Indigenous Women’s Voices Summit: Artist Panel Discussion

A free public discussion and Q+A with the filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists of the 2022 Indigenous Women’s Voices Summit. Event will be moderated by Designer Kaweniiosta Jock and features a performance by the Akwesasne Women’s Singers. Speakers include:
* American Indian Movement leader Madonna Thunder Hawk, featured in the film Warrior Women
* Food Sovereignty & Cultural Revitalization activist Marcella Gilbert
* Filmmaker Ivey Camille, Director of Powerlands
* Visual Artist Althena LaTocha
* Akwesasne Women Singers performers Bear Fox, Elizabeth Nanticoke, Iawentas Nanticoke, and Tekonwakwenni Nanticoke

Speaker Bios:

Oohenumpa Lakota matriarch Dr. Madonna Thunder Hawk is one of Indian Country’s most formidable movers and shakers. With over five decades of experience in activism, Madonna is a veteran of every contemporary Native occupation from Alcatraz, to Wounded Knee in 1973, and more recently the NoDAPL protest at Standing Rock in 2016. She is a self-described old “AIMster-gangster,” in reference to her leadership in the American Indian Movement (AIM), and co-founded key Native resistance groups Women of All Red Nations and the Black Hills Alliance. Most recently, she started the Wasagiya Najin “Grandmothers’ Group” on her homeland of Cheyenne River Reservation to assist in rebuilding kinship networks and advocate for Indigenous child welfare. Thunder Hawk has spoken around the world, served as a delegate to the United Nations in Geneva, and in 2019, received an honorary doctorate from Simmons University in Boston for her lifelong work to promote cultural survival for Native Nations. As a Warrior Women Project matriarch, Madonna is a principle organizer and voice in the Project’s efforts to collect, archive, and advocate for transformative Indigenous history and its makers.

Marcella Gilbert is a Lakota and Dakota community organizer with a focus on food sovereignty and cultural revitalization. As the daughter of Madonna Thunder Hawk, Marcella grew up inside the movement for Indigenous self-determination and was a student at the We Will Remember Survival School. At 17, she served as a delegate to the International Indian Treaty Council at the United Nations in Geneva. Now, as a mother and grandmother, she continues to pass down that legacy of activism for future generations.In addition to being a leader on the Warrior Women Project’s Matriarchs Council, Marcella works for Simply Smiles, Inc., a non-profit organization operating on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota. She manages the garden project that includes wild food identification, harvest, and food processing. She holds a Masters Degree in Nutrition from South Dakota State University. In 2014, Gilbert was recognized for her work by the Bush Foundation’s Native Nations Rebuilders Program.

Ivey Camille Manybeads-Tso is an award-winning Diné filmmaker, producer, director, script-writer, and actor. She is also a youth mentor and media arts workshop facilitator. She studied film at the prestigious Idyllwild Arts Academy and is best known for making the award winning film In the Footsteps of Yellow Woman and producing several youth-made documentary projects. She has been focusing on spreading media knowledge throughout Indigenous communities for the past five years.

Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth and wood, while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are inspired by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place. Her work has been shown across the country in places such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; CUE Art Foundation and Artists Space, New York City; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; and the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska.

Bear Fox, Elizabeth Nanticoke, Iawentas Nanticoke, Tekonwakwenni Nanticoke are members of Akwesasne Women Singers/ Kontiwennenhá:wi, which is translated as Carriers of the Words, a women’s singing group that originated from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. Kontiwennenhá:wi is made up of young women, mothers, aunties and grandmothers, who all work full time as teachers, social workers, students, and retirees.