Cannupa Hanska Luger in "Friends & Strangers" - Season 11 | Art21

♪ethereal ambient music♪

[bells jingling]

- [Cannupa VO] I think we all struggle

with what it means to belong to a place.

As an Indigenous person in North America,

there are complex
identities that are at play.

I am a citizen of the Mandan,
Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes.

So I was born

in Standing Rock Reservation
right on the Missouri River.

I think in its most honest
form, I'm river people,

and I'm living up here in
the mountains in New Mexico.

So I feel a little displaced.

After my family moved us
off of the reservation,

it felt as though my existence in both

of these worlds was in a
liminal space between the two.

[man] Okay, Cannupa, you ready?

[Cannupa] Yeah, hold on.

[indistinct chatter]

[Cannupa VO] So I exist in 
the world between places.

What I'm trying to do is remove the idea

of art as an object and think

of art as a process.

Something in action, something living.

[bells jingling]
-♪sparse curious synths♪

I am building things.

I'm building things that
aren't these objects,

but conduits to share information
from culture to culture.

♪♪♪

There's a tendency to
perpetuate this Romantic

historical narrative of native people,

which is, "This is
primitive, this is ancient,

this is not present."

And so I started a whole series

of projects that were called,

and it's kind of an ongoing set of ideas,

but it's called Future
Ancestral Technology.

It's science fiction,
it's speculative fiction.

It's imagining what and
how our culture shifts

and changes into the future.

♪airy ethereal music♪
And if it's hard to express what it means

to be Indigenous today, what does it look

like if I bypass today,

and consider what it means
to be in a distant future?

♪♪♪

So like all of the stuff
that we're using right now

is gonna be around for a
while, sitting in landfills,

and rather than recycling it

and turning it into
new products,

I'm like, "What do we do if we
just transform this material?"

[Cannupa] These are hockey gloves.

This is an old crochet blanket.

I maintain a hunter-gatherer of practice

in the 21st century, but
the fields that I navigate

are different.

All of the wool that I get
secondhand, it's leftover.

So there's very few things in the making

of any of this work that is dependent

on firsthand manufacturing.

Anytime I go to a thrift
store, if they've got an Afghan

and I like its color
story, I will dive in...

and it's like navigating
the detritus of America.

And it's important to tell these stories

for future generations because
a lot of Indigenous cosmology

is based on sustainability.

Like, "You are an
extension of the land,

you belong to the land."

Could I imagine a future

where we all understood that collectively?

- [newscaster] A protest in North Dakota
against a major oil pipeline

continues to grow.

Over 100 Native American
tribes have joined the fight

against the project,

saying that it threatens
one tribe's water supply

and its sacred land.

- [Cannupa VO] In Standing Rock, that
was described as protest.

But the reality

of that situation was
everybody who came there

was standing to protect
water more than against oil.

Seeing a riot police line,

the gear that they wear is
just completely dehumanizing.

And so I was inspired by
civil unrest that unfolded

in Ukraine where people
were bringing mirrors

to the front line so that the
police could see themselves.

I went to a hardware store and designed

and made these mirrored
shields in the parking lot,

and made a video to show how to make them.

♪energetic inspiring music♪

The main thing is that
it's an empathetic response

to violence.

♪♪♪

At the time that we were bringing

500 shields into Standing Rock, the police

and these private security forces,

they were confiscating anything

that could be considered a weapon.

And we decided

that the best way to hide these pieces

was to utilize my privilege as an artist.

♪♪♪

And we were like, "No,
these aren't shields.

It's just an art piece."

[footsteps in gravel]

- Mm.
There were antelope horns on this piece,

and I think I locked moisture
in and they exploded.

The unfortunate thing is they
fell on some of my son's work.

My oldest boy, EO, made
this little guy, he says

it's a monkey, and my
youngest, we've got this,

I don't know,

it looks like a Texas toast
hamburger with a face on it?

And here's my spider head.

♪sparse ethereal music♪
Oh, here's the fam.

Hey boys.

[Ginger VO] During the 
pandemic, everything shut down.

Before that, Cannupa was traveling 80,

80, 90 percent of the time,
of the time,

and it wasn't sustainable.

- Thanks guys.

I don't know where my art
practice is different than my life

and they're a part of my life.

Hey, if you guys want to
make something alongside me

you can go grab some clay outta my studio.

- [Ginger VO] This past year we've been traveling

with our whole family.

- [Cannupa VO] We homeschool our children,

had been homeschooling 'em
even prior to the pandemic.

Bringing them along

on these trips is a important
part of their education.

- And we thought that doing

that would create a healthier bond

with all of us.

[Cannupa] What do they say?

"You've got to get your
own house in order...

[chuckling] before you
start telling somebody else to clean up."

♪♪♪

I have a hard time with
the title of artist,

that's what you do.

That's who you are.

You're an artist.

You are what you do, right?

So I'm an artist,
because I make art.

And I'm like, "Do I, though?"

I always like to think
of myself as an engineer,

and I talk about
bridge-building as an artist.

And the gap that I'm
trying to span is the gap

between all of the different communities

and cultures that I interact with.

[Cannupa] So we're just rolling
these cubes into spheres,

and once they're spheres, you'll take one

of these little skewer sticks

and pierce the clay into a bead.

The grasslands where I'm from
are dependent on buffalo.

And so the 20,000 that
are living wild today,

I thought it would be a great gesture

that we make a bead to
represent each of them.

Even just rolling that clay in your palm,

there is no two that will be the same.

And the idea is us in
relationship with one another.

♪pensive ethereal music♪
[Cannupa VO] So the Bison Bead project is part

of this ongoing series called 'Counting Coup.'

and the intentions were
basically just trying

to re-humanize data, you know?

The first work in that
series is called 'Every One,'

and the number of beads represents missing

and murdered Indigenous relatives.

[bells jingling]
0:10:59.040,1193:02:47.295

♪♪♪
Indian and American history aren't told

in an honest format.

They're told as a myth.

It is the myth of the individual

who had to raise themselves
up out of nothing.

- I like the shoulder pads with it.

- All right, you got that pod?

[Ginger] Yeah, I got it.

I think it comes from a
group of men who decided

that they were no longer
gonna be a part of England.

They were gonna remove their self

from their ancestral place,

and the violence that
that displacement inflicts

on everybody else around it,

you have to have this myth

in place that justifies the
brutality of individualism.

-Papa.
-[Cannupa] Yeah?

- Do this.
[bells jingling]

[Cannupa VO] But it's just a myth
and it's just a story.

- Okay, that's great.

- When we do it again, spend
a little more time going back

like featuring your back.

- [sighs] Okay.

- [Ginger] There is an entire ecosystem
around successful artists.

They're getting support
from their partners,

from their parents, from their friends.

- Thank you, Ginger!

♪curious ethereal music♪

- I wanna be artist/game
designer/YouTuber.

- All I wanna do when
I grow up is figure out

what I wanna do when I grow up.

- I believe that when
my children are my age,

the definition and the exploration

of what art is hopefully
is so much broader.

It's like, "Can you do whatever
you do beautifully in your life?

Can you make your
life beautiful?"

Today we celebrate individuals,
we celebrate genius.

But it's not sustainable.

♪tender synth music♪
- [Ginger] Careful, buddy.

- [Cnnupa VO] We are dependent 
not just on each other,

but our relationships to the
environment and other species.

♪♪♪

The truth of our daily lived life is one

of integration, is one of integrity.

That's how we survive the future.

♪ethereal ambient music♪
♪♪♪

Hello, my name is Azikiwe Mohammed.

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