MARQUETTE, MI— Northern Michigan University is holding its first-ever Indigenous Perspectives Symposium on Art on Friday.
Justin Schapp is Assistant Director of the Diversity & Inclusion Office. He says along with drums and dancers and activities like beadwork, the symposium will offer various types of art that might encourage people to be introspective.
“We’re going to do things like looking at student art from boarding schools. We often look at boarding schools as assimilation process, well, how are the students complicating that in real time by creating art that reflected who they were?”
Surrealist painter Jonathan Thunder is the keynote speaker. The event will also feature a decolonizing diet-inspired lunch and a screening of the documentary “Bring Them Home,” narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Lily Gladstone.
Schapp says we need to make sure we pay attention to strategically undervalued people.
“So we, in the future, we can start building a future together on terms that make sense for not just all of us, but to say, ‘Here’s the new strategy to make sure that people are seen and heard, valued, and centered, and that their voices are uplifted.’”
The symposium takes place Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Northern Center. A link to more information is here.
