Deconstructing the Boundaries
This program was the first symposium in a multi-year collaboration between Indigo Arts Alliance and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Indigo Arts Alliance assembled a curated panel of thought leaders and workshop presenters to discuss how Black and Brown communities have always held spiritual, traditional, and cultural relationships to the land. Artists from various disciplines hosted conversations, demonstrations and interactive workshops.
The Land Fights Back
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens | July 20, 2024
This year’s 2024 symposium and public art commissions, will focus on environmental justice in urban and rural spaces and why it is critical that Black and Brown experiences and knowledge be centered. The work will unpack methods of reparative justice and challenge systems in place today. Witnessing through the lens of scholars, artists, historians and members of our community, we will honor our collective wisdom and forge new ways to be in harmony with the land known as Maine and beyond. Participants will have an opportunity to learn actionable steps that they can take to help create a better world.
Northeastern United States Indigenous citizens are the Abenaki, Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy, collectively making up the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are also known as “People of the Dawnland.” As members of a global community, we are people of the land. With the growing climate crisis and its reverberations in our societies, we bear witness to how the land fights back. Indigo Arts Alliance and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens commissioned the work of IAA’s July Artists in Residents Anna Tsouhlarakis and Shane Perley-Dutcher to envision and create a public art piece that amplifies Indigenous wisdom, artistry, and presence. This year’s 2024 symposium and public art commissions will focus on environmental justice in urban and rural spaces and why it is critical that Black and Brown experiences and knowledge be centered. The work will unpack methods of reparative justice and challenge systems in place today. Witnessing through the lens of scholars, artists, historians, and members of our community, we will honor our collective wisdom and forge new ways to be in harmony with the land known as Maine and beyond.
For our team of artists, scholars, and activists who are focused on inquiries of nourishment and repair, we will strive to address these key questions:
How do we acknowledge heretofore ignored or rejected technologies generated by African and First Nations descendant people’s existence outside of settler colonial paradigms?
How do we evolve personal, communal and institutional relationships with land ownership – including specifically with Botanical Gardens, Land Trusts and Conservancies – in ways that forge generative relationships with landscape, land use, foodways, and agricultural practices?
How do we make visible and begin to heal the deep disease that roots itself in dominant narratives and dominant cultural spaces regarding how we embody place and being?
A Future of Land and Food Resilience
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens | July 22, 2023
On Saturday, July 22nd, Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG) will present “Deconstructing the Boundaries: A Future of Land and Food Resilience,” the first symposium in a multi-year collaboration between the two organizations. Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens has partnered with Indigo Arts Alliance to present a multi-year project that will center Black, Brown, Indigenous relationships with the land. The programmatic series will launch with an all day public symposia entitled Deconstructing the Boundaries: A Future of Land & Food Resilience. Indigo Arts Alliance will share perspectives from a variety of thought leaders on how Black and Brown communities have always held spiritual, traditional and cultural relationships to the land. Conversations, demonstrations and interactive workshops will prioritize experiences from multidisciplinary artists and cultural workers. This initiative aims to create intergenerational pathways for insight and wisdom to flow in all directions.
Through this symposium we hope to explore and address these three key questions:
How do we acknowledge and appreciate the ways in which African, Brown, and Indigenous cultural and social systems, as well as spirituality exist outside of settler colonial paradigms?
How do we evolve our personal, communal, and institutional relationships with land ownership and stewardship?
How do we address and heal the deep distrust that has taken root in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities?
