(pleasant orchestral music) (crowd chattering) - [Narrator] Welcome, everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(pleasant orchestral music continues) (audience applauds) - Welcome to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

Today we present artist Andrea Carlson, who provides visibility for Indigenous peoples and helps us all recognize that right here we live and work on Anishinaabe land.

I wanna thank our presenting partner, the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

They have been integral in realizing this moment.

Also, our series partners, Detroit Public Television, and Michigan Radio, 91.7 FM.

This program today is part of a much bigger project on campus.

Andrea Carlson's new commission, which is at UMMA, or the University of Michigan Museum of Art, "Future Cache."

This celebrates the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, who are from the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

The installation features a collection of paintings and texts sharing the story of the Burt Lake Band and centering Indigenous voices.

This is on view now at UMMA and will remain in the Vertical Gallery for the next two years.

So go and check it out.

And a great moment to check it out coming up soon, an UMMA Feel Good Friday.

They had one last Friday, which was very fun, I went to.

The next one coming up is organized with Native American Heritage Month Committee and the Native American Student Association.

This will be on Friday, November 11th.

Feel Good fried bread, featuring the Indigenous dancer and TikTok sensation Notorious Cree.

So don't miss that.

Okay, folks, 19 days till midterm elections.

So we have this wonderful thing right now on campus between UMMA and the Stamps Creative Campus Voting Project.

You can get all these things done at the Ann Arbor City Clerk's Office right here on campus in two locations, at UMMA and the Duderstadt.

Deadline coming up next Monday is sort of the initial deadline for the simplest way that you can register to vote.

You can still register to vote till November 8th.

But Monday is the easiest way of doing it without having to prove residency.

We will have a Q&A today.

We have microphones set up here and here at the end of the aisle.

So if you have a question when we get to that point, come on down.

And if you're in the balcony, you'll have to come down here for that.

All right, now to introduce our speaker today, please welcome associate curator of photography at UMMA and exhibition curator of "Future Cache," Jennifer Friess.

- Woo!

(audience applauding) - Good evening, everyone.

It is my honor to welcome artist Andrea Carlson to Ann Arbor this week.

Andrea's insightful artistic practice surfaces entangled cultural narratives.

Her paintings and drawings are populated with allegories of consumption, possession, and display, while her temporary outdoor artworks often address ideas of land and belonging.

In doing so, she makes visible the live stories and practices of Indigenous peoples.

She does this while also holding institutions, museums in particular, accountable for their ongoing complicity in the erasure of Indigenous histories and presence.

Her work is in both national and international collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada.

Most recently, Andrea was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant and is a 2022 United States Artist Fellow.

Andrea is co-featured in the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art and the Front International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.

Beyond her artistic practice, Andrea is a writer, curator, and lecturer.

She's also a co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, the only Native art center in Chicago.

Andrea's exhibition at UMMA titled "Future Cache" focuses on the ongoing story of the Cheboiganing Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, who were violently forced from their land on the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula on October 15th, 1900, when the county sheriff and a local landowner claiming a right to the land set fire to the bands village on Burt Lake, the geographical heart of their ancestral lands.

The... Or sorry.

The University of Michigan benefits from the tragic displacement of the Cheboiganing Band, as part of the U of M Bio Station now sits on this land.

Centering the experience of Indigenous visitors, Andrea's "Future Cache" is meant to foster a sense of belonging and self-determination, a space for visibility for Indigenous visitors.

I wanna extend a special thanks to the members of the Cheboiganing Band, some of whom are attending tonight.

Yes.

(audience applauds) To Margaret Newton and Michael Zimmerman Jr. for their counsel and translations for the exhibition.

Ethriam Brammer for his generous guidance, enthusiasm, and support.

Mark Turcotte for sharing his poetry with us tonight.

And a sincere thank you to Andrea for being such a thoughtful partner in the creation of this exhibition.

This project has brought so many people together.

There have been so many moments of serendipity, coincidence, and deep connection.

I'm forever grateful to Andrea for her kindness and generosity.

She is truly the gravity at the center drawing us all together.

So join me in welcoming Andrea Carlson.

(audience applauding) - Woo!

- [Audience Member] Woo-woo!

- Well, I'm not crying.

(chuckles) (speaks in Ojibwe) Andrea Carlson.

(speaking in Ojibwe) My name is Andrea Carlson.

I am Turtle Clan Ojibwe from Grand Portage, Minnesota.

And I currently live in Chicago.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for listening to me today.

In the early morning hours of October 15th, 1900, a land prospector, a sheriff, and a number of men went onto the Burt Lake Band, the Cheboiganing Native community, and evicted 77 homes, at least 77 homes of Ottawa and Ojibwe people.

It was in the pouring rain.

So they were given a little bit of time to gather up their belongings.

And they were able to keep their belongings dry by sitting on their suitcases.

This is a really hard, hard story.

It belongs to the Burt Lake people.

Part of Indigenous people's experience is this feeling of separation, this feeling of being cut apart into bits and pieces, ideas of blood quantum that is meant to dissect our bodies into little tiny pieces.

Taking us from our land, taking our children from us, it's a colonial tactic that is meant to sever us from ourselves.

When I was thinking about what I was going to put together for this talk, I was thinking about the idea of wholeness, the idea of belonging, and how a lot of Native people are constantly thinking that maybe in the future there will be some healing or some repair.

And it is my understanding that we shouldn't wait for the future, that wholeness is today, and that the future is today as well.

So I wanted to kind of frame this conversation in that.

I'm going to be talking about a lot of things that have displaced Native folks.

Very long.

So October 15th, 1900 is not the end.

It's not the end for the Burt Lake Band.

They're right now in a struggle for federal reaffirmation, federal recognition.

And this has been a longstanding struggle for them.

In this slide at the top is the Burt Lake Band's village in 1890.

This is about 10 years prior to the burn-out.

The picture below is Mary Na-go-mah, who was 87 years old when the burn-out took place.

In this picture, she is selling wares to tourists.

She's selling birch-bark baskets, handmade birch-bark baskets filled with blueberries and quillwork.

So when the burn-out happened, imagine this 85-year-old woman being forced to walk, being forced to travel in the pouring rain, to find refuge in neighboring communities.

She didn't live very long past the burn-out.

Below her, the image is of the Shananaqueta family, which a number of Burt Lake descendants come from that family, descend from that family.

I didn't learn this story until 2019 when the Chicago Architecture Biennial was taking place at the Chicago Cultural Center.

A number of my friends had work in that exhibition.

A number of native artists had work in that exhibition.

And I was very excited to see their contributions.

It was the first time the Biennial had a land acknowledgement, and it was pretty exciting for Native folks.

It just happened right the tail end of the before times, before the pandemic.

And so it was one of these things where you could learn about.

And then when we all went indoors for the pandemic, it was something that stayed with me and sat with me.

But prior to the shutdown, I was able to meet the co-founders of the Settler Colonial Cities Project, which is actually based on Ann Arbor.

Ana Maria Leon and Andrew Herscher are the co-founders from here, faculty members here.

Anna Maria is now at Harvard.

But for their contribution to the Biennial, they actually looked at the building itself, the Chicago Cultural Center.

The marble was quarried and assembled by exploited labor.

They would discuss things like the Haymarket riots and how people that were in prison were forced to work on building that building.

There was plaques up that talked about the Tiffany Mosaics.

An aspect of this exhibition that really stuck with me was that they utilized the windows in the Cultural Center to discuss the erasure and seizure of Native land.

And they forced you to look at the landscape and acknowledge that this is Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi land.

On the left, you can see, "You are looking at unceded land."

You can find all of this information, all of their research, a lot of images on their website at Settler Colonial Cities Project.

So they taught me about the land that I was living on.

And they also taught me about Burt Lake Band, planted a seed in the back of my mind (chuckling) that I didn't know what to do with.

But Indigenous people all carry these, at least one of these genocidal stories in the back of our minds.

This is the shoreline of Chicago that has been filled in.

You can see like kind of the dark, heavy line of what the previous shoreline looked like, and then all of the other bits and pieces that have been filled, that has been pushed into the lake in order to make land.

So when treaties cede land, when they give up land for settlers, they were often signed in duress and oftentimes would not be held up today on any legal standard.

But they're what we have.

They're a tool that we have to fight colonization.

Treaties are the highest law of the land according to the U.S. Constitution.

So when the city filled in the lake in order to make land, that land is not ceded.

It's unceded.

It's not ceded because there's no treaty that covers it.

It's land without a treaty.

Every bit of land that doesn't have a treaty is not ceded.

So when you go to Chicago and you go to the Art Institute, or if you go to the Field Museum or the Shedd Aquarium, all of that is on unceded land.

You're on land where Chicago tells its story, where Chicago talks about itself, where Chicago tells the stories of other cultures.

But you're on land that shouldn't be.

You're on land that was stolen.

So in 1917, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi took the city to to court.

It went up through the various legal apparatus to the Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the city and claimed that the Potawatomi had abandoned this landfill land, which is absolutely bonkers, is, I think, the official language.

This quote is very important to me, and I think that everywhere you go, this is applicable with whatever nation's land you're on.

The historian and lawyer John Low, he's Pokagon Band Potawatomi, says, "The Potawatomi say, "'We walk on the bones of our ancestors "'to solemnize our connections "'to the ones who came before us, "'as well as to demonstrate "'our intimate connection to the land.'"

Whenever you walk around anywhere, I want you to remember that the land that you're walking on has been cycled and recycled through the bodies of Indigenous people and plants and animals, and that wherever you are, wherever you place your feet, is Indigenous land.

So with this knowledge, (chuckles) I was commissioned by the city of Chicago to make artwork for five giant banners that connect Upper and Lower Wacker Drive on the Chicago River.

This was the third installment.

There was two other artists that made work prior.

It's a really important place in Chicago.

It's right off of Michigan and the Chicago River.

It's really close to the Blackhawks merchandise store, which is a problematic place for Native folk.

On DuSable Bridge, there are four bridgehouses, and one of them has an image of a dead Native person on it, the very romantic imagery on the bridgehouse.

So putting, "You're on Potawatomi land," on that not ceded, unceded landfill area is a huge message.

It has to go there.

People have to know that the Potawatomi came back for this land, and it was a denied them.

So I put that there.

I worked with Kyle Malott from Pokagon Band.

He speaks Potawatomi.

And he helped me with the Potawatomi language first and then put English on after.

And I had reached out to a number of people at Pokagon Band.

And after it went up... You know, when it's just an idea, it just lives in people's mind, and they maybe can't imagine how big or scale of how things could end up.

And so after the banners came up, I was contacted by a staff member at Pokagon Band, and they were very worried that this was a guerilla art action, that I had just put these up on my own and that I could be in trouble with the city.

And I was like, "No, the city paid for it.

"I was selected by the city, "and this is the message that I wanted."

And then there was almost a disbelief and, "Wait, so the city is acknowledging that it took it?

"Well, then maybe give it back."

So this project was very, very important for me.

And I think of myself as an artist dissolved into the background.

Because these banners, which are up for at least another year, have become so beloved to Potawatomi folks living in Chicago or visiting Chicago to see this affirmation in a public space.

But meanwhile, I also wanna, you know, acknowledge that I still have this seed.

You know, this is a couple years ago.

But I still have this seed for Burt Lake in the back of my mind.

So I was contacted by Jennifer, who introduced me, to work on the Watershed exhibition that is coming down at the museum right now.

But she also asked if I would be interested in a commission in the Vertical Gallery at the museum.

And I was at this point in my career where I was saying no to everything so I could spend more time just in the studio making work that didn't have site-specific content.

But I remembered, you know, when she contacted me, I'm like, "Wait, you're in Ann Arbor, "University of Michigan?"

I was, you know, thinking of the story of Burt Lake and what I had been told.

And I said yes.

I said, "I'm interested in that, "but for a very specific reason."

And that is because I feel that there is still more acknowledgement of the burn-out than is happening right now.

This is Colonial Point, it says.

This is part of a map that's in situ at what was the burn-out.

There's a little cross.

I kinda want you to flag that cross in your mind.

"You Are Here" is actually where the sign is.

If you go up the shore from that, there's a red cross.

That comes up later in the work as an important place.

And there're nature preserves that are on, the Cheboiganing Nature preserve and the Little Traverse Conservancy where the burn-out happened.

This image I like better as a map.

You can kind of see, you know, between Douglas Lake and Burt Lake, you can see where the Biological Station is.

You can see Colonial Point.

And then you can see where, you know, if you can see past my body, (chuckles) there's the 1900 village burn-out, the red star shape at the bottom.

So you can kind of tell where at Burt Lake things are.

I like this map because it shows that Burt Lake and the community is not just super located at this small spot, that all of these pits, it says "Pit Count, Pit Field," all of these various pits are caches.

What a cache is.

I'll go to the next side.

What a cache is a hole in the ground that would sometimes be lined with clay and wood.

And you could keep your supplies through the winter, your supplies for traveling.

It's come almost like dry storage, which were really, really important for surviving rough winters.

So when I think of the cache almost metaphorically, I think of this space where we can put things in for our future, to imagine ourselves richly into the future, to imagine robust survival.

So I'm using the title of the exhibition, "Future Cache," to almost like Indigenous futurism, to imagine ourselves, you know, surviving.

You can see on the left, NASA gave a grant to locate through imaging where the various caches are that still exist.

Apparently these caches were from 1000 AD to 1600.

And then I'll come back to this slide just so you can see again the locations of all of these caches.

You know, the largest pyramids, if you can read them, they're kinda hard to see with the contrast, but 21 to 45 pits in that location.

So they just blanketed the landscape.

There's a colonial tendency, as I said, to divide up our bodies, to divide and conquer.

A lot of other maps that describe this area, there's lines through to say, "This is where the village was.

"This is where the campus is.

"This is who owns what."

And I think it's important when you see this, that those lines are post-colonial.

I like to call them like, like, land drawings.

So they're like some kind of earthworks.

We draw these lines all over maps just to carve them up.

But this type of, where you can kinda see how the land was actually used to store things.

There's a chain of lakes that connect the larger lakes.

And so Burt Lake was very important for Indigenous travel, like a highway.

We could collect our goods, we could collect our supplies, we could drop supplies off, and use the chain of lakes to get through to larger waterways.

That's the Cheboiganing.

That's that channel between places.

That's what Burt Lake calls themselves.

Here is a picture of Charles Wilson by the signage at the Cheboiganing Nature Preserves that tell the story.

I think the third slide that I showed is next to him with the picture of Mary and maps of the location.

So when I was thinking of what to include in this exhibition, I was thinking of these more or less humble signs, even though very, very important signs at that physical location.

So when people ask for monuments, when they're asking for their stories to be told, I think it's really important that we go big sometimes.

(chuckles) There's justice in that.

So there is a three-story wall in the museum that has both English and Ojibwe that retells what happened in the burn-out and ongoing federal reaffirmation struggle in a very succinct way, but it's the voice of Burt Lake.

It was decided by Tribal Council.

So this is not me telling Burt Lake's story.

It's me allowing for the space in the exhibition for it to be writ large.

It's not me telling the story, but it's their voice.

And I think that it's very important to acknowledge that this is not coming from me or the institution, that it's coming from the band themselves.

I had notes, and I'm not even following them.

So if you look at the other wall kind of adjacent to the giant text wall, there are various things, various elements that make up this exhibition.

Jen and I were able to go to the Anthropological Archeology Museum on campus, and the curators there found various objects from Burt Lake.

And I don't know if Burt Lake members knew that the museum had objects.

This is the west side of Burt Lake.

Can see their acquisition numbers.

And they're from around the time of the burn-out.

So if you want to see those objects, they're in the exhibition in a display case.

I will briefly say that there's a ladle.

Above the ladle, there's an image, a painting that says, "He scraped the kettle."

And I'm gonna tell the story of why that's in there.

There's a cultural sensitivity or prohibition on men scraping kettles.

I was up in Canada with my namesake.

And we had just finished eating a meal, and I was asked to, you know, scrape the kettle and put away the food.

And I thought it was kind of... You know, I knew the teaching, and I was a little bit annoyed.

I was thinking it was sexist.

So (chuckles) I protested a little bit, like, "Oh yeah, 'cause I'm a woman, "I gotta go do that thing."

And the elder very patiently said, "Well, no."

And this is actually not, like, any secret teaching or anything to be too nervous about.

And we joked.

You know, I don't mind going and doing it myself either.

But he's like, "I'll tell ya where the teaching comes from."

He said back, historically, when we had no resources, and we were starving, and there was no food to go around, and everyone had to divide up the food in very scant waves, it was seen as very selfish for men to rush to the kettle and take the last little bits for themselves.

It was looked at as selfish and rude and mean-spirited.

So there just became this kind of ongoing rule that men didn't do that, that women would go to the kettle and make sure everyone else was fed.

So I was thinking about the idea of land, and how it's carved up, and how so much is taken from Native people when it comes to the land, and how this land prospector, the man who paid the back taxes and wanted to steal the land from Burt Lake, he was scraping the kettle.

He was finding the last little bits owned by Native people and taking them for himself.

So I think using that teaching to describe this man's selfishness is why that text is in those works.

Another aspect of this exhibition is broadsides.

I am a huge, great fan of poetry and poets in general.

(chuckles) Love poets, and I love poetry.

I also collect broadsides.

So this is also kind of self-serving for me.

(chuckles) There are four broadsides, and then there is a fifth that's kind of off to the side by "October 15th, 1900 is not the end."

The image near the "October 15th is not the end" is actually the names of people who are buried at the grave site.

I told you on that one map to note where the red cross was.

Those are the names of people who are buried at that grave site.

But the four poems, I think, are very, very helpful.

There's a poem by Margaret Newton in both Ojibwe and English, and she worked very hard on translating this exhibition with her husband Mark.

But definitely read these poems.

There's another poem by Heid Erdrich, who is a long-time friend and collaborator from Turtle Mountain.

And because all poetry comes from mountains, there's also a poem by Mark Turcotte, who is also Turtle Mountain.

And a poem by Laura Parkey.

She's no longer with us, but these words are very beautiful and moving.

But because I've heard myself talk so much, I will invite my good friend, Mark Turcotte, he's the author of "Exploding Chippewas" and a fantastic poet and friend, dear, dear friend, to come out and read his work, and then I'll come back.

- Thanks.

(audience applauds) Hello.

You can say "hi" back.

It's okay.

- [Audience] Hi.

(Mark speaks in Ojibwe) My name is Mark Turcotte.

I'm a proud member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, Anishinaabe people from Turtle Mountain, North Dakota, like, that far from the Canadian border.

(podium rattles) Oops, sorry.

We're known for our grace.

(audience laughs) I didn't get in that class.

Sorry.

This is a rare occasion, for me to be slightly nervous.

And the reason I'm slightly nervous is because while Andrea was speaking, I was becoming more and more aware of what's going on, and that is the awesome responsibility and care that is required for Andrea to do what she is doing on behalf of the Bird Lake people.

So I wanna acknowledge that, Andrea.

Thank you.

Yeah.

(audience applauds) And I also wanna acknowledge everybody at UMMA.

You know, because without the venues, without that help, people often say, "What can we do?

"What can I do to help Native people?"

These are the kinda things you can do.

Help them tell their own stories.

Don't tell their stories.

Help them tell their stories.

So thanks, UMMA.

I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibition tomorrow.

I haven't seen it yet.

I hear that my poem is in there somewhere.

Yeah.

I do wanna mention, even though it's seems like I've scraped a lot of kettles, (audience chuckles) I've only scraped pans that used to have pudding in them.

That's my big problem.

Sweetheart, I love you.

I'm glad you're out there.

This is called "A Very Distant Drumming."

And I need to say, also in transparency, this poem is not specifically about the Burt Lake incident, the Burt Lake history and story.

Unfortunately, there are so many such stories in Indigenous America that this is based on some stories that people told me and a dream that I had about my own father and just a combination of things.

But it's just a perfect example of how the sadness and the tragedy and the hurt and the healing is shared by everybody.

"We could see the smoke for miles, "and we feared that we were next.

"We could see the smoke drifting "beyond the waters up over the hills.

"And it seemed that we could feel "the heat of flame upon our skins, "our faces flushed and tightened.

"In our mind, we saw the flames, "the long tongues wrapped all around the crooked shacks, "the tongues licking in through the windows, "eating up the curtains, and chewing down the walls, "across the floors, devouring the sad chairs, "the sad leaning tables.

"In our mind, we listened to the long tongues, "but there was no sound.

"Everything was enraged and quiet.

"Silence.

"And we remembered our father's breath "like a veil in the chilly air.

"He was pointing to the deer, "the small buck standing at the edge of the clearing.

"It sniffed and pawed at a patch of moss.

"Our father's breath like a veil "as motioned for us to be still, to listen.

"He lifted the bow, sighted, then closed his eyes.

"We closed our own eyes.

"And we heard it faintly, a very distant drumming.

"We heard it grow in our ears, maybe in our bellies.

"We heard it grow.

"It was a drum so distinct "that we could see the skin of it vibrate.

"We heard it grow, drum as distinct as a heartbeat, "true as a heartbeat.

"It was a drum so true "that we could hear the blood push through.

"We smelled the meat of it, "tasted the life of it, true as a drum.

"And we saw in our mind the deer's breath "like a veil in the air.

"And we felt our father's fingers "let go the sinew, let go the string.

"And the drum was a heartbeat, "was a heartbeat stopped and sudden, "and nothing but breath, like a veil in the air.

"Silence.

"In our mind, the long tongues, silent.

"Flickering yellow snakes moving up and under the blankets "into the beds, the sagging beds.

"Flickering tongue snake, yellow snake "winding its way beneath the blankets "to quietly devour the fingers there, "the dead fingers of those who slumped and coughed "and twisted in the beds, "wrapped in fire and disease, "not knowing they were, "not knowing they were wrapped themselves.

"We could see the smoke for miles, "and we feared that we were next.

"Standing in the snow, "wrapped in our blankets, we listened.

"In our mind, we saw that there is nothing so black "as that which has been burned.

"We could see the smoke for miles.

"And we feared, we knew that they were coming.

"We listened for the snort of the horses, "moan the wagon wheels, the echo of the guns, "standing there together, "our breath like a veil in the air."

Thank you.

(audience applauds) - Ugh, dammit.

(laughs) It's really hard to follow that.

I've got, like, goose bumps.

Okay, back to me.

Another feature of the exhibition has these kind of abstract forms.

The name of this series is "The Assomption," "L'Assomption Sashes for Carrying Things "That No Longer Exist."

Let me try that again.

"L'Assomption Sashes for Carrying Things "That No Longer Exist."

You couldn't imagine these as sashes.

Assomption sashes are these finger-woven sashes that were used to tie various things to your body.

If you were on the run or if you were part of the French fur trade, you would tie bundles of pelts to your body with these sashes.

I've been thinking about that idea just metaphorically the same way I've been thinking about caches, about this idea of carrying things that are most important to you and how so many Indigenous Native people are dislocated from their Indigenous places.

So right now, L'assomption sashes are associated with the Metis people.

It's almost a national emblem of pride.

This is what they look like.

They're very gorgeous.

But before they were fully part of Metis identity, they were used by Ojibwe people and French people alike to carry things.

You can see the Assomption sash at the bottom here, this carried earthbound abstraction.

In the top section of this piece is a constellation, is some stars in the sky.

I found this program online where you can put any location on the globe.

You can drop a pin anywhere on the planet.

And then you can put in the date and time, and it'll show you what constellations were in the sky for the date, time, and location on the planet.

This is what came up when I put October 15th, 1900 in the early morning hours at Burt Lake.

So these are the constellations overhead when Burt Lake was actively being burnt out.

For me, I see the sky as...

It's strangely, it's even ironic to say that it's maybe very grounding to think that the planets carry on their cycles and do their things when some very tragic things can happen to us on Earth.

Two other large parts of this exhibition.

You know, Burt Lake is now full of mansions, and it's a resort area.

So I found all of these postcards around Burt Lake.

And I was thinking about this space, but as, like, maybe decolonized.

Which is, you know, for me more of something that we're working towards but maybe can never reach.

So I took that beach, and I put it in this piece, but I took all the tourists out.

I raptured them away.

And when you look at the paper, when you look at the space, it's like a portal that you might be able to walk in.

It's over the scale of a human where you could maybe enter that space.

But then you're reminded that this is a painting on paper.

You see the edges of the paper, and you can't enter that decolonized space.

And that's often how a lot of Indigenous people feel about the idea of being able to decolonize any space, is that it is something that lives in our mind that we can never fully access.

And this painting is reminding us of that.

At least for me.

I don't know.

The cemetery at Burt Lake has a sign that you go under in order to get into where the graves are.

On one side, it has the flag for Burt Lake, and on the back it says, "Give me the knowledge "so I may have kindness for all."

So I superimposed this over a small section of the grave that is there.

If you are actually standing in that location, there's this kind of dark strip.

I've removed or I've raptured or taken away mansions.

You would see the rooftops of various mansions that are built on the cemeteries of Burt Lake people.

After the land prospector took the land from Burt Lake people, there's, I think it's a Father Baraga church.

He wrote the Ojibwe-English dictionary.

And the land prospector used that church to house pigs in.

Here's the sign that I was telling you about.

And you can see more of the... Two slides left, and then we'll go to questions.

I use a lot of pattern in my work.

You'll see a lot of black and white.

I want very jarring, chewing-on-your-face type imagery.

So you wanna get past it sometimes to get to these landscapes.

There's a researcher by the name of Crystal Migwans, Mikinaak Migwans, that researches mat making.

And apparently, when Native nations, when Anishinaabe people went into contracts and treaties with other native nations, we'd have a mat made.

And then we'd sit on it together, and we'd smoke a pipe and agree on certain terms.

Then you would give that mat to the people who have agreed to those terms.

And then it's a visual reminder or a contract of what you agreed to.

It's hard to wiggle out of an agreement when everyone remembers sitting on that place.

(chuckles) And so they're all different, all the designs and patterns on them are different for those reasons.

Last slide.

And this is just on me.

Why is a Ojibwe, Grand Porter Ojibwe woman that lives in Chicago interested in a story of, you know, a relative nation, but in a different place?

I am from Grand Portage Ojibwe.

That's where my family descends.

I took this picture from the highway.

This is not a drone shot.

This is what Grand Portage looks like from the highway.

When Indigenous people have their land, this is often what it can look like.

It can also look destroyed, and it can look like a national sacrifice zone, but it can also look like this.

Grand Portage lost the island Isle Royale in Lake Superior two years after the Treaty of Lapointe in 1854 was signed, where not a single Grand Portage member signed that initial treaty that took away our land.

Two years later, the Isle Royale headed a rider, an amendment, where the island was taken from us.

At that point, we understood what having ceded land felt like.

We had two years of it, and we understood what it meant.

So when Isle Royale was taken away, they say that there wasn't a single dry eye in my community.

Isle Royale isn't very far from Grand Portage, but it is currently part of Michigan.

There's a national park on it.

It's now registered as a national park.

And a lot of people in Minnesota will say, "Oh, it's so close to Minnesota, "why isn't it part of Minnesota?

"Why is it part of Michigan?"

And I'm always thinking that it's such a bizarre thing to say to someone from Grand Portage, when it's like, it shouldn't be Michigan or Minnesota.

It should be Grand Portage again.

So when I... And here's a map of where it is.

You can kind of see the Upper Peninsula and where Grand Portage National Monument is.

So this story of Burt Lake also resonates with me with having land removed, with being absolutely in love with a place and then not being willing to give it up.

The good news about Isle Royale is Michigan is now flying one of Grand Portage's flags on Isle Royale.

But with that, thank you so much for being here.

I am going to do some Q&A.

But I just wanted to thank you all.

(audience applauds) - Okay, folks.

So thank you so much, Andrea.

Anyone that has questions, we have microphones down here at the front of these two aisles.

Please come down and line up.

Students, if you're having to rush off to another course, please do so quietly.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Andrea.

- [Andrea] Is it on?

The mic is not.

Go ahead.

- Lance, do we have the microphone down here?

(Andrea chuckles) Let's just wait a moment.

(speaks faintly) Filter for a second.

- I think it'll take a moment.

- Is your mic working now?

Well.

(Andrea chuckles) (person speaking faintly) Right.

(laughing) Lance, we have the microphone house right?

- Okay.

(speaker tapping microphone) - There we go.

Okay.

Awesome.

So thank you again for being here.

I'm not gonna say this nearly as well as I had planned out in my head.

But I'm a fine arts major and also an anthropological archeology major.

And in recent years, I've been trying to find ways to respectfully turn my artwork towards these subjects.

And most recently, I've also been really interested in just historical connections to the land and making sure that those are respectfully depicted, that people know about them, et cetera.

Considering your work, what you do, and your own experiences, do you have any insight or tips for artists who don't wanna tell other people's stories, but want to give those opportunities for people when they want to do their own research?

- That's a excellent question, because I don't actually have an answer, and it depends on the community.

I know that it is very often difficult to reach everyone, to reach all of the stakeholders.

I've experienced this.

I don't know, I should move.

I have experienced it where I was a language learner, I learned the language, and then came across an artist's work that I felt I should have known about before it had gone up.

And I felt hurt about it.

I felt like an outsider to this thing that I should feel like I'm an insider too.

So I'm very sensitive to that, to that feeling of when someone's trying to be inclusive, of things being exclusive, or feeling ancillary or on the outside of some decision making.

So I don't have an answer.

It's something that I'm learning, and I'm trying to be sensitive and make sure that I'm doing it the best way that I know how and can.

You know, there's obviously resources and restrictions.

But I definitely encourage to try as much as you can to build relationships and to build trust.

But I'm not...

I mean, there's Burt members here.

I don't know if I've failed you.

(chuckles) But as honestly as possible, I think that even having a sensitivity to that now while you're developing a career and research, I think is a good place to be.

- Thank you.

Okay.

(taps microphone) Don't know if it's on.

Thank you.

- Hello?

Oh, sorry.

- [Andrea] Is that one off too?

Oh, I think... - Hello.

Hi.

Thank you for your installation.

And I'd also like to thank the members of the Burt Lake Band who are on campus.

I'd like to welcome you to the University of Michigan campus as a student.

I'm a descendant of the Little Traverse Bay Bands, Odawa Indians.

And my question is if you know if the University of Michigan has reached out at all to the Burt Lake Band to consult on what to do with the land that the University of Michigan possesses but should not have title to.

And if not, if there are any University of Michigan administrators here.

No, of course there aren't.

I just hope that your artwork maybe starts that conversation.

Thank you.

- Oh, thank you so much for that.

I think I may have left it out of my presentation.

But when I was in the early stages of conceptualizing this, I reached out to John Petoskey, who was a grad student in the program.

And he and Joseph Gone, the director of American Indian Centers here, had done a lot of early leg work of pushing at the university to make sure that this was acknowledged and to do things better.

And there was a study done.

If you go to the Bio Station's website, they do have links to various studies that were done and to the letter that was written back to Petoskey and Gone.

And I think that that's really important, to see that there was just activism already here in this space.

The wheels had already been turning.

When I reached out to John, I wish he was here, I told him about wanting to do this, wanting to do, like, a monumental text or something that could maybe even satisfy some of their asks of the university.

And he said, "Don't do that."

He said, "Don't let your work "do the work that they need to be doing."

And that was excellent advice.

This show by no means cancels out the university's responsibility to Burt Lake.

That has to happen between Tribal Council and the leadership here at the university.

And I was nervous that people would see this show as, like, me being a tool of the university.

And I have to tell you that, like, this wasn't...

When Jennifer offered me the show, it wasn't to do a Burt Lake show.

(chuckles) It was, you know, about my artwork, and I felt a responsibility, or that this place is complex, and that complexity needs to show through through the exhibition.

But that was maybe more what I wanted to see in a space.

But thank you so much for that observation.

And I think that John Petoskey is Grand Traverse Band.

So yeah, he was helpful early on.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Hello.

I think you touched on this a little bit, speaking about how there's, like, you know, colonialist thinking to, like, chop things up and all that.

But just following that track and maybe possibly touching on the subject of Lake Land Back, what do you think is like a tangible goal that we should be working towards to kinda move away from, like, hard borders and private land and woodlands that are fenced around?

You know what I'm... Yeah.

Like, what do you think should be?

- I mean, I have a lot of feelings and thoughts there too.

I'm definitely a big supporter of Land Back efforts, hashtag #LandBack.

So personally, because I have been talking about it so much, my grandmother died about a year and a half ago, and her parcel of of land... My grandpa was a commercial fisherman on Lake Superior, Scandinavian guy, and she's Ojibwe.

So when she died, I told her I was going to buy her land.

There's a fish house, and it has about 200 feet of shoreline.

So I'm in the process of buying her land, to put, when the mortgage was paid off, to have it go back to Grand Portage.

So I don't have children.

So it's something that I am situated in a little bit of a different way.

But every bit of my artwork that I sell is now kind of going to this little fund in order to pay down the mortgages on these properties.

'Cause I bought the land next door too.

I would like to put an artist residency, you know, live there, use the places as much as possible.

And then when I die, make sure that Grand Portage can keep it going and use it in a way that benefits the entire community.

So that's personally.

I'm definitely into Land Back.

As far as organizations, there's, you know, a few.

A few organizations have been given buildings and property in various places, but I think that when it comes to Land Back, it has to go to Native nations.

It can't go to nonprofits.

I mean, it can.

There's a lot of, you know, conservation trusts and places that are working environmentally.

And I think that it's kind of beholden on them to also work with Native nations to make sure that they're conserving in a way that's indigenous and respectful of Indigenous people and to take Land Back seriously.

But yeah, I have a lot of feelings about Land Back and a lot of strategies.

And you know, I've been been thinking about it a lot lately just because of my own goals that way.

It's also really expensive to sometimes care for land, to plant indigenous trees, and to care for the soil.

So if you have land, and you give it to Native folks, I am also thinking about the idea of like a fund or something to care for the land if you want it to have staying power as well.

So those are...

I mean, this is maybe not very exciting, but this is kind of what I like to talk about all the time.

So.

(chuckles) - [Student] Thank you.

Thanks.

- Hello.

First of all, sorry for all the, like, disruption during the first part of your talk.

It wasn't a reflection on you.

It was the balcony.

We were told it was closed when it was...

So sorry for making lots of noise during that.

I actually stopped at UMMA on the way here, and I had seen some of your work, and I recognized your name and was like, "Ooh, that's who's talking tonight."

And I was gonna ask if any of it, like, it looked textiles fired, but you covered that.

Do you make any textiles yourself?

- Aww.

I wish I did.

I wish I did.

I stock a few people online that make the bulrush mats.

And if anyone here knows how to do those Anishinaabe-style mats, I would love to be a student.

But it's something where there's just a handful of people that continue to do it and continue to harvest the various materials.

You can take that inner, like, skin of cedar, and you can make cedar mats or there's bulrush materials, and, you know, various other materials.

So I've been, you know, definitely stocking my grandma's land for these materials.

And I think that, you know, maybe in my near future I will be learning how to actually finger weave or make mats.

But that's an excellent question.

I am definitely a willing student if anyone wants to teach me.

(speaks in Ojibwa) - Thank you so much.

- Hi.

So I wrote my question down 'cause I get nervous.

(chuckles) So do you think that Indigenous representation in, like, fictional media and stories plays any important role in supporting Indigenous people and communities?

And if so, how do you think non-Indigenous creators should go about that representation?

- Yeah, I read a lot of Indigenous writers, and a lot of it is fiction.

My artwork is on a number of books that are published out there.

I think that we need to see ourselves in a lot of situations and in a lot of contexts.

And some of those need to be, you know, of the mind or made up or fiction.

Because I think that that's part of how we have a robust showing in every genre.

And in every, you know, angle and walk of life, we need to be alongside.

There are things like, you know, a lot of Indigenous people, Indigenous futurists, science fiction writers, will point out that, like, the "Star Wars" franchise will be actually talking about indigeneity and, like, tribalism through aliens.

Or that the story of colonization is the story of, like, space invasion.

(chuckles) And that it's maybe, you know, historically with white science fiction writers, they're imagining what it would be like for them if they were invaded the same way they've invaded everyone else.

(chuckles) So trying out different experiences has been, you know, a long tried-and-true place where fiction writers go to in, you know, white spheres.

So I do think that it's also maybe good for expression for Native folks to just wear all the hats, do all the things, write all the stuffs.

And it's good for me too as a consumer of fiction and literature.

I'm also an Indigenous futurist.

And, you know, I don't feel like anything should be taken away from us, especially, you know, imagined spaces.

So thank you.

That's a good question.

- Thank you.

- Is that it?

Can I be done?

(laughs) (audience laughs) (audience applauds) Thank you.

(speaks in Ojibwa) Thank you guys for coming.