Iȟpéya, Piyéȟpičašni

"Midnight Mine Goblet" glazed ceramic

Earth on Display/ Experiments in Pedagogy - MIT School of Architecture and Planning

November 4, 2018 at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Dakota philosophy holds that humans are not separate from or greater than the earth and its processes. With this in mind, how can we approach drastically changed landscapes resulting from widespread human-caused environmental degradation?

Once the sought-after parts of the earth’s body are taken and processed into the essential elements that make modern living possible^[1], what happens to the landscapes left behind? Using earth itself, in the form of clay, vessel-like representations explore these contours. 

vessel of Bingham Canyon mine on topographic map with copper-in-shale specimen

Using topographical maps, clay vessels molded in the form of mined earth, and specimens from the mineralogical collection of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, four sites of mining in the US are presented, opening a discussion around the ethics and implications of exploitative mining. 

USGS topographic maps of: Bingham Canyon mine in Salt Lake City, Utah,
Midnite mine on the Spokane reservation in Washington, Fort Knox
in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Twilight Mountain Top Removal Mine in
Lindytown, West Virginia.

Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, operated by Rio Tinto Kennecott is the largest open pit mine in the world and extracts copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum. Uranium from Midnite mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, helped to fuel the Cold War and is now a Superfund site. Fort Knox gold mine is located near Fairbanks, Alaska, operated by Kinross Gold, uses cyanide leaching to extract gold from the rock, and has a huge energy and water use footprint. Twilight MTR (Mountain Top Removal) mine, operated by Massey Energy/ Alpha Natural Resources is located in the Blue Hills in Lindytown, West Virginia. Mountain Top Mining is a highly destructive method that removes “overburden”: rock, mountainsides, flora and fauna, in order to get to the coal beneath it.

Viewing the installation at the Harvard Natural History Museum
Climate Change Gallery

Around this table installation, viewers shared the commonality of interrelationships between all forms of existence. Iȟpéyá, means to discard/ throw away, and is used here to describe the increasing number of places on earth that are spent, trashed, contaminated, detonated, destroyed.

Mountain top removal mine vessel

Píyéhpíčášní means broken beyond repair/ unfixable, and in this context implicates Western philosophies of separation from nature and the hierarchy of man which, compounded over hundreds of years of dominance, have caused widespread ecological collapse and climate change.

Coal variety Jet, polished in part

Vernal, Utah

Native gold in Cambrian dolomite
Hidden Fortune Mine, Black Hills, South Dakota

Molybedenite with barite crystals

Jardinera no. 1 mine

Inca de Oro, Atacama, Chile

 We don’t have to look far to see the landscapes altered by modern living. What’s harder to see is the imperative of remembering our deep relationship to the land we live on/ land we are.

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[1] Rio Tinto http://www.kennecott.com/about-us “At Rio Tinto Kennecott, we mine essential elements that make modern living possible. Our products are used in cell phones, computers, CAT scans and hybrid electric cars. Nearly everything used today relies on materials we produce.”

Existing in the void/ unwell

Sculpture by Sam Genia

"Existing in the void/ unwell" appears on Unheard Records compilation 003, "Infinite In-Betweens."

Out now! Get the album on bandcamp.

Mitakuye Oyasin/ We Are All Related

A ceremonial performance at the US Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, November 2018

November 24, 2018

US Pavilion "Dimensions of Citizenship"

La Biennale di Venezia 

Biennale Architettura 2018

US Pavilion courtyard

2:00–3:30p.m.

Mitakuye Oyasin/ We Are All Related was a ceremonial performance centered on healing, finding lost cultural knowledge, and telling the story of climate change through the lens of the Dakota legend of the Wakinyan/ Thunderbirds and Unktehi/ Water Serpent spirits. The epic battle between these supernatural beings is a way of describing the catastrophic effects of climate change through Dakota knowledge.

Moment the sun, Anpa Wi, brings out a rainbow in the battle of Wakinyan/ Thundebirds and Unktehi/ Water Monsters

The power of Dakota language, oral tradition, dance, and creative and artistic processes–which have been obscured through centuries of US policies of genocide and assimilation of Indigenous people–were expressed to call for a profound shift in the evolution of humanity towards a creative, holistic consciousness.

Mitakuye Oyasin, in the context of the "Dimensions of Citizenship" exhibition at Venice Architecture Biennale, is powerful because the concept, which is the basis of Dakota philosophy, holds that we are relatives of not only our families and other people, but animals, plants, rocks, air, electricity, water - which is life itself - and everything in existence, connected by interrelationships in a continuum of life.

sage burner sound vessel

By connecting the concepts of body outward to the cosmos through the sound of the drum, movement, and burning medicines, the ancestors and spirit were invited to the space. My cousin, Adam Genia, an award-winning powwow singer and drummer provided a song which was played on a sound vessel with the sound of a heartbeat.

Pipestone Quarry, on the Coteau des Prairies by George Catlin, 1836-37, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Images of ancient glyphs were drawn on the site of this important US cultural embassy, using a small quantity of canupa/ pipestone pigment.

The Pipestone quarry, located at what is today known as Pipestone National Monument, is a sacred location in Dakota cosmology that is tied to our origin stories.

Photographs, MHS Collection, photoprint: 'Charles H. Bennett removed these rock panels showing pictographs from the Pipestone quarries at the foot of The Three Maidens in the 1880s.'

These petroglyphs from the Three Maidens, an important site at the Pipestone quarry in Minnesota were desecrated and removed in order to be shown in the St. Louis World's Fair. Seventeen of the original 79 petroglyphs made it back to the site, and are now on display at the Pipestone National Monument visitor center.

My daughter drawing petroglyph symbols on the courtyard

When I carve canupa, I save the dust that is a byproduct of the process, as it can be used as a pigment, and, it is so precious that it cannot be wasted. I used some of the pigment to create chalk which my twin daughters and I used to recreate the glyphs looted from Three Maidens on the US Pavilion courtyard site. The images brought indigenous Dakota presence to the site in an unbroken line, at a institution in the tradition of Worlds Fair-type expos, which have had a historically troubled legacy for Indigenous people.

Ancient symbols recreated in pipestone pigmented chalk

To conclude the ceremonial performance, the Wakiyan again took center stage. The Wakinyan love everything that is clean and pure, and they make their tipis by the tallest cedar trees, which is why we use cedar for purification purposes. Using "cedar" sprigs, the audience and I brushed the building in a symbolic act of cleansing the courtyard site of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, to clear away old energies and make way for new kinds of creative visions to the space.

This piece is in dialogue with  "Acoustic Tipi," which was on site at the Lithuania Pavilion "Swamp Pavilion". 

Acoustic Tipi depicts the battle between the Wakinyan and Unktehi, shown here at the closing of the Swamp Pavilion

This program was part of the Citizen Lab programming series and took place in the US Pavilion courtyard.

Check out the Art, Culture and Technology Program at MIT's news piece about the performance here.