V O I C E S | spotlight on the artist: Tashina Lee Emery
Tashina Lee Emery, Ojibwe is currently working on her MA in Arts Politics in Tisch’s Art and Public Policy program where she will graduate later this year.
Enrolled in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Baraga, MI, Misanaquadikwe is her Native American name: The one who can clear a cloudy day. If you ever have the opportunity to meet Tashina (hint, she’ll be at the exhibition’s reception on April 17th 5:30-8pm in the Skirball Performing Arts Center Lobby, and so should you!), you’ll see what a perfect name this is for Tashina; she truly radiates the sun.
Her artwork, Anishinaabekwe, is featured in V O I C E S @nyukimmelwindows and we had the chance recently to sit down with the artist to learn a bit more about what inspires her creative process. Check it out!
Who are the women you have portrayed in your piece and what informed/inspired you to select these 7?
Mikah and Aubree. Jailyn. Sydni. Ginger. Shani. Jeanne. Victoria. Seven humans. Seven bodies. Seven physical places in life moving at once. I obscure through layers the magic of tradition, a sacred secrecy to withhold but instead asserting the wonders of existent real women and their roles in raising villages. The thick and heavy central role of the woman’s strength on the reservation that I witnessed. I celebrate their resilience to generations of trauma, now bearing the weight on my shoulders from my mother. I validate the vigor carried by blood from the collective power of the women who surround me. Glorifying my optimism through the delicate and intimate chiffon silk marking a statement of survival, the ones still here. My work shares the tenacity and superpowers of legacy. Drawing questions of the decisions we make today and how it will affect the future seven generations.
Where did you grow up and how do you feel that contributes to the person you are today?
I grew up on a small reservation of the shores of Lake Superior, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Baraga, Michigan. I was raised traditionally and always had a house full. My mother raised villages, she took in anyone in need. Rez life was always something I wanted to escape growing up. Any opportunity, I took it, the more I left, the more I want to return. The more I return, the more I want to leave. However, I love my home. The awareness from a distanced perspective gives me the vigor for a healthy community, my people deserve.
What materials did you use and can you speak a little about your artistic process?
The silks transparency, the soft touch of see through that flows following the bodies fluid movements. I created seven chiffon pieces to hold the seven women of my inner circle of strength and struggle, woven elegance and damage.
I had invited all the woman in my immediate family during Thanksgiving break to spend the day in Zeba, MI with me, bringing back memories of were my mother and aunties grew up. Originally there was supposed to be a few more chiffon pieces. My cousins, aunties, sisters, and mother dressed across from deep frozen waters of Lake Superior. We did our makeup together and I made sure to bring an immense collection of my own jewelry, which anything they wore they were able to have after. An offering for their time and help in my project. My poems and short proses adorning the woman who raised me and the future generations we too, will one day effect.
My stories come from the hardships I bared, the trauma that my family has. I disguise the complex narratives of hurt and hope with stacked layers, to beautiful burden the viewer. The reader is forced to look deeper. A strategic transparency the viewer will have to work for.
You include what appears to be handwriting in the some of the pieces; who's writing is this and is there more of a story to how and why you've chosen to incorporate this in places?
My mother’s handwriting was such an important piece, representing a thread between all the pieces. The Ojibwe floral layer is the bond between the women, but my mother’s words, some in Ojibwe, are the realistic spots creating a decolonized version of the map, a fabric framework of place. A bit of her being, reclaiming her voice.
What are seven things that inspire you in life and in art-making?
My home. The thick woodlands, and the crystal lake Lake Superior shores. My reservation right near the water's embrace. I vow to surround myself again with the trees and water.
My mom. She is my best friend and her stories however horrific come with a tinge of humor, happiness, and hope.
Indian Country. The social movements and political progressions excite me. I am honored to witness the privileges my ancestors fight so hard for coming into fruition.
My nieces. I try to crave out terrain that one day, they can one day exceed expectations too.
Raw natural materials, their carried stories. I cherish the traditional medicines, the plants, and the decolonized memory and making.
Healing. I come from a Tribal Public Health background and the practices of other first Nations is power. Culture is medicine.
Traveling. The mobile Native or body of color has been a new fascination, especially coming from a reservation enacting my dual citizenship, a double consciousness.
Below are detail images of the installation along with translations of their accompanying poems; be sure to swing by and see the works in person!
Nieces - Mikah and Aubree - Panel 1
I look at the light skinned dark babies, the babies born mixed, the mothers who hold shades lighter, the black haired mothers who protect their redheaded daughters.
The worlds purposeful intentions, reminding us that difference is okay, humbling our mothers, my mother. This beautiful baby, we created in our body’s came out into harsh world, the very not memory of the past colonization, not our light skin, not only the light hair. Not the colonizers wounds, it’s a reminder to love one another. To find new forms of securities, new love, new radical change.
I watch a mother of dark complexion cradle her little lighter joy and embraced the baby’s new warmth, she holds the entire world in that little girl. Her eyes didn’t look like her mothers but she loved her to the moon, I traveled to witnessing her joy.
Nieces - Mikah and Aubree - Panel 1
Bright pink, yes, our favorite color! The colorful toes were adorned in glittered, glamorous, tall, jeweled heels walked through the cold, dark rain. The studded emeralds were the only pieces in color in the gray, murky video as they moved closer towards us, with sass. Then, guess what the fabulous feet did? They brought forward one beautiful foot in slow motion, swung the tattooed leg with just enough force to smash the window, glass in front of them. The glass's sharp edges bursting everywhere.
Be careful where you step, but good thing the feet had heels on.
I see the power in the person wearing those heels, a fight in heels is a tougher work then most. A similar work you’ll have, as women of color, your heels is the shade skin you wear. The height of the stem should empower you. Stand up straight, walk with vigor and purposeful, with finesse. The heels you wear are adorned with jewels of your ancestors carrying you as you sustain them. Please know those heels come with baggage, the pain, the ache in your foot, feel that with every step you take and use it as bright pink fuel.
Cousin - Jailyn - Panel 2
Baamaapii. adv tmp temporal adverb - later, after a while, eventually. In Ojibwe, we do not have a “goodbye”. What a beautiful reminder that the permanence of leaving or being gone is unrestricted and open ended to possibilities. We also view death as “passing on”, no one “dies”, but “passes away”, just moving on until we meet again. As a wanderer, these notions of the “see you later” are comforting. I learned very young, my home will always be there - the fresh cold water of Lake Superior, the dark woodlands, the dirt tireless roads, and the vast open fields to roam.
I take my passion, my dreams, the unknown with me to New York City. I left my appreciation, with cooked dinners and movie nights with my mom. I left my joy with my nieces and sisters spending days at the beach. I left my strength with the women in my family, to carry on the raised villages. I left my future with the hardest worker and most compassionate boy, my best friend.
My values of family and my rural home, are so ingrained that I have a innate need to settle and have a family. The reservation calls my name even 1,137.2 miles away. The content lifestyle of the midwest is seducing because it was all I ever was exposed to, it was the norm. I can’t stop moving, I need to explore. The unknown captives me more, but I known in the back of mind I can have it all. My autonomy is so strategic, that I will prove you can be a found soul. Baamaappii.
Speak or fashion or eat or adorn and repeat.
“Decolonize” has been such a buzz word it’s on fire, the trend game is so strong. Do not get me wrong, we need the framework, decolonization seeks revolutionary change and a sense of peace we all need. Decolonize, a mindful act, has always been an unspoken truth for Native communities, an existing way of life but now it is law. A term to police each other, another quantum to test my blood. A verbiage to see my percentage of authenticity, but guess what I’m not prefect. Strip down bare, bring fire to everything, live in this past world, listen carefully to every word you say. How dare I accuse someone for not wanting to suffer? Not assimilation, but to live a life our ancestors fought to be apart. Yes, I will be educated. Yes I will speak and write in english. Yes, I will shop online. Yes, I will move in and out of the reservation. But, I do everything with my values of my mother and her’s before her.
I hate the word, but I’m not saying to not purse practices, change the agenda, but bring awareness to use words that aren’t even ours. Maybe I’m writing for myself to digest the words of criticism, of hate, of intolerance or unawareness. Decolonize is a tool or maybe a truth to get some where new, but it should never be a way to beat someone up. “If you don’t speak or fashion or eat or adorn and repeat in decolonization, then your Native authenticity is lacking.” More ways of classification, as taunting as measuring my relations to my people, my community and my land. Yes, there is a difference between decolonize and pride, one doesn’t force you to follow along in the boasting of Nativeness.
A part in my heart where no trust lives.
On Saturday morning at 3:21 am, I called the police with an almost calm voice and simply but accurately stated ", I recently had a home invasion with assault." How bleek, I had no emotion, but I spoke in their words so they could hear me.
My face was marked with blood and burned with stinging pain along my eye and a few intense deep scratches on my cheeks. I felt woozy so I sat down with my phone in my hand, numb. I sat alone.
I had already outlined the situation in my head. Trying to replay the events in my head, trying to label and fully understand what happened, trying to remember how to start and finish. I was there, but I couldn’t grasp time anymore. I'm trying to wrap my freshly onset of dizziness, but I was blurry from the outside deep down within, the world flew out softly and left me shuddering on the floor of my living room.
I sat in my house empty. Sending a photo to my best friend first, labeled should I call the police?
I am mad, I am pissed, I have rage. I have a part in my heart where no trust lives. No home or shield that will protect me. The part that reminds me to lock my doors twice. I sit back and observe everyone. I want them to know they ignited a tiny fire and it is a reason to speak even louder, to scream next time. I want accountability. I want justice. I want that if she was a guy, she'd be a prisoner. I want credibility. And this isn't acceptable.
But survival you do alone, when breathing becomes essential. I’m not saved or healed, but I breathe. Take deep breaths.
It is not with the cloak of physical wounds I carry, but the adusatity you have of boasting about the events. The fact that you claim the victim. How does the idea come to your head that you “win”? That you even want to “win”.
My case wasn't taken seriously, so I sparked flames. I couldn’t break the cycles of hurt, because hurt people, hurt people. I am broken, but the fight of a shattered person is effective when saving other shattered people.
Cousin - Ginger - Panel 4
A cloud that dropped everyone to their knees.
I braid the hair of the bridesmaids, and ending with the little flower girls because the restless toddlers couldn’t sit long enough. Their pearl crowns in place, the small crowded house seemed to get louder with anxiousness. My aunty in all white, her voice shook as she entered the room, she held her phone. Already she was the center of attention, we paused everything for the bride, we grew silent listening to the beautiful text her son had just sent. He wished he could be there and was sorry he wasn’t able to see her beauty on her big day. He was called out to a wildfire in Utah at 3 am the night before. The ceremony was near, I was helping with last minute highlight, adding more or less creme blush, we choked on hairspray, sipping wine and beer to ease the excited tensions. I was the last to be ready, the bridal crew escaped leaving me behind while I applied my last touches of peach shadows, hands shaking applying my matte liquid wings. The primer, creme foundation, and the powder setting, can not forget the setting.
The world went blurry, the bride was limp, numb to the news. The alcohol that was just setting in, did not ease the pain I saw and couldn’t digest. Everyone’s shock was a slight buzz, a cloud that dropped everyone to their knees. The disbelief traumatized everyone. His sisters, my sisters screaming out, “he is gone”. She sharply snapped, yelling at my optimistic skepticism. She wanted to punch me with the truth. She could have and I still wouldn’t have listened. The police arrived to confirm.
The trauma of that evening broke my whole family, broke my community. The firefighters never made it outside of Minnesota. Two years have gone by and there is not a day that goes by when I don’t think of the Jimmy, James Frederick Shelifoe Jr. Again, we met at my mother's house to struggle together and we still do.
It wasn’t the day after when the world stopped, it wasn’t the weeks after when a being who was presence no longer existed, it wasn’t the months after where every meal around a table meant Jimmy wasn’t there.
My lineage stems from strong powerful women, the strength of wounds that still need healing. The endurance, the resilience mirrored in their our young. They say a higher power, gives you only what you can handle. The generations of women in my life handled what can only be told in stories surrounded by laughter, because you wouldn’t be able to hear the truth in seriousness. My mother comes from broken parents, split in half by trauma. My grandfather beat my grandmother into suicide. His drinking came from the abuse he received himself and so on. At 11 years old my mom and her siblings fended on their own in homes of a broken community - Bridgette, Cathy, Jerry, Jim, Vicki, Miino, Baghi, Wausa, Waba, Allen, and Steve. They carried the heaviness of loss entering this already harsh world.
The pain and hurt has descended to my shoulders, and that’s just the pain I witnessed. Dare I even go back further? Do I want to know? What I do see is the baggage on my cousins, their little ones. We are normalized to the hurt, content with the struggle of barely making it through. That is all we ever known. Three of my uncles are currently incarcerated, more than half addicted to numbing the pain, three have passed on because some couldn’t “handle what the higher power gives you”. The damaged but tenacious beings who now are raising kids. I would ask my mom how do you handle losing a sibling, more than one because, at my age, I didn’t know how to grip the hurt, pain and hate that comes from the loss of a young soul, we were supposed to be the generation of stopped cycles. She never really responded but, just lead the way, just kept moving. It was like an initiation to the club. I have learned loss at age 5 years old. My mother lost her younger sibling and my cousin became my sister.
Now take this hurt, times the built up tonnage by *1,130 and trap it in one place called reservations.
How are you not mad? How do I accuse someone of not wanting to suffer? Because sometimes, I am so heated that I want to fight. I want to break walls, punch, kick and scream - but I don't I use my words and stories. Stories you can only tell in laughter.
*The # of Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Tribal Members Enrolled residing in Baraga County
Mother - Jeanne - Panel 6
My cousins tease that my mom is a Catholic saint, our lack of Christianity didn’t deter us from labeling her a powerful being having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness or closeness to God. We did, however, know she was the Native version of a saint, she was a Native Saint.
My mother has an exceptional degree of holiness, a likeness and a closeness to the Creator. She always has, she'd tell us stories of when she was little, she'd sing in the woods as if that was further confirming her sainthood. I think it’s funny, her Ojibwe traditional knowledge is most prominent but I see subtle hints of the colonizer she adapted in her own reclamation. I wonder what my people, called prayers or messages to the Creator before Columbus. Even the Ojibwe word Anama'e, which means prayer translates to “church, Christian”. But the act, the ritual, the modern day ceremony of her prayer creates her own resistance through her blend of worlds.
She offers her Asemaa, tobacco, usually from her fresh pack of Seneca's because Marlboros are now too expensive. She closes her eyes holding them shut, with the same tension as she holds the small grains of the whitewashed Kinnikinnick, smoking herbs. The "old Indian way" would have maybe Bearberry leaf, Mullein leaf, Deer's Tongue, Osha leaf, Red Sumac leaf, and Spearmint leaf in their mixtures. Although now most First Nation’s natural resource departments harvest their own real traditional sacred tobacco, the plant Nicotiana Rustica, successfully and unsuccessfully. But she acts on the call of prayer, which is spontaneous and always urgent. She introduces herself, connects herself to the land, and connects herself to her role and community. I see her mumble the thoughts, the wishes, the needs of my people. I can even hear her inner voice ending each phrase “in a good way”. I give her, her space as she mends those around me.
“Aunty Jean, can you pray about my Dad he is in the hole again.” “Mom, can you pray for my Cats they keep peeing in my bed.” “Can you have your mom pray for me as I go into this final nursing exam.” “Aunty Jean, can you pray for my rez car, I about to bring it to the shop again.” “Mom, can you pray for my IUD procedure Friday.”
This is my meeting place, where my Ojibwe tradition encounters contemporary western society.
Then, the ritual starts again. My mother introduces herself. Nindizhinikaaz Namid Migizi. My name is Dancing Eagle. Nindonjibaa Baraga. I am from Baraga. Mikinaak Nindoodem. My clan is Turtle. She continues sharing her courage with me to do the same.
Mother - Jeanne - Panel 6
Because you are my daughter.
I have never been so filled with anxiety. I see mixed messages on every social platform. My brain is constantly talking to itself and all I’m trying to do sleep for the two hours I have left before the new day starts. For the first time at least since I can, remember I feel like I’m constantly questioning my own work, and my own authenticity, why am I the one allowed too be here, to create? Am I stressed because I’m not apart of my Native community? Or is because I’m the only Native dealing with this new place by herself?
Is this what rewarding risk taking feels like?
Decolonize has always been an unspoken truth, but now it is law. If you don’t speak or fashion or eat or adorn or repeat in decolonization then your Native authenticity is lacking. The new classification is as taunting as blood quantum, measuring my relations to my people, my community and my land. Yes, there is a difference between decolonize and pride, one doesn’t force you to follow along in the boasting of Nativeness.
I have never questioned myself more since coming to NYU, so I asked my mom why do I get to do what I do?
“Because you are sweet and because you are my daughter.”
Aunty - Victoria - Panel 7
Learn to be fucking tough, does being an artist mean I have to be tough? Which I thought I was.
I’m just as valid in my own way, my work is valid and means shit, I need to represent it as is, fight for it, that's my toughness.
I’m just as right as you and I accept you.
Recognize the conversation you now play with everything to the past? Do I have to respond or is it okay to just be? “I have to be tough, I have to be tough, I have to be tough, I have to be tough” I grow thicker skin, the more I say it.
Aunty - Victoria - Panel 7
The second you don’t feel the fear, you’ll see the future so clear. I’ll keep telling myself that.
And what if my change I try to push, comes before they are ready, is there a better time? Maybe it’s not timing, but it’s more about the process, the way you teach and not scare. Because if you change in a Native American community, then we are gone, we are extinct. The second I’m deviant, an artist, when I break the rules or go against tradition, prove, maintain, and represent I’m still Native. How can I create conditions to change, formation.
Aunty - Victoria - Panel 7
Both of these worlds, want to refer to me in the trapping past or always a near future, but never the present here and now. I appreciate the challenge, but to be apart of the conversation I physically, mentally and wholeheartedly beg, strive, fight to represent my past with integrity then, I do the exact same to represents the future. Through exhaustion, tirelessly because if I don’t, who will. My nieces and my own children will one day have too, and that makes the urgency even more. I tell myself to grow thicker skin, I need to be tough.
