The National Museum of the American Indian’s traveling exhibit
IndiVisible: African - Native American Lives in the Americas will make its first Portland appearance at the 1st annual Jim Pepper Native Arts Festival,
August 7 – 10 and then will return to Portland through October – November for
an extended run at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus, in the heart of
the City’s historically segregated African American neighborhoods.
Admission to the IndiVisible exhibit at Jim PepperFest
2013 will be free to the public, open 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Wednesday – Saturday
August 7 – 10, at Parkrose HS Performing Arts Center in NE Portland.
We will be requesting donations of two items of nonperishable
food for the Oregon Food Bank.
Jimi Hendrix, rock
legend
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will
know peace.”
—Jimi Hendrix
The rock-and-roll innovator
Jimi Hendrix often spoke proudly of his Cherokee grandmother. He was one of
many African Americans who cite family traditions in claiming Native ancestry. Photo: Courtesy Experience Music
Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
IndiVisible:
African-Native American Lives in the Americas was produced by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
the American Indian (NMAI), the National Museum of African American History and
Culture (NMAAHC) and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
(SITES). The exhibition was made possible in part thanks to the generous
support of an anonymous donor and the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino
Center.
From the National Museum of
the American Indian:
IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the
Americas
A place of belonging. A true
sense of home.
All people share this desire.
For those of dual African American and Native American heritage, this powerful
sense of home has been difficult to find. Because they have not fit into
society’s established racial categories, they’ve been denied a true sense of
belonging.
Despite this challenge, the
life experiences of African-Native American peoples have become a vital part of
our American identity. Faced with centuries of government policies and laws
that systematically oppressed and excluded them, they came together to find
creative and effective ways to fight back. They established new, blended
communities that drew strength from sharing traditions and philosophies. And,
for more than 500 years, with their music, dance, craft, and food,
African-Native Americans developed deeply rich cultural expressions that made
an indelible mark on American life.
For centuries, African American
and Native people have shared cultural traditions and practices, united in
common struggle and forged relationships, families and unique ways of life
throughout the Americas. But at times, racist policy and prejudice divided
these communities and denied their shared heritage. Notable figures in U.S.
history with dual African American and Native American ancestry include Crispus
Attucks, Langston Hughes and Jimi Hendrix. By focusing on the dynamics of race,
community, culture and creativity, “IndiVisible” examines an important and
often overlooked aspect of American history.
Since its premiere on the
National Mall in 2009, the exhibition has traveled to museums and cultural
centers across the country, including the Chieftains Museum in Rome, Ga.; the
Standing Bear Museum in Ponca City, Okla.; New Mexico State University Museum
in Las Cruces, N.M.; the California African American Museum in Los Angeles; and
the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Ala.
The Smithsonian’s National
Museum of the American Indian opens a 20-panel banner exhibition, “IndiVisible:
African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” focusing on the seldom-viewed
history and complex lives of people of dual African American and Native
American ancestry. Through the themes of policy, community, creative resistance
and lifestyles, the exhibition includes stories of cultural integration and the
struggle to define and preserve identity.
The exhibition addresses the
racially motivated laws that have been forced upon Native, African American and
mixed-heritage peoples since the time of Christopher Columbus. Since
precolonial times, Native and African American peoples have built strong
communities through intermarriage, unified efforts to preserve their land and
by taking part in creative resistance. These communities developed constructive
survival strategies over time, and several have regained economic
sustainability through gaming in the 1980s. The daily cultural practices that
define the African-Native American experience through food, language, writing,
music, dance and the visual arts, will also be highlighted in the exhibition.
A 10-minute media piece is
featured with interviews obtained during research and work on the exhibition with
tribal communities across North America. Site work was conducted in Mashpee,
Mass. with the Mashpee Wampanoag community, in Los Angeles with the Creek and
Garifuna communities, with the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Okla., and at the
Tutelo Homecoming Festival in Ithaca, N.Y., which welcomed the Cayuga, Tutelo
and Saponi Indian Nations.
“The topic of African-Native
Americans is one that touches a great number of individuals through family
histories, tribal histories and personal identities,” said Kevin Gover
(Pawnee), director of the museum. “We find commonalities in our shared past of
genocide and in the alienation from our ancestral homelands, and it
acknowledges the strength and resilience we recognize in one another today.”
“The National Museum of African
American History and Culture is proud to have contributed to this important and
thoughtful exhibition,” said museum director Lonnie Bunch. “African American
oral tradition is full of stories about ‘Black Indians,’ with many black
families claiming Indian blood. However, there have been few scholarly
treatments of this subject which, in the end, expresses the basic human desire
of belonging.”
The exhibition was curated by
leading scholars, educators and community leaders, including Gabrielle Tayac
(Piscataway), Robert Keith Collins (African-Choctaw descent), Angela Gonzales
(Hopi), Judy Kertèsz, Penny Gamble-Williams (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag) and
Thunder Williams (Afro-Carib).
The accompanying exhibition
book, “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” edited by
Gabrielle Tayac, features 27 essays from authors across the hemisphere sharing
firstperson accounts of struggle, adaptation and survival and examines such
diverse subjects as contemporary art, the Cherokee Freedmen issue and the
evolution of jazz and blues. The richly illustrated 256-page book is available
in Smithsonian museum stores and through the Bookshop section of the museum’s
Web site at www.AmericanIndian.si.edu/bookshop
The exhibition is produced in
collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture
and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES)
~~~~~~
Jim
PepperFest 2013 tickets are on sale now:
Volunteer:
Sponsor Jim
PepperFest 2013 and help us make history:
Contact: Sean Aaron Cruz
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JimPepperNativeArtsFestival
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