a modern singer reflecting on the past. It culminates in a 30-minute segment of a Northern Traditional dance.
The film features Gina Bluebird-Stacona, Lakota; Ruben Little Head, Cheyenne; Jamie John, Anishinaabe; Paula Shebala, Blackfeet/Choctaw; Tyus Beebe, Blood Reserve; Black Lodge Singers; and Cozad Northern and Southern Host Drums.The documentary is currently making the film festival rounds.
Hopinka, Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores Indigenous homeland, language, and cultural continuity. His films have previously screened at the Sundance, Toronto and New York film festivals.
This poster promotes the documentary film, “Powwow People,” by acclaimed filmmaker and artist Sky Hopinka, Ho-Chunk. Credit: Photo courtesy of Sky Hopinka
“I am a filmmaker whose practice is rooted in experimental forms of cinema, with an emphasis on nonfiction and documentary approaches to storytelling,” Hopinka said in a statement.
“My identity as an Indigenous person guides those approaches; in each film, I look for ways to represent something specific within my culture, often minor and overlooked. I push back against broad, flattened modes of Indigenous representation and narrow my focus to the personal — to my family, my tribe, and my community.”
With “Powwow People,” he expanded his practice through deeper collaboration by working with a full crew, a cinematographer, and a consulting editor.
“Hosting my own powwow and involving participants directly in the filmmaking process allowed me to resist the extractive gaze often associated with nonfiction representations of Indigenous life,” he said. “Instead, I sought to create a film that is immersive, dynamic, and alive with movement, song, and spirit.”
ART: After exploring the world, siblings center back to tribal home
In an unusual retrospective, two Cree Métis siblings, Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird, have joined together to exhibit decades worth of work at Onsite Gallery in Toronto, Canada.
The exhibit, “Returning to Ourselves,” weaves together their Indigenous heritage, countercultural experimentation, and community-centered approaches in sculpture, painting, and public art. The exhibit runs through Jan. 30.
Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird, Cree Métis artists who are also siblings, are exhibiting decades of their work together at Onsite Gallery in Toronto, Canada. The exhibit, “Returning to Ourselves,” runs through Jan. 30, 2027. Credit: Photo courtesy of Onsite Gallery
The siblings were born in the mid-1950s to a Cree Métis father and a mother of Scottish and German descent, and their grandmother, Victoria Belcourt Callihoo, was a Métis historian whose accounts date back to before Canada became a country. Her husband, Louis Jerome, was the chief of the Michel Band.
“She’s really quite well known – she was famous for harboring Sitting Bull over the border when he fled to Canada in 1877 to escape the United States military after the Battle of the Little Bighorn,” Kenny told ICT.
“My sister and I collaborated on art every 10 years or so, it’s a 45-year broad spectrum of our work, and realizing how making the artwork connected and grounded us spiritually,” he said. “She makes test patterns in beads and sweetgrass. I make glass feathers and paint eagles. It’s a lot of pop cultural references and things that we gravitated to that we didn’t know why and then they revealed themselves later.”
A mural created by artists and siblings Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird, Cree Métis, is featured in a new exhibit at the Onsite Gallery in Toronto, Canada. The exhibit runs through Jan. 30, 2027. Credit: Photo courtesy of Onsite Gallery
Kenny Baird has worked in the pioneering fields of interior design for experimental nightclubs in New York City and Toronto in the 1980s, made music videos for David Bowie, and says that combining art, music and fashion is “a very Native thing. Community-oriented crossover, cross-pollination, working together.”
A newly created mural by the duo shows two crows, one with a pearl in its mouth, facing a beaded circle with native plants influenced by Cree Métis material culture.
ART: Beloved mountain lion to be immortalized in bronze
The National Wildlife Federation and Friends of Griffith Park have announced a special sculpture will be made of P-22, the mountain lion movie star that lived alone in the heart of Hollywood for over a decade.
California tribes work to give mountain lion P-22 a proper burial
P-22 apparently crossed freeways to find hunting grounds and got stranded in urban areas until his passing in 2024. He became famous after photos captured him against the Hollywood sign and his lone journey emerged. He is believed to have lived alone in Griffith Park and was featured in a film made by the Los Angeles Zoo.
The sculpture, “Earth to City: Rhapsody of the Wild King,” will be made by Los Angeles-based artist Adam Matano, in tribute to the animal’s legacy in helping people the world over understand urban wildlife conservation.
The statue will have a permanent place at the Griffith Park Visitors Center.
Matano has completed the clay art form, a meticulous process with wildlife detail to be made of bronze. The sculpture shows P-22 wearing his tracking collar, his long hind legs perched atop a geometric podium that features views of the city while his front paws clamber down onto a rock with skunks, western gray foxes and native plants. The dual bases show his transition from the natural world to an urban one in a “story of coexistence,” the artist says.
The mountain lion’s journey also inspired construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over the 101 Freeway to help other animals avoid highways and traffic.
The post INDIGENOUS A&E: People who powwow, sibling art, mountain lion immortalized appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.