Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant - LIVE EVENT
On 12 March 2021 STTLMNT participating Artis Dakota Camacho Presented ETAK video premiere and live multinational Zoom conversation:
This live event invited our communities to engage in the work of STTLMNT participating artist Dakota Camacho through Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant; a poetic recitation of ecologies relating to navigation, journey, lineage, birth and chosen kinship through extensive travel across the globe.
Artist Dakota Camacho premiered their short film, Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant anchoring a very special live Zoom engagement featuring performance, artist talks and storytelling presented by artists, cultural bearers and scholars with global ties in Indigeneity, tuning in from Micronesia and throughout North America including; Cannupa Hanska Luger, Monaeka Flores, Ojeya Cruz Banks, Gabriel Teodros, Vince Díaz and Dakota Camacho.
Etak (pronounced Eh-tack) loosely translates as moving islands, a form of triangulation and is a Micronesian seafaring technology, used in relationship to understanding the ocean-going vessel’s relationship to the movement of space and time. Etak is built upon the ethos in Micronesia that the canoe is stable and the universe moves around the canoe, this is a vessel for traveling through space and time, through the world as an Indigenous person who is of a global community yet from a specific place.
In presenting this work and engagement, Dakota Camacho reflects, “This gathering will be a digital space for the co-creation of Indigenous knowledge and the understanding of our relationship to each other, as if all our canoes, waters and lands are moving in relationship to one another…”
This program invites us into contemplation of our belonging: How does an Indigenous body exist with the land and the water? How do we exist with it instead of extract from it? How do we remember our ceremonies? Where do we go to regenerate our Indigeneity (outside of our ancestral lands).
More about Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant
“My family taught me to plot our course to home through building beautiful relationships to spaces, places, and kin. Ináfa’maolek is the energy that flows from our cultural practices. I endeavor to understand my relationship to being a good human by triangulating my relationship to the peoples, languages, cultural practices, and lands where I have experienced inágofli’e & ináguaiya. Ináfa’maolek.” -Dakota Camacho
For artist Dakota Camacho, presenting Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant through STTLMNT Digital Occupation is personal. They are making and sharing this work to more deeply understand the purpose of life's journey and to further their connections across the world, reflecting, ‘What does place based Indigeneity mean to a person who navigates the globe encountering many cultures, communities, and histories and what are our responsibilities to extended kinships beyond a specific geography. Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant is the cinematographic articulation of the ceremony of gratitude to all the lineages that inform my body, mind, and spirit. This work is an offering, a deep sharing, a development of meditations on protocol, togetherness, of working towards making kin with one another, of entering into community, of practicing accountability, and of building a vision for the future that celebrates the possibilities of our collective liberation.”
Etak: an [un]traditional Micronesian Navigation Chant engages a poetic recitation of wild ecologies relating to navigation, journey, lineage, birth and chosen kinship through extensive travel across the globe. It is a story of genealogy, of the vast heritage and culture beacons that inform and guide an understanding of what it means to be Indigenous. The visuals inform the poem, centering around the cultures and the places which guide and extend our collective worldview -- a portrait of how human beings are regenerated as we collaborate in solidarity with the elements. There is a reverence between us, the land and the more than human environment; we are our ancestors. This work reminds us that we are informed by the natural environment around us, we must pay respect to that root part of us, and always return.
Etak is ritual. It is the process of deeply understanding the world around us, in relationship to self and to each other, to the land and the water. In this awareness we find our place and purpose, we create the space for the co-creation of knowledge, compassion, and understanding. When we come together, we are deepening our relationships to each other.
More about the artists engaging in the LIVE event:
Dakota Camacho believes in creativity as a record of interaction with the spirit realm. Exploring the overlap between integrity, ancestral/indigenous life ways, true love, and accountability, guiya (they) activate a Matao worldview to make offerings towards inafa’maolek (Balance and harmony with all of life). Weaving through languages of altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer, guiya (they) generate moments of encounter with self, each other, spirit, and the natural world. Yo’ña (their) work enacts spaces where multiple worlds, ways of knowing, being, and doing speak to each other to unearth embodied pathways towards collective liberation. www.dakotacamacho.com
STTLMNT project concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multi-disciplinary artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota descent. Using social collaboration and in response to timely and site-specific issues, Luger produces multi-pronged projects provoking diverse publics to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring. He exhibits, lectures and participates in projects globally. www.cannupahanska.com
Monaeka Flores (Familian Kabesa) is a queer CHamoru artist and daughter of Guåhan. She has worked in ceramic, metal, glass, painting, and mixed media and curated and coordinated a number of exhibits including Guam’s first Pride Month Art Exhibit in 2018. Monaeka is a member of dynamic community organizations that focus on CHamoru self-determination, environmental justice, and the protection of sacred sites: I Hagan Famalåo’an Guåhan, Prutehi Litekyan – Save Ritidian, and Independent Guåhan, all of which are members of the Fanohge Coalition.
Ojeya Cruz Banks (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Dance at Denison University. A dancer anthropologist, her research, dancemaking and film is grounded in her Pacific Islander (Guåhan/Guam) and African American heritage. For over a decade, she worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This is where she developed an interest in indigenous contemporary dance and Black Pacific dance intersections. Cruz Banks calls her teaching, choreographies and publications decolonial interventions that include topics such as Black/African and Pasifika creative processes, pedagogies, spiritual well-being, ethnography, and epistemologies of performance.
Gabriel Teodros is a musician and writer from South Seattle who first made a mark with the group Abyssinian Creole, and reached an international audience with his critically-acclaimed solo debut Lovework. He has been setting stages on fire ever since, all across the US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Ethiopia and South Africa; often in combination with workshops on creative writing, music, history, science fiction and media literacy.
Vicente (Vince) M. Diaz, a Filipino-Pohnpeian scholar and writer from Guåhan, is an interdisciplinary scholar (History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Comparative and Global Indigenous Studies) who specializes in critical indigenous studies in North America and the Pacific Ocean region. He is the founder and director of The Native Canoe Program, housed in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. This program uses traditional Indigenous watercraft and Indigenous water-based ecological knowledge and technology from across Oceania and the Native Great Lakes and Mississippi River to advance community-engaged research, teaching, and service.