I Am The River: Conversation with Amber Morning Star Byars

In this podcast we feature a timely and pointed conversation with dear friend, water protector, artist and current law school student Amber Morning Star Byars. The topics we discuss in this episode range from healing ancestral trauma, survival, the Resist Line3 camps, Land Back initiatives, tribal law, art, wellness, mental health and self care; all of which need continued attention as we work towards a healthy relationship to our planet. 

Amber Morning Star Byars is an artist, advocate, storyteller, and law student from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amber is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a descendant of the Chickasaw Nation. She received a BA in Indigenous Liberal Studies and an AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018 and is a current student at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. After graduating law school in the spring of 2022, Amber will continue to advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples, specifically in the areas of Land Back, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and environmental protection.

In the middle of our conversation we shared an audio reading of an article Amber wrote about her reflections from the Line3 pipeline resistance at Red Lake River in Northern Minnesota, while she was on the frontlines this year. The article titled I Am The River, was first published via AllCreation.org as part of their Fall Equinox 2021 collection, Sacred Relationship. At the end of my conversation with Amber, we here the song “Silt and Clay” by singer/songwriter Adam Horowitz. 

Land Back, Front Line and Tribal Law Resources:
Rebecah Nagle work and her podcast, This Land
Nick Estes and the Red Nation podcast
Winona LaDuke and Honor The Earth
Stopline3.org For info and then donate to legal fund
Water Protectors Legal collective
IG @resist_line_3 

Well Being, Spiritual and Mental Health Books:
THE EXTENDED MIND: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
The Body Keeps the Score by Vessel Vanderclock
The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life by Edith Eger
Breath by James Nester
We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by  Laura McKowen
Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner
The Book of Secrets by Depak Chopra

Leadership Books:
Think Again by Adam grant
Dare To Lead by Brene Brown
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

This conversation was hosted by Ginger Dunnill of Broken Boxes Podcast

Bonus episode: Ku'e - Who I am/ What I stand for - CCA series launch for Radio Coyote

This is a special Bonus Episode, presented as a poem stitched together with music and memory, story and reflection. I am a sound artist and this is how I feel most comfortable to share a bit of my own story, who I am on this planet, how I maintain community, connection to land and assert ally-ship to the various communities who I love and who love me.

This episode was the first broadcast to open a series of 18 episodes presented by Broken Boxes for Radio Coyote and aired March, 2021. You can hear the full series archive at Radiocoyote.org.

Ku`e loosely translates from Hawaiian language to mean, “To Oppose, Resist: Stand Different”. My life I have always been different, it used to feel like a point of trauma, not belonging, but now as I grow older, I feel like this understanding of relationship to self and land is what makes me so strong. I am proud of who I am and where I come from. This broadcast is the memory of home. The land I was born in/with/for and the people and locations and songs that informed my being on the planet. In the middle of the pacific ocean, the water and the land of Hana on the island of Maui, Hawai’i. This broadcast is my memory of that place, it is a vulnerable love story. Kumu Kama, a teacher of mine from my youth used to say “You have to honor the land, songs and dance of where you are from in order to honor the that of others you may want to support and be in community with.” Thank you to my family and friends for sharing your memories of home transmitted here in a mixtape format to set up this series.

Thank you to my dad, my hanai sister Pamakani Pico and my dear friends Christy Werner and Angelica Belmont who contributed to this episode by sharing stories from home!

Music featured in this episode:
Artist: Olomana 
Song: Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u 

Artist: Hapa
Song: Lei Pikake

Artist: Paula Fuga
Song: Loloiwi

Audio recording from the late Kanaka Maoli activist Haunani Kay Trask. This excerpt is from a speech Trask gave On the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1993, where Trask famously spoke in front of Iolani Palace.

Artist: Composed by Hinaleimoana Wong
Song: Kū Haʻaheo E Kuʻu Hawaiʻi

This conversation was hosted by Ginger Dunnill of Broken Boxes Podcast

Through Paradox: Conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger & Ginger Dunnill

This episode presents a candid and vulnerable reflection into the experience of one family of creatives and how they are making it work. 

Creatives and life partners, Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Producer Ginger Dunnill speak about their journey together for over a decade, making art, producing content and always being ‘one step closer to almost being done’. The focus of their conversation is on the last two+ years; navigating the pandemic, travel, making art and caring for family. This episode is shared in a hope to offer insight to others who may feel overwhelmed by the pressure to participate in the artworld in a sustainable way for mental and physical wellbeing.

About the artists:

Cannupa Hanska Luger & Ginger Dunnill on location filming Luger’s Future Ancestral Technologies: New Myth project, 2021

Multi-disciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger communicates stories of 21st century Indigeneity through social collaboration, performance and monumental installations which incorporate ceramic, steel and fiber. He exhibits, lectures and produces projects globally.

Broken Boxes Podcast creator and host Ginger Dunnill centers collaboration to create a living archive in support of intersectionality. She has organized exhibitions and social engagement projects globally, activating transformative justice practices.

Music: Tears Of Fire, Glad As Knives, 2011
This episode is now streaming on Apple Music & Spotify

On This Site: Interview with Jeremy Dennis

This episode we hear from Afro-Indigenous photographer Jeremy Dennis who shares insight, concept and approach around their practice. Jeremy also describes a myriad of exciting projects they have going on including Ma’s house, an old family home on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, NY that he and his family have been renovating.

Learn about all the projects mentioned on this episode and how to support the work at www.jeremynative.com

Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation. Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, cultural assimilation, and the ancestral traditional practices of his community, the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Dennis' work is a means of examining his identity and the identity of his community, specifically the unique experience of living on a sovereign Indian reservation and the problems they face. He currently lives and works in Southampton, New York on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. 

Nothing Happened Here. Jeremy Dennis, 2016

Jeremy Dennis Artist Statement: 

My photography explores indigenous identity, cultural assimilation, and the ancestral traditional practices of my tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Though science has solved many questions about natural phenomena, questions of identity are more abstract, the answers more nuanced. My work is a means of examining my identity and the identity of my community, specifically the unique experience of living on a sovereign Indian reservation and the problems we face.

Digital photography lets me create cinematic images. Nowhere have indigenous people been more poorly misrepresented than in American movies. My images question and disrupt the post-colonial narrative that dominates in film and media and results in damaging stereotypes, such as the “noble savage” depictions in Disney’s Pocahontas. As racial divisions and tensions reach a nationwide fever pitch, it’s more important to me than ever to offer a complex and compelling representation of indigenous people. I like making use of the cinema’s tools, the same ones directors have always turned against us (curiously familiar representations, clothing that makes a statement, pleasing lighting), to create conversations about uncomfortable aspects of post-colonialism. For example, in my 2016 project, “Nothing Happened Here,” stylized portraits of non-indigenous people impaled by arrows symbolize, in a playful way, the “white guilt” many Americans have carried through generations, and the inconvenience of co-existing with people their ancestors tried to destroy.

By looking to the past, I trace issues that plague indigenous communities back to their source. For example, research for my ongoing project “On This Site” entailed studying archaeological and anthropological records, oral stories, and newspaper archives. The resulting landscape photography honors Shinnecock’s 10,000-plus years’ presence in Long Island, New York. Working on that collection has left me with a better understanding of how centuries of treaties, land grabs, and colonialist efforts to white-wash indigenous communities have led to our resilience, our ways of interacting with our environment, and the constant struggle to maintain our autonomy.

Despite four hundred years of colonization, we remain anchored to our land by our ancient stories. The indigenous mythology that influences my photography grants me access to the minds of my ancestors, including the value they placed on our sacred lands. By outfitting and arranging models to depict those myths, I strive to continue my ancestors’ tradition of storytelling and showcase the sanctity of our land, elevating its worth beyond a prize for the highest bidder.

Music/Samples featured on this episode: 
Zero 7- Futures (feat Jose Gonzales)
Excerpt recording from James Baldwin, Why We Need Artists

This episode is now streaming on Apple Music & Spotify

This conversation was hosted by Ginger Dunnill of Broken Boxes Podcast

Revolutions of Pattern: Interview with Lehuauakea

This episode I speak with artist Lehuauakea. Lehua is a māhū or Queer, Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian and mixed heritage interdisciplinary artist and kapa maker from Pāpaʻikou on Moku O Keawe, or the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. We caught up this summer on the ancestral lands of the Tewa/Towa people of what is now known as Santa Fe, NM during their residency at the School for Advanced Research this summer where Lehua was working on making some large scale Kapa and other projects. We chat about the intention Lehua takes in how their culture is embedded in all they make, their ways of practicing art and producing kapa, and how the act of making keeps Lehua connected deeper to their land and ancestry.

Opening the episode we hear an audio recording from the late Kanaka Maoli activist Haunani Kay Trask. This excerpt is from a speech Trask gave On the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1993, where Trask famously spoke in front of Iolani Palace.

About Lehuauakea:

O Haumea Kino Pāhaʻohaʻo (detail). Lehuauakea

Lehuauakea is a māhū mixed-Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist and kapa maker from Pāpaʻikou on Moku O Keawe, the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Lehua’s Kānaka Maoli family descends from several lineages connected to Maui, Kauaʻi, Kohala, and Hāmākua where their family resides to this day.

Through a range of craft-based media, their art serves as a means of exploring cultural and biological ecologies, spectrums of Indigeneity, and what it means to live within the context of contemporary environmental degradation. With a particular focus on the labor-intensive making of ʻohe kāpala (carved bamboo printing tools), kapa (bark cloth), and natural pigments, Lehua is able to breathe new life into patterns and traditions practiced for generations. Through these acts of resilience that help forge deeper relationships with ʻāina, this mode of Indigenous storytelling is carried well into the future.

They have participated in several solo and group shows around the Pacific Ocean, and recently opened their first curatorial research project, DISplace, at the Five Oaks Museum in Portland, Oregon. The artist is currently based between the Pacific Northwest and Pāpaʻikou after earning their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting with a minor in Art + Ecology at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Follow the work of Lehuauakea: 

Website: https://lehuauakea.com 
IG at @_lehuauakea_ https://www.instagram.com/_lehuauakea_/

Music featured on this episode by Hawane Rios
Songs: It’s Everything & Warrior Rising 

This conversation was hosted by Ginger Dunnill of Broken Boxes Podcast

This episode is now streaming on Apple Music & Spotify