Portland-based transdisciplinary artist and poet Demian DinéYazhi´ is making a space for queer Indigenous people within the art world, but it’s proving to be a hard task.
“I think for a while I had a really difficult time having pride in my identity because it was tied so much to this border town [Gallup, New Mexico, where DinéYazhi´ grew up] that is just very toxic and racist,” says DinéYazhi´. “I think moving to Portland definitely made me realize how much of who I am is actually tied to where I grew up and within that I became interested in breaking down why that place is the way it is.”
Growing up in the ’90s, DinéYazhi´ found an identity in a newly shifting landscape of labels, which helped open up the conversation.
“I think the labels are an entry point for non-Indigenous people, but I think it’s also an entry point for Indigenous people, and I think that there is a little bit of play there. I think on the one hand it’s like actually talking within this western theoretical mindset and the other part of it, I think, it’s also allowing Indigenous people into that conversation.”
Navigating multiple identities, DinéYazhi´ is trying to find a balance between two worlds. DinéYazhi´ admits that they don’t feel very supported within Indigenous art communities, attributing some of this lack of acceptance to the way their art “refuses to work within this idea of traditional Indigenous art.” Similarly, they don’t always find the support they are looking for within the LGBTQ+ community, either.
“I don’t know how much the queer community cares or even thinks about Indigenous people,” they say. “I know there are some people within the community that do hold space for that, but within a larger context, I don’t think the queer community [supports] the Indigenous community as much as it could.”
On Friday, October 12, DinéYazhi´ will be performing their poem “An Infected Sunset” here in Victoria. Within this piece, they examine the ways in which nature landscapes are interpreted. They “play a little bit with an alternative view of the sunset from an Indigenous perspective in a post-apocalyptic landscape,” says DinéYazhi´.
Through their art, DinéYazhi´ encourages us to think about the ways in which we talk about both Indigenous activism and ways of being.
“I think that word, ‘activism,’ is very complex and perhaps even a little problematic within Indigenous communities,” they say. “I don’t think that we have necessarily had any other option than to be activists, and I think our activism is tied mostly to our will and desire to both survive but also to sustain our cultures and languages. So I think it’s challenging within a western perspective, because our activism is just tied to taking care of the Earth; it’s just tied to basic human relationships with the planet that we live on. I don’t think that within an Indigenous practice or an Indigenous mentality or philosophy those things are radical notions, but when you get western civilization and white-settler, colonial, hetero-patriarchal, white-supremacist social structures and power structures coming into direct contact with Indigenous people, then it turns into this really radical idea. But, really, it’s so much embedded into our ceremony and ways of being.”
Demian DinéYazhi´
7 pm Friday, October 12
Free, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
aggv.ca