Soul to Soul

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The following is special programming sponsored by Public Radio KUNV 91.5. The content of Soul2Soul does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Soul to Soul, universal ideas for a brighter tomorrow.

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Thank you so much for joining us today. This show is a free for all of positive energy that will include book discussions, music, politics, books, food, COVID-19, oral history, books, and Las Vegas history. So welcome. My show today is with Fawn Douglas. Fawn is an indigenous artist and an activist who is currently completing the MFA program at UNLV. Her practice includes the intersections of art, social justice, community, education, culture, identity, and place. Also, we have A.B. Wilkinson, who is an associate professor in the Department of History here at UNLV and is the author of Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom, Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English-Colonia America. He has research and teaching interests in African American history, Native American history, ethnic studies, decolonial theory, and critical race theory in the Americas, including the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean. We also have a third guest who did not send me an intro, so I'm going to allow him to do it himself. Michael Collins. Hi, Michael.

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Hello, everybody. My name is Michael Collins. I'm a registered nurse. I recently retired from University Medical Center. I'm originally from Kansas City, Kansas. I have roots in the Muskogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. In the time that I've been in Las Vegas, I've been involved with the SEIU Local 1107 for many years and I've also been an activist in the community and a former member of the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender Community Center in the early 90s here, 2000s here in Las Vegas. And I have a baccalaureate degree from UNLV as well as an associate degree from Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, Kansas.

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Fantastic. And so who do you work for right now? Who are you working with right now?

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I'm currently the president of Indigenous AF. Indigenous AF is a not-for-profit 501c3 that has been formed to provide distributions to artists and communities groups within the Las Vegas or state of Nevada that are involved in cultural reconciliation and identification decolonization and Also, just really dynamic groups of people who are interested in positive change. Wonderful

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So Fawn, can you tell me about Nuu-Wu?

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Yes, thank you.

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Am I pronouncing it correctly?

0:03:43
Yes, Nuu-Wu. Okay. So Nuu-Wu means the people, specifically the Southern Paiute people. I'm a member of the Las Vegas Paiute tribe here, and my art reflects some of our histories and culture and cultural landscape. And so I named myself Nuu-Wu Art for my art. And last year I partnered with, well, my partner, A.B. Wilkinson, to create New Woo Arts, LLC. But from that, you know, those are our buildings. Those are what we've done on Maryland Parkway. But what's really important is the nonprofit that we've also started and that we're here to talk about today.

0:04:21
That's right. So I want to tell you to talk about that collaboration, that togetherness of Nuu and Indigenous AF. How do they fit?

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You want me to talk about that? Go ahead. Go ahead and take it.

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So like Fawn said, Nuu art is kind of her art business. She's an artist. I'm kind of just a sidekick and do a lot of the finances and things like that. But Fawn is the talent, I guess we'd say. And then we have a collective of probably almost, well, around 15 people, some of them artists, some of them activists, and we're renting out several studios to who we call the core group. And they've been really supportive and working together with us to push for positive change in the community. And so that's kind of a new art, and that space is right up on Maryland Parkway, right by the Circle Park, behind the Huntridge Theater on Charleston. And it's obvious, you can't miss it.

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Nice and bright.

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Yes. So, and then Indigenous AF is our nonprofit that we're working on, and that is separate from NUWU Art, but the AF also stands for Indigenous Arts Facilities, so that will support some of the activities and things that we're doing up at Maryland Parkway.

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Oh, that's fantastic. So, Michael, how did you meet these people?

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Well, I've loosely known Fawn since the early part of the century when I was a nurse working with Native American community services. So I was aware of some of her work in the community. And then several years ago, I met AB through ceremonies that were being conducted at my home.

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Oh, wonderful. So tell me how this idea came about.

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It was a collective idea. I mean, we had the idea to, you know, do these facilities for like through New Wu Art. But we also had dreams and goals of just going bigger. Like we see that there's a bigger need for our community. We see that there's a lot of people who are doing a lot of hard work, especially with the activism, with the arts. When we were putting this together for the NWU Art Facilities, people wanted to donate, to help. I love what you're doing around the education. I love what you're doing around the arts. We wanted to be able to support more of that, like having educational forums, teach-ins, call-ins, and other things. And so, you know, we saw this need for programming, and so we decided to, you know, create this nonprofit organization that could help support that.

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Good. So, cultural arts and activism. What does that look like? How does it come together?

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A lot of different ways. Like Fawn said, we have done some teach-ins. We've had people from different communities, from the Latinx community, and just recently had a member, Xochitl and Juan Cuevas, who are renting one of the studios, and they do a lot of work around the Aztec calendar, and they brought in an elder who taught on, you know, that kind of cultural education. And we all learned, like, our birthdays by that calendar, and we all participated, and it was a great event up there. So it could be a teach-in. We're also doing healing circles, and maybe Fawn would like to

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talk a little bit more about those. And how we find out about these when they're about to happen.

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So I do post on my Instagram page for NUWU Arts for different events and things but just because of COVID and you know space like we haven't even officially opened yet. We do plan to open we have a goal for this fall but we have you know between our artist friends and families you know done smaller events and that's enabled us to see like all right what do we have the capacity for and to do so we've done a couple of things you know with some of the kids like the families that are involved with our group, you know, painting doors and, you know, having like, you know, really group functions that are happening. And like Aaron was saying, like one of the, one of my favorite events is really when that elder came out to teach about his culture and language, language around the words and the meanings around the symbols. And it was so impactful. I mean, it was just like silence. Everyone was hanging on every word of what this man had to say about the culture and really teaching me because I didn't know a lot about the Aztec calendar until it was really dissected and explained and just how it has meaning for all people. This is not limited to one culture. Once people know about these things, it's like we all know about these things. And that's what we want to do too, because, you know, our places are not limited to Native American culture, because we are on this path of decolonization, you know, in many different ways. And it's meant, you know, something different for everybody who comes to our facilities, and even, you know, the three of us who sit here today.

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So, so, Collette, go ahead.

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March, there was an event that celebrated the Mexica New Year, which is the new year for the Azteca calendar. And it was attended by well over a hundred. Probably about 300 people. And the artists displayed and sold their work. And what happens with that is people become aware of other cultures through coming in contact with their art. And the expressions, all these people are younger than me. I was overwhelmingly impressed by the passion that these young folks had for decolonization, for reclaiming their cultures, for reclaiming their identity as people and the expressions that came to us through their art. It was a wonderful event. And I'm really looking forward to the community experiencing more of that.

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So if I'm not on Instagram, how do I find out about this? Right now, yeah, and

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probably we should, Fawn had mentioned, we're not officially open yet because we actually have three phases of opening and the first phase was opening the art studios and officially that's 1335 South Maryland Parkway. The activism studios, where there are three nonprofits, My Scars Are Beautiful, Indigenous Educators Empowerment, and then our nonprofit, Indigenous AF, are in the North building, we call it, it's the big orange one, it's 1325 South Maryland Parkway. And then we have a phase three that's kind of been a surprise, and this is probably our first kind of public announcement of it here on Soul to Soul. But we are opening NUWU Art Gallery and Community Center at 1331

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South Maryland Parkway this fall and

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that will be you know where we can Well, as time goes on and things expand, the indigenous AF, or indigenous art facilities, can realize more potential as indigenous allies and families or indigenous Afrofuturisms. And it will expand. And we hope that somewhere in the future, it can expand to indigenous art foundations, which will be an endowment for indigenous artists and for expressions of decolonization. But that's way off in the future.

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Wonderful. Okay, so I'm really excited now. So how much space is this complete total space that you have there? Well, it actually consists of three buildings and a casita in the back.

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And for the approximate square footage, there's there's lots. So I think right now, because I'm working on all the construction with the contractors and things. And so the the center building, for example, is about 1300 or 1400 square feet. And it used to be where the Jewish Jewish community gathered at the synagogue up there on Maryland Parkway in the Huntridge neighborhood. And so it's a pretty big building, 12 to 15 foot high ceilings, and we're going to have some nice gathering space there. So we'll be able to fit in a good number of people. And then there's a lot of parking in the back. So it's officially three properties together, but like Fawn said, there's four buildings because we have Ben Alex Dupree, who's an indigenous filmmaker who works on a lot of good film and art himself. And he's currently renting that casita. And him and his family have been really a joy to have around, and a lot of kids, a lot of young activities. So it's been good.

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Fantastic. So I love this idea. I love that. I know that you're going to collaborate with lots of people throughout the state. I've heard a bit about it so far. So, Fawn, do you want to talk about some of the collaborations that you might have in mind?

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Yeah, for sure. I mean, because we've already been collaborating with other people, and like my partner said, we're not officially open, but we do have a number of people who already want to do so much with us. And so, you know, the future looks bright for our community. It really does. Even currently, you know, with my, you know, my work, like here at UNLV, and working with the Nevada Museum of Art, you know, as a, you know, co-collaborator for different things. I'm currently co-curating for, you know, some things that are coming up this fall with the artist Rose B. Simpson, who is a phenomenal person. And she's also going to be one of the artists that's within the Iwani exhibition that's going to be here at the Donna Beam Gallery. And that exhibition is going to be starting November 1st through December 10th. So keep an eye out for that. But it's also going to be a symposium as well. The Iwani symposium, which

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will be at the Barak Museum of Fine Art on the I'm sorry, on November 5th, which coincides with the UNLV's Art Walk. Oh, this is perfect. It sounds like there is a hunger in the community for what you're doing. You've only had a couple of events and the attendance has just been overwhelming.

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Yeah, it has.

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So it sounds as if that you came up with this idea at the right time. How do you feel about your timing?

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I feel really good about the timing and honestly at first I didn't because this was something that was a part of my five year plan because I wanted to focus on grad school. This is going to be my last year of the MFA program which has been so amazing, so amazing. Anybody who is an artist who is going through college and such should really look into it and do it because it has been so fulfilling. But yeah, my partner was the one who actually saw the synagogue for sale. He's like, we should look into this because he knows my dreams and my hopes about, you know, galleries, studios, community center, all of this, and I was very much against it because I was so busy.

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Well, I saw all the pictures on Facebook as you were cleaning it up and painting it. I just couldn't help you but I loved what you were doing. I wanted to be with

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you. I was there. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, there's been a lot of good community support and if you go to NUWUart.com, N-U-W-U-A-R-T, I'm sorry not dot-com, is it dot-com? Yes it is. Okay, Fawn knows these social media tags better than me. It's.com. IndigenousAF or IAFINC.org is where you can find our website there for the nonprofit. But yeah, we're going to get more pictures up. I'm also working on those websites too.

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Wonderful. Amazing. So, Michael, is there anything that anyone else wants to add? Michael, would you like to add anything else?

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Just briefly, if you choose or would like to donate to Indigenous AF, you can do so, get that information from our website.

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Wonderful. Thank you so much for that information. Fawn, anything else that we should know so that we can be prepared for the opening?

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Yeah, just look forward to the fall and keep an eye out for the social media posts. I drop some Easter eggs here and there about the future so people can see a picture or a glimmer of something that's coming up or something in the messaging. And yeah, it's going to be fun, but just look forward to the fall. There's a lot that's going to be happening. And I post different events that are happening within the Native community as well. And I'm also, NUWU Art is also co-partnered with the old forts. We're bringing back the indigenous marketplace, which is going to be September 25th as well. So I wanted to kind of put that on people's radars too, where we're going to have like foods, vendors, arts, crafts, everything. And it's going to be a lot of fun.

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So if I'm an artist here in the city, what should I know? What should I know about NUVU.

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I think really, really, both of the organizations we're working with, are, you know, we have a focus of decolonization, and we're having more discussion around what that means, and how we as people of color, whether you're indigenous, African American, Latinx, how do we get back to where our ancestors come from, where our elders have lived. And we're really trying to reclaim space, reclaim our identities, and also push that forward into the future. We can't go back to 1491. You know, we can't go back to pre-colonization times, but we can work on colonizing forces today and move ourselves in a positive way into that future. So since

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you said that, I have to ask this question. So one of your areas of research is critical race theory is in a very simple term so that we are not confused.

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Right, right. For me, and I specialize in critical race theory, and for me, just looking at the history honestly and critically, and just accepting that race has played a part in our nation's founding within the United States. It was instrumental in forming class and gender hierarchies in the colonial period, very instrumental to our founding fathers and their founding documents, you know, of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. And if we're going to be honest about our history and be honest about reconciling the past with the present, then we have to accept that race played a key role in our nation's founding. And so just being honest is, you know, with the history, a part of what I consider critical race theory.

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So I didn't think I was going to have time to talk about your book at all. But it sounds like we have a few more minutes. So, A.B. is an author. He's one of our professors here on campus, one of my favorite people here on campus. And he has written this book that I haven't finished yet because it is dense, it is complicated. It is looking at various ideas from history in a completely new way. The name of the book is Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom, Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English So, A.B., I was very touched by a lot of this book. The opening just horrified me. So, just to get everybody else on the same page where we are, tell me about that opening.

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In that opening, I look at a person whose term mulatto or mulatta. She's a woman who's owned by a man, her master Courtney. We don't even have her name in the records, but we know that she's horrendously maimed for running away and seeking her freedom. And I kind of look at the complexity of that relationship, that slave master relationship with a person of mixed ancestry in the very early colonial period, 1600s, in Virginia. And so I really look at how we've come to think about mixed race and where we even got the idea that races can mix, because it's not that race is mixed and you hear people say, oh, race is a social construct, it really doesn't exist. And I think a lot of what I do in the book is bring to light the history just like I talked about. It's very much a book about critical race theory and about, you know, really connecting with what we're doing today. I consider the past a part of the present. We have to accept what has taken place in the past and has gotten us here and how we're going to deal with those things today. So the book is really an exploration about the idea of racial mixture and mixed heritage people. And as many of us in this room here are of mixed ancestry and some of the things that we're working on around identity at the new art studios is really around some of that healing, you know, and healing of the past. And a lot of it is horrific, a lot of it is hard, but a lot of it's beautiful. A lot of triumph, struggle, and overcoming adversity. And those are some of the things that we're still working on. And we kind of pay homage to that. And we want to build a new legacy for those generations that are coming after us.

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So I'm from a place in Northeastern North Carolina, Ahoski, North Carolina. And I grew up with that theory of the one-drop rule and you talk about that somewhat in the book and you expand upon that. When I went away to college from my small town, I went to one of the HBCUs in North Carolina, and people looked at me with my darker skin and they said, you cannot be from a high-skinned North Carolina, Carolina because everyone else from that area who had gone to that school were

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mulattoes. And so that's how we looked at people in those days. We looked at the color of the skin. So tell people what I mean by the one-drop rule. Yeah, you know the one-drop rule is that in the U.S. is the understanding that if someone Negro as the term was used in the past. And so there was a lot of discussion. You know, this is where we kind of get into critical race theory. You know, what is race? What makes one white? What makes one black? I personally don't really use racial terms or I kind of put them in quotations and kind of remind people that we kind of make up these ideas. And, you know, again, I kind of always point back to the New Art Studios and Indigenous AF about what we're doing, because a lot of that work is kind of healing work. A lot of my research is me-search, is I come from very mixed ancestry. And really just kind of working through some of those things around colorism is really what you're kind of describing with your own experience. And I kind of get into that in the book and some of the earliest forms of colorism within the African-American community and other communities of color and this is a part of colonization that has really quite literally made us hate ourselves in our dark skin and then we kind of had this back and forth between light skin dark skin That's within the African-American community. It's within the indigenous community. It's within the Latinx community. And we need to work through those things and stop fighting each other's the whole the whole crab in a barrel mentality. And yes, and those are some of the things we're working on. What surprised me in your book

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was the punishment that white women could get for having relationships with Africans. I was just horrified. I mean they could be whipped. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, I mean, they could be whipped.

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Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean a lot of servants in the early, you know, period colonial period in the 1600s again 17th century. These these women were having relationships with African men with native men and there's a lot of mixing in the slave and servant quarters because really before you get to African slavery, you have to deal with European indentured servitude. And so many Europeans came to this continent in bonds themselves. And to be sure, there's a difference between servitude and slavery. And these Europeans are able to get their freedom. But when they're in the servant and slave quarters, they're not in the master's house, and they're intermixing. And so, you know, there's even a law in Maryland which made European women slaves for the lifetime of their African husbands who were enslaved. And not a lot of people know about this history, but it was there. And this is where we really get the first kind of what we understand as mixed people in North America and some of those ideas

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Well, I was just I am just so surprised by so much of the book. So, everybody, you have you have to read the book. It's just amazing. Again, the title is Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom, Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English Colonia, America. Amazing research. So I'd like to see if any one of my three guests again are Michael Collins, A.B. Wilkinson, and Juan Douglas. Any closing remarks? We have about two minutes.

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Well, thank you for having us, Claytee. We really appreciate having the opportunity to express what's going on with us to your audience. And if anyone would care to, I would encourage them to go to the website. It's indigenousaf.org and see what we're doing, see what we're planning, see how we intend to expand our efforts to support artists in this community, individuals and groups in like-minded and are interested in their culture and decolonization. Wonderful.

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Phawn?

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Yeah, and I would encourage other people to also educate themselves. UNLV now has a minor in American Indian Indigenous Studies, and so they can take it here and learn about that. We have some really amazing faculty that are within that and yes, please come out to the exhibition that's going to be here on campus, the Awani exhibition, Awani meaning balance in the Southern Paiute language. Please come to the symposium and there will be more news about that on the websites that people will see as well.

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Fantastic. A.B., last word.

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I think I'm good. I think my partner here, my partners here have pretty much covered it. And just thank you for all the good work that you're doing and we really appreciate you having us on today.

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Wonderful. It was great having you here. So this is Soul to Soul, universal ideas for a brighter tomorrow. This show again is a free-for-all of positive energy that will include book discussions, music, politics, books, food, COVID-19, oral history, books, and Las Vegas history. Thank you so much.

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You've been listening to special programming sponsored by Public Radio KUNV 91.5 Jazz & More, You've been listening to special programming sponsored by Public Radio KUNV 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Transcribed with Cockatoo