Before Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) began her lifelong career making films, she was a singer. Her 1977 film Amisk documents the James Bay Festival, a nine-day convergence of Indigenous musicians from across North America to perform in solidarity against a hydroelectric development on Cree land. Featuring performances by Akalise Novalinga (Inuit), Gordon Tootoosis (Cree), Tom Jackson (Cree), Duke Redbird (Chippewa), Willie Dunn (Micmac), as well as Obomsawin herself, Amisk is not only a concert film but also a declaration of culture, resistance, and the future of Indigenous sovereignty. (1977, Canada, 40 min.)
Preceding Amisk are two recent short videos by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) and Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee). Ortman’s My Soul Remainer, made in collaboration with Nanobah Becker (Diné) and Jock Soto (Diné), features the artist in one of her sound-sculpting and atmospheric solo violin performances atop a mountain in New Mexico. In Teach Me a Song, the artist features Indigenous friends teaching her songs in an ongoing project concerned with language and song preservation.
Friday’s screening will be introduced by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).
Total running time for the screening: 65 min.
Bios
Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki, b. 1932, near Lebanon, New Hampshire) is one of Canada’s most distinguished documentary filmmakers. She began her career as a professional singer and storyteller before joining the National Film Board in 1967. Her award-winning films address the struggles of Indigenous peoples in Canada from their perspective, giving prominence to voices that have long been ignored or dismissed. A Companion of the Order of Canada and a Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Québec, she has received the Prix Albert-Tessier and the Canadian Screen Awards’ Humanitarian Award as well as multiple Governor General’s Awards, lifetime achievement awards, and honorary degrees.
Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to use the Cherokee language in a contemporary song. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges; Documenta 14; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Harkins created the Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, and streaming from OK#1 in Tulsa. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a double LP, which can be found on Harkins’s Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation.
Laura Ortman (b. Arizona, 1973) is a soloist musician, composer, and vibrant collaborator who creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. Ortman has collaborated with artists Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, and Martha Colburn, and as part of the trio In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all Native American cast. Ortman has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; the Stone residency; the New Museum, New York; imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival; the 2019 Whitney Biennial; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless venues in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Accessibility
For information about accessibility, or to request additional accommodations for this program, call 612-375-7564, or email access@walkerart.org.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
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