Brown, Black, and Fierce!

We are a collective dedicated to centering the experiences and voices of Indigenous people and people of colour (IBPOC). We are inspired by all the talent and power of Indigenous and racialized artists who survive, thrive, heal, and CREATE things... FESTIVAL!!! Saturday, NOV 7 2015 @ Stanley A. Milner Library, Amiskwaciy (Edmonton)

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Brown Black and Fierce Collective Press Release: FLIP Fest Fiscal Transparency Statement & Sexual Violence Accountability Statement

Press Release:



August 18, 2017 RE: FLIP Fest Fiscal Transparency Statement & Sexual Violence Accountability Statement



As organizers in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory, it has come to our attention that FLIP Festival- a feminist festival-has received funding from Electric Eye, an organization whose co-founder has committed sexual assault against a member of the community, and who has not demonstrated accountability for their actions to the survivor or larger community.  


Brown, Black & Fierce have been in contact with organizers to gain clarification surrounding the decision to accept funds without transparency to the community and for information about *how* folks with intersectional identities were being prioritized/protected, especially those having experienced sexual violence. A statement was issued by the festival organizers further breaking down the funding percentages. However the primary issues of safety, sexual assault, and community accountability were largely skimmed over in their statement, and despite a survivor coming forward saying they were assaulted, the FLIP organizers chose to use words like “alleged” with regard to this report, further invalidating the experiences of a woman-identified individual experiencing sexualized violence. 



Although we recognize the potential agency of this money (from the now defunct organization) to be used in productive and transformative ways- it raises red flags for us in terms of how this decision was made, especially since the survivor of sexual assault has not been involved in this decision, and continues to be ostracized by the festival organizers.



FLIP Festival aims to “create an encouraging and inclusive Lethbridge music community for female and gender-non-conforming artists” and to center intersectionality; however, BB&F does not feel their actions as organizers both performatively and personally demonstrate priority and centering of those who have experienced sexualized violence within their larger community.  To see FLIP Festival’s statement concerning sexual assault, please proceed to the link below carefully (cw: mentions of sexual assault and sexualized violence) https://tinyurl.com/y8s4hlt4 


We believe it's important to use this platform and our privilege to amplify ignored voices but also to provide this information so people can decide how they interact with this festival and the organizers, and reflect on how sexual violence is addressed within the festival and beyond.

*We leave this post for you to aide in making a more informed decision around your involvement with FLIP fest. We do not intend to engage with subsequent comments and discussion on this post but our allies will be monitoring responses and may engage.*

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big love to LAL tonight #brownblackfierce (at Mercury Room Yeg)

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taking up the space to dream @lalforest #brownblackfierce (at Mercury Room Yeg)

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Too Attached is @vivekshraya and @shamikmusic #brownblackfierce (at Mercury Room Yeg)

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if you aren't at Mercury Room yet you should get here 5 minutes ago #brownblackfierce @karimahmusik (at Mercury Room Yeg)

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Next Tuesday! Plenty time to spread the word and gather up items. #ymmfire

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Join us! We're making cards and letters for the youth of #Attawapiskat until 9 tonight at the Milner Library. (at Stanley A. Milner Library)

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we are on instagram ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻 #brownblackfierce

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**image description: a collection of four photos, set on a stark, naturally lit dance stage. the dancer is captured in dynamic movement both grounded on the floor and in the air, with their wheel chair and canes extending their expression. IBPOC Movers! PLEASE SHARE WIDELY! SIGN-UP CLOSES FRIDAY MARCH 11

This summer, CRIPSiE (www.cripsie.ca) is hosting amazing dancer and emerging choreographer, Alice Sheppard. Alice Sheppard is a world-renowned dancer who has performed with Axis Dance and other major integrated dance companies around the world (see https://alicesheppard.com). We will be running a creation intensive with her in August, with weekly rehearsals in September-November to prepare for CRIPSiE's full length show on November 18 & 19, 2016. We are extending an invitation to CRIPSiE artists to apply for this opportunity, as well as to artists associated with the Brown, Black, and Fierce Collective. We will choose up to 14 dancers from those who express an interest here. All artists will be paid at least a $75 performance fee for participating in the final show. Pending grant funding, artists will be paid for rehearsal time as well. No dance training required. We are interested in people who like to move, and want to explore movement and politics together.

Please complete this form by FRIDAY MARCH 11 to be considered for this opportunity. We will contact you before March 16 to talk about your participation in this project.

Need help with this form or have questions? Contact Lindsay at [phone] or [email protected]

SIGN UP FORM--> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Rc9jRirCSZxpVnHPu-njJod3V2A10Q3SUocz8uVXUwg/viewform?c=0&w=1

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Brown, Black, and Fierce! Was featured in AFROPUNK magazine!  “As racialized peoples, and as queer folks, all of us organizers have struggled to make ourselves small enough, palatable enough, and quiet enough for our own survival in [Edmonton],” says Ruby Diaz Smith, a founding member of Brown, Black, and Fierce – a group dedicated to creating a safe space and open dialogue for IPOC, with an emphasis on queer, trans, gender diverse, and two-spirit communities. Along with Alex Felicitas, Leila Sidi, Jenni Roberts and Aurélie Lesueur, this small project has struck a chord amongst a demographic that feels grossly underrepresented in their city.”

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Meet BB&F performance program MC, Jodi Stonehouse!

Jodi Stonehouse is of Cree and Mohawk descent from the Michel First Nation. She has completed her Bachelor of Arts in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta and is now working on her MSc with the Faculty of Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology. Her interests are Indigenous law, urban Indigenous issues, Indigenous women and Indigenous feminism.

Jodi currently is the producer & broadcaster of ACIMOWIN, an Aboriginal Radio program on CJSR. In collaboration with filmmaker Tracie Louttit, they are producing a 6-part internet series entitled “Indigenizing the Airwavez”. This series highlights contemporary Indigenous artists, musicians, and national activists.

Her work is dedicated to uplifting and educating audiences worldwide, and through this program she strives to break down social barriers to improve the perception and understandings of Indigenous people to broader community. Her work celebrates Aboriginal people and their success stories as well as their trials & tribulations to demonstrate the complexity of indigeneity and the 21st Century.

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Anticipating some decompression time after BB&F? Meet healers Setareh and Claire Campbell Williams! Setareh and Claire will offer a healing justice space for IBPOC identified folks post-festival on Sunday, November 8th. Offerings will be free and/or by donation, and will be held in a private residence (address and other info provided upon request/registration). A sign-up sheet for the Healing Justice space will be available on Saturday at 5:30pm in the festival merch room where you register for a session and meet these rad healer-folk face to face! Read their bios and healing offerings below. Setareh is a queer Irani exiled sic femme (genderqueer with cis privilege) who shapeshifts as a holistic health practitioner and artist (based in unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Swxwú7mesh-ulh, and Tsleil-Waututh also known as, Vancouver). She shares their practices of energy healing/Reiki, Shiatsu massage, birthwork (prenatal & postpartum doula work), yoga*, and holistic nutrition on a sliding scale or by trade/donation/and gift economy. She offers medicine/healing work with healing justice principles because access to vibrant individual and collective health on y/our self-determined terms and consensual healing is everyone's birthright. * Despite their certification as a RYT it is her understanding that yoga (interconnectedness with creator/creation through movement, breath, and meditation) is not something that she can teach but it is something that they can share. Setareh’s Offerings: Setareh is offering sliding scale energy healing sessions. The energy work they do stems from her ancestral medicine knowledge and that of Japanese traditions of Reiki and when appropriate also include Shiatsu bodywork, Chi Nei Tsang (internal organ massage,) yogic*, and food medicine healing. What they offer can be done in-person (hands on or hands off) or from long distance and can be offered to the past or future - distance, future, and past work can be scheduled outside of the festival. In-person sessions at the Sunday healing justice space are by donation and for 30 minutes.

For more details about Setareh, the energy healing that she offers please read the attached document. Claire Campbell Williams is a mixed heritage Caribbean, (so called) Canadian, Celtic wombwarrior, shaped by the plains rivers of Cree Anishinabe Territory. She has dedicated herself to the call of birth work & reproductive justice, honoring and remembering Indigenous and Diasporic African traditions. "Birth and reproductive justice is about our contemporary village and our resiliency and capacity for growth. It's about our gift to create and destroy. It is a gift worth defending." Taking control of our reproduction is our means to autonomy and change, literally from the root of our ancestors to the fruit's of the next generation.

Claire currently works and resides in Coast Salish territories, where she attends births as a doula , supports new families and facilitates workshops on reproductive wellness. In her spare time, she gets down to underground hip hop, attends confreres focused on Black History and Justice, and holds babies to make them feel welcome in the village.

Claire’s Offerings Claire is available to offer reproductive counselling and resources from a full spectrum perspective for all bodies and people. Claire will be offering traditional abdominal massage, and *one on one or * group cycle mapping support for bodies that menstruate. All offerings are held with confidentiality, openness and a focus on self autonomy utilizing traditional and holistic approaches to wellness. Claire holds a nourishing and calm space, and is happy to provide a safe container for self care and decompression after Brown, Black & Fierce.

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Meet BB&F workshop facilitators Toni Letendre and Kirsten Lindquist. Attend their workshop Re-Imaging and Re-Mapping Our Multi-Verse TOMORROW NOV 7 @ Stanley A. Milner Library

Toni Letendre, also known as Moon Nakota Feminist from Alexis First Nation, is working with awesome young people through the iSucceed Warrior program at iHuman Youth Society. If Toni isn't hanging out at iHuman or zipping around on her bicycle with her purple helmet, she's dreaming of returning to the North - where she left a part of her heart with the youth in Fort Providence and Fort Resolution.

Kirsten Lindquist - Kirsten Lindquist, a Cree-Métis woman with mixed settler ancestry from North East Alberta, is working with young people to share connections between many universes to create an alternative multi-verse, which follows the Zapatista vision of a world where many worlds co-exist. In November 2015, she will graduate from the University of Victoria with an MA in Indigenous Governance. Her goal is to create a mobile Brownie (you know – from the movie Willow) powered Bison Bus as her part in sharing connections between the universes across the prairies.

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Meet the BB&F performers who will bring you Verbasive!

SATURDAY, NOV 7 @ Stanley A. Milner Library Verbasive-- the movement-based stage adaptation of Jules Nyx poem, Verbasive. Verbasive is a fusion of spoken word and movement-based performance tells a ethereal and also sincere story about navigating consent. With performers Neelam Chattoo, Shrina Patel of ShaktiFlow and Jules Nyx. Creative Director: Jules Nyx Technical Design & Stage Manager: Rebecca John. As the current co-facilitator of the Tarot Society of Edmonton Jules Nyx puts out the fires of fear you have towards your tarot and shows you how tarot fits in life. She suffered blogger fatigue while writing her now retired esoteric blog “Things I Never Told Lovers” but today still gets positive feedback about it from strangers. While Jules is not tossing tarot cards she is a poet, writer and fledgling filmmaker.

Rebecca John: BFA-Multidisciplinary graduate of the University of Lethbridge. Rebecca is a member of both Mindhive Collective and Undercurrent Theatre, working in areas of anti-oppression, feminism, performing arts, design, writing, installation and film. Photo credit: GIRL NAMED SHIRL Photography for Undercurrent Theatre

Shrina Patel is a dancer, choreographer, actress and a visual performing artist. She is the founder of ShaktiFlow, a dance company in Edmonton which is founded upon the philosophy of empowering the collective through the strengthening of each individual, all through the combination of dance, meditation and psychological strengthening of the spiritual mind. A dedicated humanitarian, Shrina uses her talents in the performing arts to initiate positive social changes for marginalized groups that are at the greatest risk. Shrina believes that art is the most powerful tool with which the world can be made more humane and human beings inspired to humanitarian altruism.

Neelam Chattoo is a local theatre practitioner, visual artist, and graphic designer with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta. She has been immersed in theatre and the arts for the past several years. Neelam is thrilled to be a part of Brown, Black & Fierce this November. It is an inspiring event and collective going on in Edmonton, and she can't wait to see you there!

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Brown Black and Fierce Collective is honoured that Two Spirit Elder, Roxanne Roan, will open the performance space and guide the Territorial Acknowledgements on Saturday evening with Chicken Dancer, Ashley Tiller. Roxanne holds many traditional teachings and walks the red road as a Two Spirit teacher and knowledge holder.

Brown, Black and Fierce! Festival, Saturday, NOV 7 @Stanley A. Milner Library, Amiskwaciy (Edmonton)

Roxanne Roan of the Ermineskin First Nation was raised in the Traditional Spiritual way of life with members of her Cree family in the well known Robert Smallboy Camp in the Rocky Mountain House kootenay Plains. She was accepted throughout her life as a transgendered member in her community. Despite her ordeals in residential school she graduated high school and assists in teaching the Cree language and Aboriginal culture when needed. She took training as a life skills trainer with use of the “Medicine Wheel” method and has given training sessions throughout western Canada and the States. She also took courses in film production, acting and directing at Vancouver’s Emily Carr College resulting in her production of a film about her people that received critical acclaim. Presently, she is doing more research from Elders about Cree culture.

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Meet BB&F opening performer Ashley Tiller! She will open the BB&F performance space with Two-Spirit Elder, Roxanne Roan.

Brown, Black and Fierce! Festival Saturday, NOV 7 @ Stanley A. Milner Library, Amiskwaciy (Edmonton)

Ashley Tiller was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. She is Métis and follows Cree and Ojibway teachings. She is also a Two- Spirit Chicken Dancer. Ashley was raised by the Ben Calf Robe Society community and they have been her biggest supporter in her dancing. Since she was 8 years old she has wanted to dance men's chicken dance - It took her until last year to build the courage to dance publicly. It was an honour for Ashley to dance because she believes in the healing properties of dancing.

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Meet BB&F performe Shima Aisha Robinson!

Shima Aisha Robinson aka Dwennimmen is a spoken word poet and student born and raised in Treaty 6. Dwennimmen is the name of an ancient African Adinkra symbol, which means strength, humility, learning and wisdom.  She has been the host of the open mic reading series, known as the POET TREE, in downtown Edmonton where poets come together to share their work. She is primarily a spoken word poet and has been writing and performing spoken word poetry for over 10 years. She has recently been published in the 2013 Sun & Snow Anthology:The Rhythm of One Love.

Performance description:

A selection of up to 10 spoken word poems that treat the development of self awareness through pain and healing with attention to issues of mental health/illness, African diaspora identity, feminism, love, family and subjectivity.