Resist Magazine

THE ART OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

THE WATER ISSUE JAIDA GREY EAGLE LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER REPEAL HYDE ART PROJECT MELANIE CERVANTES A TRIBE CALLED RED

WINTER 2017

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Issue No. 1 | Fall 2016

FROM FLINT TO STANDING ROCK

THE ART OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

STAFF EDI T ORS Wynn Adele, Sugar Barnard, Keiko Ipsen COPYEDI T OR Starla Dove-Weinfurtner LAYOU T S Darryl Parks PRODUC T ION AS SIS TAN T S Beatrix Nooregaard ADVER T ISING Rosa Salire rosa.salire@resistmag.com COVER IMAGE Untitled, Jaida Grey Eagle INQUIRIE S info@resistmag.com

CONTRIBUTORS DIANA BUDDS is a New York–based writer covering design and the built environment.

DUNCAN COOPER is executive producer of Fader magazine and is also known under the musical alias Wildarms.

NICK E S T E S ( KUL WICASA SICANGU T INT ONWAN ) holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in history from the University of South Dakota. Historian by training, Estes’ work interrogates the political economy of the northern Great Plains, the politics of property, land tenure, resource extraction, border town violence, Indigenous internationalism, Lakota treaties and history, and human rights.

ANDY GENSLER is a writer, editor and enthusiastic dancer who has worked at and written for the New York Times, 2 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT E R I S S UE

Rolling Stone and Spin. He co-founded the Mishpucha music collective and the No Dancing Allowed political organization fighting NYC’s restrictive cabaret laws. He also edited the Daily Swarm and played guitar in the Homefries, an eclectic folkmetal-country-gypsy-punk band.

MAT T IE K AHN is a writer who lives in New York. She covers politics, style, culture, and dangerous women. As far as she’s concerned, candidates come and go, but the Oxford comma is forever.

WILLIAM E . K E T CHUM III is a journalist who covers music, pop culture, film/TV, race, culture and social justice. He is an editor at Okayplayer, and his work has appeared in Complex, Billboard, Guardian, NPR, MTV, Ebony, HipHopDX, and more.

S OWMYA K RISHNAMUR T HY wears red lipstick and interviews your favorite artists. A hiphop aficionado since the “public school era,” she frequently appears on-air as a pop culture expert on MTV, CNN, VH1, NPR and the Huffington Post.

MIK E DJ PIZ ZO is managing editor and Co-Creator of Cuepoint at Medium, creator of HipHopSite.com, and resident DJ at soundcloud.com/hotdamage.

JULIA LURIE is a reporter at Mother Jones in San Francisco whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

R AQUEL REICHARD is the Politics & Culture Editor at Latina.com and Latina magazine, writing on all things policy, social justice, cultura and health. A proud NuyoFloRican chonga, when Raquel’s not talking Latina feminism, racial justice, the “x” in Latinx or the prison industrial complex, she’s going on and on about the Puerto Rican diaspora in Orlando, Florida.

FROM THE EDITORS Thank you for picking up the first issue of RESIST Magazine. We are an arts and culture magazine that centers the voices of revolutionaries, changemakers, and everyday folks on the margins. We look at the space where art and activism intersect and support artists who — to borrow from legendary artivist Nina Simone — reflect the times, re-frame the narrative, and re-imagine reality.

We focus on artists who create to amplify the voices of their communites. A portion of the proceeds from our publication goes toward funding featured artists as well as the causes around which they are creating.

This quarter’s issue focuses on two of the United States’ most pressing water crises: the poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan, and the violation of treaty rights on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

Proceeds from this issue will go directly to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and water filtration systems in Flint.

As you read, you will be introduced to the response from musicians grassroots to celebrity regarding the Flint water crisis. You will see Latoya Ruby Frazier’s challenge to the power wielded by the traditional photographer through her stunning and transgressive portraiture. You will witness joyful and unapologetic resistance at the Oceti Sakowin camp captured through the lens of Jaida Grey Eagle. And you will see the incredible breadth of visual art being created by artists in a resounding message of solidarity with the #NoDAPL movement.

Let this issue be a reminder that these moments are far from over; that tangible actions of support through our voices, the leveraging of our privileges, the creation of art, the organizing of our communities is necessary in order to halt and undo these legacies of harm. That the resistance at Standing Rock takes place in the context of more than 500 years of Indigenous resistance to occupation in the Americas. That the poisoning of Flint's water supply continues a centuries-old legacy of environmental racism that disproportionately harms and targets Black and brown communities.

Please write to us, and your letters will be published in next quarter’s issue.

Call us out, call us in, share resources, give shout outs, and send recommendations our way. We want to build this with you.

We stand with Standing Rock. We stand with Flint. We will continue using our voices, building our communities, leveraging our resources, and creating in the name of liberation. Join us!

In solidarity,

The Editors

R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 3

RESOURCES

We hope that some of the content you engage with in this issue of RESIST inspires action. While this list is by no means exhaustive, we welcome you to use any these resources as a starting point for education, dialogue and action in your own community.

Information

Reporting

Community Foundation of Greater Flint cfgf.org

Democracy Now democracynow.org

Flint Water Study flintwaterstudy.org

Indian Country indiancountrymedianetwork.com

Sacred Stone Camp sacredstone.org

The Nation thenation.com

Standing Rock Sioux standingrock.org

Mother Jones motherjones.com

4 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT E R I S S UE

For action alerts, interviews, and more: Twitter + Instagram + Facebook @ resistmag Podcast T he Art of Resistance Web r esistmagazine.com

Arts Until We Are All Free untilweareallfree.com CultureStrike culturestrike.org Dignidad Rebelde dignidadrebelde.com Repeal Hyde Art Project repealhydeartproject.org

Action Governor Rick Snyder 517 373 3400 PO Box 30013 Lansing, Michigan 48909 North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple 201 328 2200 Energy Transfer Partners Lee Hanse, EVP 210 403 6455 Lee.Hanse@energytransfer.com #NoDAPL White House Petition bit.ly/StandingRockWG Army Corps of Engineers 202 761 5903

R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 5

CONTENTS Opening Lyrics: New World Water................................................................................. 8 #NoDAPL In Historical Context....................................................................................... 10 Flint, MI: A Timeline.................................................................................................................. 16

Repeal Hyde Art Project ......................................................................................................... 22 Artists in Solidarity with #NoDAPL ............................................................................. 28 Melanie Cervantes ..................................................................................................................... 38

Native Artists Shift the Narrative..................................................................................... 44 Flint is Family................................................................................................................................... 52 Latoya Ruby Frazier..................................................................................................................... 62

Hip Hop Responds ..................................................................................................................... 66 Musicians of Flint......................................................................................................................... 70 A Tribe Called R.E.D................................................................................................................... 76 Closing Lyrics: Black Snakes .............................................................................................. 78

R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 7

Man, you gotta cook with it, bathe and clean with it (That’s right) When it’s hot, summertime you fiend for it (Let em know) You gotta put it in the iron you steaming with (That’s right) It’s what they dress wounds and treat diseases with (Shout it out) The rich and poor, black and white got need for it (That’s right) And everybody in the world can agree with this (Let em know) Consumption promotes health and easiness (That’s right) Go too long without it on this earth and you leaving it (Shout it out) Americans wasting it on some leisure shit (Say word?)

And other nations be desperately seeking it (Let em know) Bacteria washing up on they beaches (Say word?)

Don’t drink the water, son they can’t wash they feet with it (Let em know) Young babies in perpetual neediness (Say word?)

Epidemics hopping up off the petri dish (Let em know) Control centers try to play it all secretive (Say word?)

To avoid public panic and freakiness (Let em know) There are places where TB is common as TV Cause foreign-based companies go and get greedy The type of cats who pollute the whole shore line Have it purified, sell it for a dollar twenty-five Now the world is drinking it Your moms, wife, and baby girl is drinking it Up north and down south is drinking it You should just have to go to your sink for it The cash registers is going “cha-chink!” for it Fluorocarbons and monoxide Got the fish looking cockeyed Used to be free now it cost you a fee Cause it’s all about getting that cash (Money) Said it’s all about getting that cash (Money) Johny cash (Money) Roseland cash (Money) Give me cash (Money) Cold cash (Money) Cash rules everything around me Move!

MOS DEF/YASIIN BEY

BLACK ON BOTH SIDES 1999

NEW WORLD WATER

There’s nothing more refreshing (that cool refreshing drink) Than a cool, crisp, clean glass of water On a warm summer’s day (That cool refreshing drink) Try it with your friends New World Water make the tide rise high Come inland and make your house go “Bye” (My house!)

Fools done upset the Old Man River Made him carry slave ships and fed him dead n***a Now his belly full and he about to flood something So I’ma throw a rope that ain’t tied to nothing Tell your crew use the H2 in wise amounts since It’s the New World Water; and every drop counts You can laugh and take it as a joke if you wanna But it don’t rain for four weeks some summers And it’s about to get real wild in the half You be buying Evi an just to take a fucking bath Heads is acting wild, sipping poor, puffin dank Competing with the next man for higher playing rank See I ain’t got time try to be Big Hank, Fuck a bank, I need a twenty-year water tank Cause while these knuckleheads is out here sweating they goods The sun is sitting in the treetops burning the woods And as the flames from the blaze get higher and higher They say, “Don’t drink the water! We need it for the fire!”

New York is drinking it (New World Water) Now all of California is drinking it (New World Water) Way up north and down south is drinking it (New World Water) Used to have minerals and zinc in it (New World Water) Now they say it got lead and stink in it (New World Water) Fluorocarbons and monoxide Push the water table lopside Used to be free now it cost you a fee Cause oil tankers spill they load as they roam cross the sea

CONTEXT PEACEFUL WARRIOR Dan Nanamkin of the Yakima

Nation of Washington state stands on Highway 1806, part of the historic Lewis & Clark trail. A peaceful warrior, Dan was arrested while praying (Image and caption: Camille Seaman).

Overlaid: Fort Laramie Treaty.

FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES #NoDAPL IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

BY NICK ESTES L ittle has been written about the historical relationship between the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the longer histories of Oceti Sakowin (The Great Sioux Nation) resistance against the trespass of settlers, dams, and pipelines across the Mni Sose (the Missouri River).

This is a short analysis of the historical and political context of the #NoDAPL movement and the transformative possibilities of the current struggle.

Thousands have camped along the banks of the Missouri River at Cannon Ball in the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which promises to carry half a million barrels of heavy crude oil a day across four states, under the Missouri River twice, and under the Mississippi River toward the Gulf of Mexico for global export. Camp Oceti Sakowin, Red Warrior Camp, and Sacred Stone Camp — the various Native-led groups standing in unity against DAPL — have brought together the largest mass gathering of Natives and allies in more than a century, all on land and along a river over which the Army Corps of Engineers claims sole jurisdiction and authority.

In 1803 the wasicu — the fat-takers, the settlers, the capitalists — claimed this stretch of the river as part of what became the largest real estate transaction in world history.

The fledgling U.S. settler state “bought” 827 million acres from the French Crown in the Louisiana Purchase and sent

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two white explorers, Lewis and Clark, to claim and map the newly acquired territory. None of the Native Nations west of the Mississippi consented to the sale of their lands to a sovereign they neither recognized nor viewed as superior.

It was only after we rebuffed Lewis and Clark for failing to pay tribute for their passage on our river that they labeled the Oceti Sakowin “the vilest miscreants of the savage race.” Thus began one of the longest and most hotly contested struggles in the history of the world.

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

or the next hundred years, the United States led various F unsuccessful military campaigns to suppress, annihilate, and dispossess us of our rightful claim to the river and our lands. Despite popular belief, we were never militarily defeated. Red Cloud’s War and the War for the Black Hills led to the military defeat of the U.S. Calvary, most famously the annihilation of General George Armstrong Custer’s forces at the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. These wars, for our part, were entirely defensive.

The Oceti Sakowin signed peace treaties with the invading settler government. The 1854 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties provided temporary reprieve and defined the vast 25-million-acre territory of what became the Great Sioux Reservation, which stretched from the eastern shore of the Missouri River to the Bighorn Mountains. However, four decades of intense warfare took its toll. More than ten million buffalo were slaughtered to starve us out. Settler 1 2 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

hordes invaded and pillaged our Black Hills for gold. Our vast land base diminished and the treaties were nullified when Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876, which abolished treaty-making with Native Nations, and the Black Hills Act of 1877, which illegally ceded the Black Hills and created the present-day reservation system.

The Oceti Sakowin has vigorously opposed these bald imperialistic maneuvers to usurp our self-determining authority over our lives and lands. Settler society entreated the Oceti Sakowin for the 1854 and 1868 agreements, not the other way around. We entered these relationships with the understanding that both parties respected a common humanity with the people and the lands. In our view, the settler state lost its humanity when it violated the treaties. Every act on our part to recover and reclaim our lives and land and to resist elimination is an attempt to recuperate that lost humanity — humanity this settler state refuses and denies even to its own.

1868 FOR LARAMIE TREATY

South Dakota and North Dakota statehood played a major role in suppressing the Oceti Sakowin. Although we have never signed any treaties with these states, they lay claim to the destinies of our lands, our river, and our people. To do so, they have always used violence and hatred. In 1890, a year after statehood, these two states drummed up anti-Indian sentiment to further break up and open reservation lands for settlement. As a result, they fabricated the Ghost Dance crisis; called for federal troops to intervene to protect white property

EVERY ACT ON OUR PART TO RECOVER AND RECLAIM OUR LIVES AND LAND AND TO RESIST ELIMINATION IS AN ATTEMPT TO RECUPERATE THAT LOST HUMANITY — HUMANITY THIS SETTLER STATE REFUSES AND DENIES EVEN TO ITS OWN. that resulted in the assassination of our military and political leaders such as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull; and resulted in the killing of over 300 mostly unarmed women, children, and elders at Wounded Knee.

OUTRIGHT MURDER WAS NEVER ENOUGH

The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 and the creation of five smaller reservations attempted to factionalize the OcetiSakowin and opened up “surplus” lands to white homesteaders.

From 1907 to 1934, millions of acres of the remaining Great Sioux Reservation were lost. In the early 1900s, Missouri River Basin states began organizing to usurp Native water rights for large-scale irrigation projects. These states envisioned a dam system that would create large reservoirs that would primarily flood Native lands. But there was a major problem. In 1908, a U.S. Supreme Court decision held that tribes maintained access and control of water within original treaty territory, even if that territory was diminished. This became known as the Winters Doctrine. For the Missouri River, the Oceti Sakowin possessed the prior claim to both the river and its shorelines as spelled out in the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties.

HISTORIC AND PRESENT DAY TREATY LANDS

An opportunity for the states arose. After unseasonal mass flooding, Congress passed the Flood Control Act in 1944 — or what became known as the Pick-Sloan Plan — authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to erect five dams on the mainstem of the river. All of which targeted and disproportionately destroyed Native lands and lives. Of the five dams, four flooded the lands of seven nations of the Oceti Sakowin: the Santee Sioux Tribe, the Yankton Sioux Tribe, the Sicangu Oyate, the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Of the 611,642 condemned acres through eminent domain in what was called the “taking area,” these nations lost 309,584 acres of vital bottomlands.

Inundation also forced more than a thousand Native families, in patent violation of treaties and without their consent, to relocate. Entire communities were removed to marginal reservation lands, and many were forced to leave the reservation entirely. As a result of condemnation, the Army Corps of Engineers claims sole jurisdiction over the river and its shoreline.

PICK-SLOAN DAMS

The dams, which promised and delivered wholesale destruction, coincided and worked in tandem with the federal policies of termination and relocation. In 1953, Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 (HCR 108) that inaugurated termination policy, and called for the immediate termination or ended federal recognition of the Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribes. That same year, Congress passed Public Law 280 (PL 280) that authorized states to assume criminal and civil jurisdiction over Native lands. The Bureau of Indian Affairs supported these programs and carried out the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 that relocated thousands from the reservation to far-off urban centers. HCR 108, PL 280, relocation, and the Pick-Sloan dams did not just promote assimilation — they enforced genocide.

Through termination, relocation, and massive flooding, however, colonialism created its own gravediggers. The Oceti Sakowin unified to thwart the state of South Dakota’s attempts to implement PL 280 to overthrow Native governments and assume control over their lands. Natives on relocation also began to organize. Groups such as the National Indian Youth Council and the American Indian Movement (AIM) formed in the urban centers to combat the wholesale destruction of Native life on- and off-reservation. In 1973, AIM occupied Wounded Knee in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which was a culmination of more than a decade of Red Power organizing. The occupation was the catalyst for a mass gathering of thousands at Standing Rock in 1974, which resulted in the founding of the International Indian Treaty Council. At Standing Rock, more than 90 Native Nations from around the world built the foundations of what would become four decades of work at the United Nations and the basis for the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The International Indian Treaty Council, the international arm of the American Indian Movement, was founded at Standing Rock in 1974. The anti-colonial uprising taking place in Oceti Sakowin treaty territory and spilling onto the world stage was met with violent state repression. AIM leaders were assassinated and many were imprisoned. For example, Native leader Leonard Peltier, who participated in this movement for the life and dignity of his people, to this day sits behind bars as one of the longest serving political prisoners in United C O N T E X T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 13

T REATY RIGHTS, AND BY DEFAULT NATIVE SOVEREIGNTY, PROTECT EVERYONE’S RIGHTS.

States history. From 1977 to 2012 South Dakota’s prison population increased 500 percent. One third of its prison population is Native, although Natives make up only nine percent of the total population.

With the advent of tarsands extraction and heavy crude pipelines destroying water supplies and scorching the earth, Natives and the Oceti Sakowin have once again reunited. This unification first targeted tarsands and pipeline construction in so-called Canada in First Nations’ territory. Successful blockades have halted pipelines. In 2014, the Oceti Sakowin began a massive organizing effort, with help from allies, against the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline that, too, threatened to cross the Missouri River. Our Nation is made up of some of the poorest people in the Western hemisphere organizing to oppose a fossil fuel industry made up of some of the most powerful and wealthiest people on the planet. Despite these odds KXL was defeated on November 6, 2015. After mass protests, the Obama administration denied the pipeline’s permit.

Two important lessons were drawn from the KXL struggle that were carried into #NoDAPL. The power of multinational unity between Natives and non-Natives was one of the movement’s successes. The other proved the transformative power and potential of anti-colonial resistance to successfully mobilize poor people against the rich and powerful — and win!

THE RED NATION RIDERS AT #NODAPL

ike our ancestors’ wars of the nineteenth century, our curL rent war is also defensive — it is to protect water and land from inevitable spoliation in the name of profit. The #NoDAPL movement is explicitly nonviolent, which accounts for its mass appeal to Native and non-Native communities. In spite of this, political violence as a tactic of state repression has emerged against water protectors who engage in nonviolent direct action to disrupt the construction of the pipeline as well as those not engaged in direct actions. Natives at or near camp — whether involved in direct actions or not — are also targets for surveillance and repression. The camp and the Standing Rock reservation are under constant surveillance. The reason: 1 4 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

IN THIS CASE, THEY PROTECT A VITAL FRESH WATER SOURCE FOR MILLIONS: THE MISSOURI RIVER.

Native bodies stand between corporations and their money.

Halting the accumulation of capital, which in this context is the exploitation of our river and lands, has piqued settler ire and spite.

The prolonged peaceful encampment practices an unsettling counter-sovereignty. It has drawn the support and solidarity of more than 200 Native Nations and countless thousands of allied forces sending a clear message to corporate interests: North Dakota cannot manage its Indians and the “Indian Problem” is out of control. After all, controlling the “Indian Problem” has always meant maintaining unrestricted access to Native lands and resources and keeping Indians silent, out of view, and factionalized. At Standing Rock, an unarmed, nonviolent prayer camp poses such a serious threat to settler proprietary claims that North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, who has direct ties to the oil and gas industry, has deployed the full force of the Highway Patrol and the National Guards. These forces are not there to service an impoverished Native community or protect the integrity of the land and river. They are there to carry out the will of DAPL backers Energy Transfer Partners, some of the richest and most powerful people in the world who have used attack dogs against unarmed, nonviolent water protectors.

More than 60 have been arrested, including journalists.

Violent state repression has not ceased.

THE #NODAPL “UNITED NATIONS” OF NATIVE NATION FLAGS The Army Corps of Engineers, who maintains jurisdiction over the river in violation of the 1854 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties, claims it holds the final say about whether the DAPL can cross the Missouri River. The #NoDAPL encampment, in an exercise in Native sovereignty, sits atop lands claimed by the Corps, who only recently “permitted” the camp’s presence. On September 9, the Department of Interior, the Department of Justice, and the Corps also issued a joint statement halting — for now — the construction of the

pipeline under the Missouri River as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s case against DAPL will be considered and reviewed.

This was a victory — a temporary halt of construction at a key site — and proof that this enemy, no matter how powerful, violent, or spiteful, too, can be defeated if Native people refuse to back down and continue to act in unity and cooperation. While construction halted under the river, it continues everywhere else. So too do direct actions. So too does the peaceful encampment. And so too must our focus and support on #NoDAPL.

O CETI SAKOWIN AND NATIVE RESISTANCE WILL CONTINUE. Early lessons from this ongoing struggle can be drawn to help strategize future possibilities. The colonial state does not possess, and never has possessed, the moral high ground. It defends corporate access to Native lands and uses violence as a political tactic to maintain its contested authority over the land. The North Dakota National Guard has never in its history been deployed in force against an unarmed “domestic” population—until now. The National Guard and the Highway Patrol protect corporate interests and enforce the colonial state’s monopoly on violence against the most vulnerable and marginalized populations — Native people.

The prayer camp has galvanized multinational unity, primarily mobilizing everyday people in defense of Native sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. Treaty rights, and by default Native sovereignty, protect everyone’s rights. In this case, they protect a vital fresh water source for millions — the Missouri River.

The profits that corporations like Energy Transfer Corporation reap from colonial projects like the DAPL should be seized and used to repair damage to the land and river. With this also comes a long-term goal to restore the Missouri River to its rightful protectors — the Oceti Sakowin — and its natural path.

This means the Army Corps of Engineers must relinquish its claim to the river and begin to demolish the Pick-Sloan dams so that the river and its people may once again live.

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PICTURED City of Flint water plant and the

Industrial Iron & Metal Co (Latoya Ruby Frazier).

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CONTEXT

three years and counting Flint, Michigan has been without clean water since April 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder switched the city's water supply to the Flint River. Though the issue is no longer trending in the media, this majority African American city is still in the midst of a life-threatening water crisis. By Julia Lurie

C O N T E X T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 17

FROM LEFT: Leanne Walters heats bottled water for the twins' weekly bath, as Gavin looks on (Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press); Former EPA Re-

gion 5 administration Susan Hedman, Former Flint EM Darnell Earley, Former Flint mayor Dayne Walling and Virgina Tech professor Marc Edwards sworn in before testifying before a congressional hearing on the Flint water crisis in March 2016 (Getty Images); A protestor in front of Flint City Hall in January 2016 (Steve Carmody/Michigan Radio).

2014 APRIL 25 To save money, Flint changes its municipal water

source to the Flint River rather than the Detroit water system.

The switch is overseen by state emergency manager Darnell Earley, who, like other emergency managers around the state, is able to override local policies in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

SUMMER Residents begin complaining to local leaders about

JANUARY 7 A state building in Flint starts hauling in coolers of

clean water, according to emails later exposed by Progress Michigan. An email from the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget reads, “DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink.”

tainted, foul-smelling tap water—and health symptoms such as rashes and hair loss from drinking and bathing in it.

JANUARY 12 Detroit offers to reconnect Flint to its water system

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER E. coli and coliform bacteria are found in

JANUARY 13 Gov. Rick Snyder names Jerry Ambrose as Flint’s

Flint water supply. The city instructs residents to boil tap water.

OCTOBER 1 General Motors says it will stop using Flint River

water in its plants after workers notice that the water corrodes engine parts.

2015 JANUARY 2 Flint issues an advisory warning that its water con-

tains high levels of trihalomethanes, byproducts of water-disinfectant chemicals. Over time, these byproducts can cause kidney, liver, and nervous system damage. Sick and elderly people may be at risk, the advisory notes, but the water is otherwise safe.

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at no cost. Emergency manager Earley rejects the offer.

new emergency manager; Earley is reassigned as emergency manager for the Detroit Public Schools.

FEBRUARY 3 Gov. Snyder awards Flint $2 million to improve its

water system. In a memo to Snyder, state officials write, “It’s clear the nature of the threat was communicated poorly. It’s also clear that folks in Flint are concerned about other aspects of their water—taste, smell, and color being among the top complaints.”

FEBRUARY 18 Lead levels of 104 parts per billion are found in

the tap water of LeeAnne Walters, a Flint mother of four who demanded the city test her water after her kids showed troubling symptoms. The threshold for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to initiate an enforcement action is 15 ppb. The city offered to connect the Walters to a neighbor’s home.

FEBRUARY 25 Walters contacts Miguel Del Toral, a manager at

the EPA’s Midwest water division. She informs him that Flint isn’t treating its water with standard corrosion controls—critical in an aging city like Flint—that prevent old pipes from leaching lead. Del Toral also learns that residents’ taps are being preflushed for several minutes prior to sampling for city water tests.

MARCH 24 Ambrose, the new emergency manager, nixes a City Council vote to “do all things necessary” to switch back to the Detroit water system, calling the vote “incomprehensible.”

APRIL 6 In a Facebook post, City Council VP Wantwaz Davis

accuses Gov. Snyder and emergency manager Ambrose of trying to commit “genocide” in Flint. Explaining himself to the Flint Journal, Davis says, “I feel the emergency manager and governor should be held more accountable…I do believe maybe five, maybe 10 years from now, some people are going to contract a disease…they cannot ever get rid of.”

JUNE 24 Del Toral writes a memo (later leaked) to the head of the

SEPTEMBER 24 Pediatrician/researcher Mona Hanna-Attisha

goes public with her research showing that the percentage of Flint children under five years old with elevated blood lead levels has doubled, and in some cases tripled, since the change in water supply. MDEQ pushes back Spokesman Brad Wurfel calls her findings “unfortunate” in a time of “near-hysteria” among residents. “When a state with a team of 50 epidemiologists tells you you’re wrong,” Hanna-Attisha later tells the New York Times, “how can you not second-guess yourself?”

SEPTEMBER 25 Flint issues a lead warning, advising residents to

drink and cook only with cold tap water, but still maintains that the water complies with federal standards. The governor’s chief of staff emails his boss “The MDEQ and [Department of Community Health] feel that some in Flint are taking the very sensitive issue of children’s exposure to lead and trying to turn it into a political football.”

OCTOBER 8 Lead is found at high levels in the drinking fountains

EPA’s drinking water division, calling Flint’s lack of corrosion controls a “major concern.”

of three Flint schools. Snyder announces that Flint will go back to buying water from Detroit. The city makes the switch about a week later.

APRIL 28 Marc Edwards, professor at Virginia Tech and expert on

OCTOBER 19 “It recently has become clear that our drinking water

lead corrosion, conducts new tests on the Walters’ home without flushing the taps first and finds lead levels more than twice the level the EPA classifies as hazardous waste.

MAY 6 An EPA report identifies more homes with high levels of lead contaminating drinking water.

JULY 1 Susan Hedman, director of the EPA’s Midwest division,

suggests that Del Toral’s report was premature and that an official version will be released “when the report has been revised and fully vetted by EPA management.”

program staff made a mistake while working with the city of Flint,” MDEQ director Dan Wyant admits. “Simply stated, staff employed a federal protocol they believed was appropriate, and it was not.”

NOVEMBER 16 Lawyers announce a class-action lawsuit against

city and state officials, including Snyder and Wyant, on behalf of Flint residents.

DECEMBER 29 Independent task force created by Snyder points

fingers at MDEQ, calling its regulatory approach “unacceptable.”

C O N T E X T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 19

FROM LEFT: Flint resident Lisia Williams, 43, protests at Gov. Snyder’s hearing; LaShanti Redmond, 10, gets tested at a “lead awareness family

fun night” at Freeman Elementary School after water from school fountains were found to contain toxic levels of lead. Gov. Rick Snyder takes his seat before a hearing about the Flint water crisis in front of the U.S. House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform at the Rayburn House Office Building (Jake May/MLive.com).

2016 JANUARY 5 Snyder declares a state of emergency for Genesee Coun-

ty, home to Flint. The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan launches an investigation into officials’ handling of the crisis.

JANUARY 7 The state’s chief medical executive advises Flint residents to use only bottled or filtered water.

JANUARY 12 Snyder deploys National Guard troops to distribute

bottled water and water filters to Flint homes. A day later, the governor announces that cases of Legionnaire’s disease have spiked in Genesee County since Flint residents began drinking the river water—10 people in the county had died from the normally rare disease.

JANUARY 16 President Barack Obama declares a state of emergency in Flint, freeing up $5 million in federal relief.

JANUARY 17 Hillary Clinton brings up Flint at the Democratic

debate. “I’ll tell you what, if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action.” Bernie Sanders goes further, saying Snyder should resign.

JANUARY 19 In a State of the State address, Snyder apologizes. “No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe,” he says. He pledges to release his office’s emails.

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JANUARY 21 Hedman, the head of the EPA’s Midwest division,

resigns. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announces an investigation into the division’s handling of the crisis. Obama announces that his administration will give $80 million in aid to Michigan, most of which will go towards the Flint crisis.

JANUARY 22 Snyder adamantly denies suggestions that the Flint crisis was the result of environmental racism “I’ve made a focused effort since before I started in office to say we need to work hard to help people that have the greatest need,” he said.

JANUARY 24 The Daily Beast reveals that in 2012, Ed Kurtz, then

Flint’s emergency manager, rejected using Flint River water based on conversations with MDEQ. It remains unclear why use of Flint River water was later authorized.

JANUARY 25 The state announces that Red Cross and National Guard teams have delivered bottled water to each Flint house twice, and that it will now dial back on the deliveries.

JANUARY 26 Ambrose, Flint’s former emergency manager, resigns from his position on Lansing’s Financial Health team.

JANUARY 27 A coalition of organizations and citizens, including

the ACLU and Natural Resources Defense Council, file a lawsuit asking federal court to step in to provide clean drinking water.

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ART THAT INTERSECTS VISUAL ART

AN INTERVIEW WITH MEGAN SMITH OF THE REPEAL HYDE ART PROJECT Interview by Mary Dobson Hobbs Images by Megan Smith

Megan Smith is an artist, activist, and social worker based in Massachusetts. In 2011, Megan founded the Repeal Hyde Art Project, which uses participatory art installations to raise awareness and create dialogue about the Hyde Amendment, which prevents people from using Medicaid to pay for abortions.

Tell me a little bit about your background in the arts, and how you came to start the Repeal Hyde Art Project. I do not have any professional artistic training but have always

been a creative person. I come from a family of artists: my grandmother is a painter. As a child I remember painting with her in her apartment and her teaching me about color and perspective. Art was always something that was valued and encouraged in my family, and I realized from an early age that it was something that I could do.

Art has played a large role in social movements past and present, and I am in-

terested in its ability to transcend messaging and create dialogue about social issues. I have been involved in abortion access and reproductive health/justice work for seven years. I am passionate about pushing for a world where people can make the decision to parent or not to parent with safety, dignity, support, and respect. I created the Repeal Hyde Art Project in 2011 based on these principles, as a way to create dialogue and awareness about the Hyde Amendment,

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MEGAN SMITH creator of Repeal Hyde Art Project. (Photo courtesy of Repeal Hyde Art Project).

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which blocks people from using Medicaid to pay for abortions.

Hyde can have devastating consequences for people living in poverty who may have to put off paying rent, bills, or even risk putting themselves in dangerous situations to be able to afford an abortion. I wanted to create images that celebrated resilient narratives in the face of such burdensome obstacles.

I have worked with abortion funds in Philadelphia and in Boston

over the past few years, and I have talked with people firsthand about their experiences trying to come up with the money to pay for their abortions. What I remember and hold about the people I have spoken with is not only the destructive policies and limited resources, but more importantly, the stories of resilience. Hyde has been in place for nearly 40 years, and every day we are confronted with more and more restrictions to reproductive health care. Yet for as long as politicians have been trying to make reproductive health care impossible, cutting social programs, and sanctioning state violence, there have been people overcoming those barriers. So I thought to myself in 2011, where are the images that represent those stories? Where are the images in the 24 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

reproductive health/rights/justice movement that symbolize hope and optimism? I didn’t see any, so I created one myself with the intention that it would be usable and shareable as a way to bring more people into that conversation.

How does how the project work, and what you hope to accomplish? The

Repeal Hyde Art Project raises awareness and creates dialogue about the Hyde Amendment, which blocks people from using Medicaid to pay for abortions. The Project accomplishes its mission through collaborative, in-person displays and shareable graphic content. The purpose of both the interactive displays and the shareable images are to invite people into conversation about abortion access in physical and online spaces.

The interactive displays are easy: just print out the bird

templates from my website along with posters with information about the Project and about the Hyde Amendment, instruct people to write a message on the birds about why they think that the Hyde Amendment should be repealed, and post them in a public space.It’s also easy to share my images from my website or

“I WANT TO CREATE IMAGES THAT CELEBRATE RESILIENT NARRATIVES.”

Facebook page to create dialogue about reproductive health/justice issues. The online graphics have enabled me to think about expanding my messaging. I recognize that the Hyde Amendment has a disproportionate impact on women of color and exists within a multi-layered, oppressive environment. I strive to create intersectional dialogue that links abortion access to other related issues—a dialogue which reflects our complex realities.

I love that you created a symbolic image for the project. Tell me about what the bird means to you, and why you chose it for this project? I created the

bird symbol because I wanted to make something that represented the resistance and resilience of people who have overcome significant obstacles to be able to care for themselves and their families. I wanted something that reflected the dignity of people who face these difficult decisions every day, and I wanted to honor them. I also wanted a symbol that represents the hope for change.

Hyde has been in place for nearly 40 years, and it is a stubborn piece of legislation that folks have been working diligently to repeal for a long time. I wanted to remind us that we have the power to challenge and change the “status quo.” I also chose a

bird specifically because I liked the idea that each person who participates has a bird that is unique to them, but that we are flying together over these barriers.

You have made over 100 shareable graphics - talk about the decision to give your images away and what you hope these images will do in the world?

When I created the Repeal Hyde Art Project, I never intended for

it to be something that I owned, but rather something to spark dialogue and make change that could be used by individuals and groups. Although the project has expanded, I have intentionally made the work free for non-commercial use because I wanted to maintain that spirit. It is more important to me that the images are shared and that people are using them to start conversation about reproductive justice issues than for me to make money.

Why do you believe art can be a catalyst for positive change? I think that

art has the power to connect and resonate with people in on an emotional level. Art can make people think about ideas and concepts that they would not necessarily think about in other settings or through other mediums. Art and symbols can also capture V I S UA L A R T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 25

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complex ideas and thoughts and synthesize them in a way that invites the viewer to consider multiple ideas at once. When you are looking at an image, you are looking at its physical presence, color, light, and texture, thinking about what it means, considering how it relates to you, or perhaps even thinking of a familiar memory, person, or place. Art gives us permission to hold multiple ideas and values at once, and I think that permission can bring people into conversation that they may not have entered otherwise.

What excites you most about your work right now? Right now, I am most excited thinking about the possibilities for collaboration that will take this dialogue to new places and audiences. I have worked

with a number of organizations on exciting campaigns, including most recently a billboard campaign with New Voices Cleveland.

That campaign was conducted in response to racist, anti-abortion billboards in the Cleveland area, and I am thrilled that I was able to partner with New Voices to put up positive images and messages to reach people who had seen only negative images previously.

I’m also excited that I have recently collaborated with young people over the past academic year in the Repeal Hyde Art Project leadership program, funded by the Abortion Conversation Project. It’s important to me to make space and foster the voices of young people in this movement, and I plan to use a portion of this award to continue the leadership program.

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VISUAL ART

Artists in Solidarity with #NoDAPL

ACROSS THE WORLD, ARTISTS ARE CREATING WORK TO EXPRESS SOLIDARITY WITH WATER PROTECTORS AT STANDING ROCK. IN SEPTEMBER, MELANIE CERVANTES OF DIGNIDAD REBELDE BEGAN USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO COMPILE THESE ARTWORKS , DOCUMENTING THE RESOUNDING INTERNATIONAL MESSAGE OF SUPPORT FOR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX AS THEY FIGHT TO PROTECT THEIR WATER. THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE A SMALL SAMPLING OF THE ART THAT HAS BEEN MADE WORLDWIDE. TO VIEW THE EVER-GROWING COMPILATION, CHECK OUT MELANIE'S FACEBOOK ALBUM, SOLIDARITY WITH STANDING ROCK ART. CURATED BY MELANIE CERVANTES

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MICAH BAZANT

2017 | San Francisco Bay Area

micahbazant.com V I S UA L A R T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 29

LEILA ABDELRAZAQ October 2016 | Chicago

lalaleila.com

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NOEMI November 2016 | Location unknown

website unknown

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JACKIE FAWN 2016 | Klamath, CA

jackiefawn.crevado.com

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ERICA PRETTY EAGLE MOORE September 2016 | Oklahoma

ericaprettyeagle.com

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MONICA TRINIDAD

September 2016 | Chicago

monicatrinidad.bigcartel.com

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MELANIE CERVANTES August 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area

dignidadrebelde.com

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ZEKE PEÑA

September 2016 | El Paso, Texas

zpvisual.com

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THENTVS

2016 | Location unknown

thentvs.com

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ART FOR THE PEOPLE

FROM LEFT C ervantes stands in front of a wall of

posters created by herself, Jesus Barraza and artist Jessica Sabogal; Four-color screen print of renowned racial justice activist Yuri Kochiyama.

THE CALIFORNIA XICANA CO-FOUNDED DIGNIDAD REBELDE, A GRAPHIC ARTS COLLABORATION BETWEEN HERSELF AND OAKLAND-BASED ARTIST JESUS BARRAZA, IN 2007. SHE ALSO ACTS AS THE SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER AT THE AKONADI FOUNDATION, WHICH SUPPORTS ORGANIZATIONS WORKING TO ELIMINATE STRUCTURAL RACISM, AND MANAGES ONE OF THE MOST BADASS LATINA FEMINIST INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS ON THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

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VISUAL ART

AN INTERVIEW WITH MELANIE CERVANTES OF DIGNIDAD REBELDE

By Raquel Reichard

V I S UA L A R T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 39

What can you tell our readers about Dignidad Rebelde and why you felt the urgency to co-create it? Initially, our interest in starting Dignidad

Rebelde was to create and distribute political graphics and posters that amplified the voices of the most impacted communities working in social justice organizations. We wanted to sustain the tradition of intersecting graphics and organizing, which has a history of more than hundred years in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. We learned from the collective Taller models that came before us about how to bring a handmade process of printmaking to community as a different way to engage and share stories. We were determined to refine a methodology that would work for the new millennium by introducing new forms and utilizing platforms that our elders might have never imagined would exist, such as the Internet and social media. We were determined, as Juan R. Fuentes, a veterano of this work, has eloquently stated, “to use every tool possible in the fight for our collective liberation.”

How did your political consciousness take shape as a Xicana growing up in the South Bay of Los Angeles? In 1994, I was a senior in high school.

This was the year California Gov. Pete Wilson championed the racist and anti-migrant Proposition 187, which would have required state and government workers to report anyone they suspected to be undocumented to the Attorney General’s office. This was the year the Zapatistas came out of the jungle to declare war against the Mexican State and protest the signing of NAFTA. 40 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

It was my last year of high school, and I stood on a precipice – not

sure what my path would be or that I’d be shaped by these world events. Six years later, when I felt an urgency to do something about the sexual harassment I was experiencing in the service sector and enrolled in college, I was able to think and talk about what I was seeing and how it impacted me. At community college, I did a lot of campus-based organizing with my friends. That’s where I learned about the power of community and organizing. It was in those years, at the dawn of the new millennium, that I realized the problems that impacted many of us require collective solutions.

When did you start viewing art as a form of activism? Artists like

Malaquias Montoya and Rupert Garcia played very important roles in creating visual tools for the Chicano movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and their work was the first I was exposed to.

Honestly, it was when their art graced the covers of books like “Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement” by F. Artuto Rosales and “Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement” by Carlos Munoz that I started to seek out more images that told stories of the Chicano movement. I was immediately obsessed with screenprinted works. I sought out more of their work and quickly realized that I was hungry for more from Chicanas, who could provide an intersectional analysis and perspective. I found pieces by artists like Ester Hernandez and Yolanda Lopez that offered a perspective that I was deeply hungry for.

FROM LEFT P ower and Love, 2016; We Didn’t Cross the Border, The Border Crossed Us, 2016.

V I S UA L A R T | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 4 1

PROTECT GRANDMOTHER EARTH J esus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, 2013.

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“IT IS THROUGH SHARING MY TRUTH THAT I FIND OUT THAT I AM NOT ALONE, AND IT IS IN THE PLACE OF INTERCONNECTION THAT I FIND STRENGTH AND A DETERMINATION TO CHANGE THINGS.”

It was through this history that I found a glimpse of what would be. In the mid-2000s, I came across the work of Estria Miyashiro, Favianna Rodriguez and Jesus Barraza. They were all artists who founded a collective studio called the Taller Tupac Amaru. I would have never guessed that a couple of years later they would invite me to join.

What is the relationship between art, cultural work, and organizing? Cul-

tural work allows us to address the trauma we have experienced and transform the pain we feel by allowing us a space to share our experiences with one another. This is also what organizing allows us to do. When we bridge the cultural work with organizing, then we open up more space for members of our community to enter these conversations. The process of bringing the two strategies together isn’t always easy. One of the challenges we face is the silos created between these practices. Many organizers I’ve met are also artists, but organizations don’t always feel supported to integrate this skillset into their work. It’s often a missed opportunity.

Although this is a challenge, I see the silo creation often shaped by much larger forces that compartmentalize what we bring to our fight for liberation.

Who else do you see in the Latinx rights movement doing great cultural organizing work? Some of the most inspiring work I have seen has

happened through a network of Indigenous women who have worked through the United Nations to bring the concerns of their communities to international fora. Artists like Celia Herrera Rodriguez have worked at the intersection of ceremony and memory to engage community members in conversations about pressing issues, such as our role in caring for sacred water or what displacement and migration is doing to our cultural lifeway as Indigenous people.

What challenges do you experience as a woman of color in this field?

When I think about how I was introduced to the political graphics of social movements that peaked before I was born, I specifically remember the books that carried these histories dominated by cis-male voices and experiences. In some respects, this is still a challenge. I see art books that are supposed to be somewhat representative of a wide swath of printmakers and only two or three women are included. It’s 2016, and this is still an issue. However, I do see some chipping away at this. The art world, with a capital A, is dominated by straight white men, which isn’t terribly surprising given that it’s a microcosm of the larger Imperialist White Supremacist Cis Hetero Capitalist Patriarchy.

Much of your art centers on women – queer, young, indigenous, Third World.

Is this intentional? If so, why place women at the axis? Given the problem of Imperialist White Supremacist Cis Hetero Capitalist Patriarchy, I have found it incumbent to center those of us who exist on the margins of the marginalized. As a young person, I felt so disempowered. I was sexually assaulted in front of my teachers in their classrooms. The police and army recruiters knew me better than my college counselor. I closeted my queerness and silenced who I was for fear of violent repercussions. For so many years, I felt like I was disposable to this society, that my life didn’t matter. It took me more than 30 years to realize I am in the first generation of a long line of women to be born outside of a land base that my grandmothers and their grandmothers lived on and were connected to. It’s from these wounds that I seek to heal myself through my art, and through my work I invite others to also engage with the art and address these issues of abuse, colonization and disempowerment. It is through sharing my truth that I find out that I am not alone, and it is in the place of interconnection that I find strength and a determination to change things.

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NATIVE ARTISTS SHIFT THE NARRATIVE OF#NODAPL Written by Isaac Kaplan Photographs by Jaida Grey Eagle

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The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) has caused controversy since its inception. If completed, it will transport nearly 570,000 barrels of crude oil from oil wells in North Dakota to consumer markets throughout the U.S. every day. At 1,172 miles long, it would cut through four states and 49 counties. Part of that stretch sees the pipeline running alongside the Missouri River, next to a Sioux reservation in North Dakota. Native American groups charge that the route desecrates sacred burial sites and would make their drinking supply vulnerable to oil leaks.

Demonstrations are ongoing as hundreds from across the country have joined Sioux protesters to support their cause and to highlight centuries of injustice against native peoples.

On Monday, more than a million people “checked in” to the Sioux reservation, Standing Rock, on Facebook—an act originally intended to bamboozle police spying via social media but ultimately becoming a sign of support for the protestors and their cries of “No DAPL!” Thanks to relatively sparse media coverage of the protest, this act of digital solidarity marked the first time some in the wider world learned about Standing Rock.

But demonstrations against the pipeline date back to at least April, when a small group prayed in a camp on the reservation, following years of general opposition to the plans.

If linked to a long history of indigenous people’s resistance to the machinations of industry and the United States government, the acts of protectors — the preferred term for protestors, now reportedly numbering between the hundreds and thousands— date back much further. It is perhaps not immediately clear to those of us who are watching from a distance that what is happening at Standing Rock is not only police firing pepper spray and rubber bullets at peaceful protectors, as seen in online videos.

Away from social media and the presence of heavily armed police, a different side of the camp is being captured by Jaida Grey Eagle, an Oglala Lakota woman, who is currently a photographer studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Sante Fe. Along with some 25 other arts students—videographers, writers, painters, photographers—Grey Eagle made the 14hour drive north to Standing Rock in mid-September, spending roughly four days at the Oceti Sakowin camp.

“We were going up and we were scared because of the images that were coming out [of the protest],” Grey Eagle told me by phone. “But it’s so different being there as opposed to watching.”

The experience has pushed her towards taking more socially engaged photography. “I’ve honestly never felt so safe in my life,”

PHOTOGRAPHY ater Protectors display signs of W protest at Oceti Sakowin camp.

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hildren swim in the Missouri C River, the waterway protected by the #NoDAPL movement.

“WE WERE SCARED GOING UP BECAUSE OF THE IMAGES THAT WERE COMING OUT OF THE PROTEST. BUT I’VE HONESTLY NEVER FELT SO SAFE IN MY LIFE.” –JAIDA GREY EAGLE she said. “Walking around alone as a woman is always a thing that gives me a bit of anxiety. But there, I don’t know what it was, if it was the energy of the camp, but I just felt so brave and so strong.”

She described being invited to sit at fires and have discussions with people about why they were there. “I was given hand warmers, wool socks, a lady even gave me a pair of hiking boots,” she said. “I’ve never been hugged so much in my life.”

“What people are missing is how peaceful the camp really is, and [that] there are people risking their jobs and risking their lives at home to support this cause,” Chad BrownEagle, of the Shoshone Bannock and Spokane Tribe, told me by email. A junior at IAIA, where he studies cinematic arts and serves as the president of student government, BrownEagle traveled to the reservation with his fellow students. One of his friends, he told me, described the camp as “like a time before we were colonized.”

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The students raised money to support their journey indpendently of the school, which is federally funded and cannot officially participate in the protests. But they all felt a strong desire to make it to the camp. “For a lot of us that’s our family up there, that’s our friends, our tribal members,” said Grey Eagle. “Just watching from afar, that’s really hard.”

The students also collected donations to buy canvases, paint, and brushes in order to hold workshops with the children living in the camp. “When we arrived, we went to the school they had there, and when we mentioned the workshop, they were so excited because they needed their youth to focus on something fun other than the Dakota Access Pipeline,” BrownEagle said. Grey Eagle described one of her favorite pieces, a work created by a small kid who wrote “this is bad” over black and blue paint. “You could see how much they were absorbing around them,” she said.

aiting in line for lunch, W Lance Keebler from Sisseton South Dakota stands wrapped in a Buffalo robe.

FROM LEFT Chad BrownEagle of the Shoshone

Bannock and Spokane Tribe raises his fist at Oceti Sakowin; George and Shakeem overlook the camp, resting after participating in a march in Bismarck.

The works were brought back to IAIA and sold in a benefit for the protest. There are plans for students to make more trips to the camp in the coming months, and they are currently holding a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for supplies to keep them going through winter, as the protests show no sign of abating.

Though he didn’t travel with the students to Standing Rock, artist and IAIA alum Charles Rencountre, of the Lower Brule Sioux, began working on a sculpture overlooking the original Sacred Stones Camp around the time the students arrived at Oceti Sakowin. Though the Sacred Stones camp opened in April, other camps that share the goal of stopping the DAPL, such as Oceti Sakowin, emerged more recently as protest numbers swelled. Like other camps, Sacred Stones prohibits guns, alcohol, and drugs.

For Rencountre, an artist for over 30 years, “my sole purpose was to go there and make a sculpture. It took me the entire month, from sun up to sundown,” he said of his work Not Afraid to Look.

The large concrete statue gazes out over the camp, near the point at which the Cannonball River meets the Missouri River,

and where demonstrators forced pipeline excavators to cease their work. “It’s meant to be a monument to the efforts of all the Nations and people from all over the world who came to that location to fight for no DAPL,” he said. Welded to a concrete foundation, the work will outlast the efforts at Standing Rock, regardless of their outcome. “Even long after this event has come and gone, this piece will sit there and commemorate that time,” Rencountre said.

The work draws its name and inspiration from “Not Afraid to Look the White Man in the Face,” a smoking pipe originally carved during a period of heavy fighting between indigenous people and the U.S. government in the Northern plains. The pipe, which wound up in the collection of President Andrew Jackson, has a small indigenous figure carved into the shank and facing the attached bowl, which depicts a white man. “I wanted to make these little effigies, which were maybe an inch to three inches tall, into monumental pieces so that people could understand our sculptural history,” said Rencountre, who is also a pipe carver.

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FROM LEFT T wo Water Protectors hold the Fort Laramie Treaty as JoAnn Spotted Bear reads it aloud; a teepee sits in front of the flags of Indigenous Nations, which line the road running through the camp , representing every tribe that has visited.

He’d previously made the first Not Afraid to Look before the protests began, and when he saw what was happening at Standing Rock he knew the work had a place there. “That piece and I come from that area. My great-great-great grandfather was a signatory of the 1851 treaty—he put his name on that treaty,” Rencountre said, referring to an agreement between the U.S. government and the Sioux that protesters have cited as legally granting them the land that the pipeline would run through. “The piece resonates clear back into the history of our people and so it’s extremely appropriate that work is sitting there at that camp,” Rencountre said.

Police reaction to the protests has been severe, with pepper spray, sound canons, rubber bullets, and even dogs deployed against the peaceful demonstrations. For their part, police insist local residents are terrified by the influx of outsiders and that protests are a disruption occurring on public and private land.

Writing in the New Yorker, Sierra Crane-Murdoch wonders if the threat authorities perceive is really “the fear not of violence but of a people who have survived, who remember things the rest of us often choose to forget, and who have found each other, again, through this memory.”

For many, this newfound solidarity has been an inspiration.

“We’ve never had the Nations of this country come together for any reason I can think of,” Rencountre said. “What you need to go

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there to appreciate is the coming together of all walks of life, from all over the United States and all over the globe. To come and to witness and to feel a community working together toward a cause is something that is pretty rare these days.”

BrownEagle echoes the sentiments. A photograph of him captured by Grey Eagle (shown on the cover of this issue of RESIST) shows him standing above the camp, fist raised. “I remember feeling this power, the power of the camp,” he wrote to me. “If you have nothing going for a weekend, or for the week, GO! Experience this unity, the peace, have the courage and join in solidarity, for your children! We are the movement that will change lives and the world!”

Reflecting on her time, Grey Eagle spoke about being approached by a man at the very end of her trip there, as she and other IAIA students were about to leave. The man “said our ancient ones all spoke the same language, much like we do now,” she said. “And that we’re coming back together again like we used to be.” The man shared a gesture from that ancient language. “You take your hand and your pointer finger and your two fingers after it, and you drag it across your cheek. It means never ever give up,” Grey Eagle said. “He told us to take that with us and share it with everyone. So every time we see each other in the hallway we all do that to each other—never ever give up.”

FLINT IS FAMILY Collaborative storytelling by Latoya Ruby Frazier, Mattie Kahn and Shea Cobb

THE WOMEN OF THE COBB FAMILY Left to right: Marzel Marshall, Kristina Cobb, Lynda Gardner, Denise Clay, Andrea Cobb, Nephratiti Givens, Keonia Thompson, Zion Brown, Renée Cobb, Shea Cobb.

All photos copyright Latoya Ruby Frazier, from the series “Flint is Family,” 2016.

When President Obama took a sip of Flint’s water in early May, many assumed the city’s two-year water crisis was over. But photographer and Macarthur Genius Grant recipient LaToya Ruby Frazier has a different story to tell. Frazier spent five months with three generations of Flint women who both suffer and insistently thrive amid the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in recent national memory.

S

hea Cobb stopped cooking in September 2014. It had been five months since her tap water turned brown, since her skin broke out in a furious rash, since Zion, her nine-year-old daughter, complained that the smell of the water made her sick.

Shea, 32, clamped her mouth shut in the shower and barred Zion from drinking from school water fountains. She used bottled water to brush their teeth. She made her mother, Renée, 55, promise to swear off tap water, too.

Even so, Renée noticed her hair was falling out. It had been thinning for months. But now it was coming off in clumps. She obsessed over it—they were so careful. Finally, it clicked. Renée worked for General Motors. She drank coffee every day, sipping it to stay alert during the punishing third shift. It was brewed with water from Flint.

Shea and Zion were born and raised in Flint. Renée has lived there since she was a kid. Like so many Rust Belt cities, Flint has been hollowed out by economic change. But the Cobbs have stuck with it, watching it become a twenty-first century ghost town.

A writer for The Detroit News described Flint in 1983 as a place in which “there are so few people about that you might think the neutron bomb had hit.” But to these three generations of women, it’s still home.

When I visited these women over this past winter and spring, to learn about how one family endured the water crisis, they stressed that to me. Flint was family. Family was Flint—until now. This is the story of how a town loses a family and a family loses a town.

In 2013, the Flint City Council voted to leave the expensive Detroit water system and contract with the still-incomplete Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), a water-distribution corporation. But while the city waited to join the KWA, Flint would need an interim water source. In June, state-appointed emergency manager Ed Kurtz ruled that Flint would start to draw water from the 78.3-mile Flint River, which flows from Lapeer County into the Saginaw Bay. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder had awarded Kurtz the job the year before in his latest bid to reverse Flint’s financial downturn.

The autumn before the switch to Flint River water, Flint had a $19 million deficit. Using the Flint River would save the city about $5 million over the course of two years. Officials promised that Flint residents—mostly black and 40 percent poor—wouldn’t even notice the difference.

On April 25, 2014, Flint’s mayor, Dayne Walling, invited about a dozen people to join him at a small water treatment plant to commemorate what he deemed a “historic moment.” The switch would let Flint “return to its roots,” Walling said. Someone started a countdown. A pitcher and plastic cups materialized. Officials

54 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT E R I S S UE

raised their cups of Flint River water and toasted: “Here’s to Flint.”

At zero, the mayor pressed a small black button, which turned off the flow from Detroit.

Within weeks, the complaints streamed in. The water tasted rancid. It stank. Across the city, people were breaking out in hives and rashes. Their hair had started to fall out—eyelashes, too.

Mostly ensconced in wealthier suburbs like Flushing and Grand Blanc, which drew water from a different source, officials insisted the water in Flint was fine to drink. “It’s a quality, safe product,” Mayor Walling said that month. “I think people are wasting their precious money buying bottled water.”

Shea used to hear rumors about the Flint River. It could turn your skin blue or make you grow an extra toe, people said. Some kids whispered that dead bodies rotted below the surface. It was toxic, a decades-old dump site for waste and chemicals. In the 1930s, when thousands of fish died at once, a lab determined that pollution had so deoxygenated the water that the fish had suffocated to death. Flint passed a series of ordinances in the 1950s and 1960s to try to decontaminate the water, but the efforts suffered setbacks. In 1974, researchers discovered that a local wastewater plant had been oozing raw sewage into the river for decades. In 1999, when Shea was 15, a 72-inch pipe that connected sewers to the Flint Waste Treatment Plant was accidentally slashed open.

By the time workers stopped the flow, 22 million gallons of human, industrial, and commercial waste had flowed into the river. For the next 14 months, health officials forbade swimming, fishing, or even coming into direct contact with the river. Shea remembers her uncle Rodney warning her that if she ever fell in, she’d better run to the hospital: “’You don’t know what’s in there,’ he told me, ‘so do not waste time, Shea. You go get help.’”

Four months after officials opened the city’s taps to Flint River water, tests detected traces of E. coli in the water. The bacterium can cause diarrhea, stomach aches, headaches, and nausea. But it poses a more serious risk to children and the infirm, threatening organ failure and other grave health problems. Officials issued water-boil advisories and promised to fine-tune the chemical mixture they had been using to treat the water. The pipes wereflooded with chlorine. Tap water in Flint started to smell like a public pool and taste like copper. It stung Zion’s eyes. The rashes persisted.

By September 2014, Wally Janeczek, the executive chef for Flint Community Schools, decided he could no longer take a chance on foul water for school kids. He placed orders for bottled water, making space in the budget for gallons of water to wash and cook all school food. In October 2014, General Motors announced it would halt the use of Flint River water in its downtown plant and contract to hook up to Lake Huron instead. The highly chlorinated river water had started to eat away at engine parts. And in February

A sign outside the Grainery Natural Grocery warns Flint residents to filter their water.

FROM LEFT S hea doing crochet braids in her cousin Andrea’s hair for Andrea’s daughter Nephratiti’s wedding while a portrait of LeRoy and Hazel sits on the dresser behind them; Shea brushes Zion’s teeth.

2015, LeeAnne Walters, a mother of four, had her water tested at home. She discovered lead levels more than seven times the government’s maximum threshold. A month later, they had reached 27 times the limit. Walters, the "whistleblower" of Flint, convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene. In May, the EPA found elevated lead levels in at least two more homes in Flint.

In September 2015, local pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha shared her research on the crisis: The percentage of young children with elevated lead levels had at least doubled, if not tripled, since the switch. While lead is always toxic, it hits kids the hardest. Exposure stunts not only physical growth, but behavioral and intellectual development, too. Some studies have linked lead to attention deficit disorders and even violent tendencies. “We have no full-service grocery stores. We have tremendous unemployment and limited transportation options. The life expectancy of people in Flint is 20 years shorter than people in neighboring suburbs,” Hanna-Attisha reported in February 2016. “Our children already had every obstacle to success. And then they got lead. If you want to bring down a population even more than it already is, you expose it to lead.” On October 8, 2015, lead was found in the water fountains at three public schools.

Meanwhile, experts linked a 17-month outbreak of a severe form of pneumonia to the crisis. The Flint area reports around six to 13 annual cases; in 2014 and 2015, almost 100 people in Flint were treated for it. Twelve died.

The state government at last bowed to public pressure in October 2015, passing a bill to redirect funds to Flint. Flint used that money to reconnect to Lake Huron. But the real harm was harder to reverse. Because it wasn’t just bad river water that set the crisis in motion—it was what that untreated water did to sewers and drains and pipes that doomed Flint. Corroded infrastructure cannot be fixed with the flip of a switch.

Governor Snyder has maintained he knew little of the conditions in Flint in the early months of the crisis. But members of his senior staff certainly had the facts. In October 2014, a Snyder aide who grew up in Flint wrote in an email that “the notion that 56 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary.” In January 2015, a special projects manager in the Snyder administration deemed the circumstances in Flint “a public relations crisis” and warned that the news was just “waiting to explode nationally.” And while residents continued to choke down lead-laced water, in early 2015 the state started to deliver filtered water for government employees in the area. An internal memo circulated on January 7 stated that employees would not have to drink tap water that did not “meet treatment requirements.” Communities of Flint were not extended the same grace.

When Shea’s grandparents, Hazel and LeRoy Cobb, moved to Flint from Mount Vernon, New York, in 1967, they landed in a city in its prime. Flint was the “Happiest Town in Michigan,” according to Coronet magazine. It had good schools, a stylish downtown—and work. For decades, General Motors, founded there in 1908, produced not only millions of cars, but also thousands of jobs. By 1954, the company employed almost 80,000 of Flint’s 200,000 residents.

LeRoy, Hazel, and their seven children—including Shea’s thenseven-year-old mother, Renée—had followed the flow of black workers into “Vehicle City.” Having lost employees to the war effort, General Motors first started to recruit African Americans in the South to work in factories in Flint during the the 1940s. And even once the war was over, the trend continued. News of opportunity spreads fast, after all. And so by the postwar era, residents in the black St. John area of the city had a nickname for the influx.

They deemed it “the rush-in.” By 1960, the black community had swelled to more than 30,000 people.

The Cobbs flourished in the black, middle-class enclave that was developing in Flint. LeRoy became a master mechanic at Buick. He and Hazel moved into a corner house on Mary Street, a tree-lined block just a few streets over from Martin Luther King Avenue. Together they hosted block parties and barbecues. They danced a lot, blasting music from every room. LeRoy “loved music,” remembers Denise Clay, Shea’s aunt. “All kinds—from country to hip hop to bluegrass.” Hazel was at home in the kitchen, famous

for her scratch-made chicken and dumplings. “It was really nice as a kid,” Renée remembers. “It was so full of life.”

But less than a decade after the Cobbs moved in, 15.1 percent of people in Flint were out of work—and almost 50 percent of African American teens could not find a job. The oil shocks of the 1970s had derailed the expansion of the auto industry. By the mid-1970s, Japanese carmakers controlled almost 10 percent of the United States market. Henry Ford II described the arrival of Japanese cars on American shores as “an economic Pearl Harbor.” In 1999, General Motors shuttered Buick City, the largest industrial complex in Flint. By 2009, only 5,000 people were still on GM’s Flint payroll. “Buick is Flint and Flint is Buick,” asserted the official historian of the Buick division of General Motors in 1945. At the time, he wanted to celebrate the connection. Now it sounds like a premonition.

Renée, the baby, watched her brother and each of her sisters leave home. But none went too far. One sister moved to Pontiac, less than an hour away, another to Kenton, Michigan. Everyone else found work in Flint. By the time Renée was ready to leave home, she had almost a dozen nieces and nephews. She met Shea’s father at a skating rink in her twenties. In 1984, she had Shea.

her — hopes, fears, sins, boys. Surly teenagers defer to her. She is a cheerleader, celebrating the achievements of “her babies.”

“Go to class,” she calls out to a cluster of retreating figures one breezy morning in April. She has taken me to Southwestern Academy in Flint, her alma mater. She seems to know almost every child who walks through its front doors. “Do not make me come for you,” she cries.

She likes the work, but music is her passion. For months, Shea has been weaving the water trauma into a record she wants to sell.

Her sound mixes spoken-word poetry and hip hop, with a note of country she blames on LeRoy. Like everyone who still lives in Flint, Shea picks up free water bottles from pop-up water distribution sites around her hometown. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has supplied the water bottles since January 2016 and continues to do so now. Even so, residents have been instructed to flush their tap water every day. It’s been treated with chemicals that are supposed to restore an essential protective barrier in the pipes. But many—and Shea, too—have so given up on their government that they don’t bother. She never expects to drink Flint water again.

In April, I ride shotgun as Shea makes her daily trip to the

“I don’t believe democracy exists. I think that’s the lie we tell ourselves to believe this country is halfway decent to live in and the system will somehow work for [us] someday.”

– Shea Cobb

Flint didn’t really bottom out for Shea until LeRoy and Hazel got sick. LeRoy checked into the hospital in 2006, showing symptoms of Bell’s Palsy. The day he was released, Hazel slipped and fell on an icy patch of snow. Shea moved in to take care of LeRoy and Hazel. She planned to spend just the weekend, but Hazel couldn’t get down the stairs on her own. LeRoy was deteriorating fast. In July 2007, he died of cancer.

The recession thrust one-third of the city into poverty. Crime exploded. Houses were burned to the ground. Opiate addiction soared. In 2013, the population in Flint sunk below 100,000 for the first time in almost a century. It has continued to fall since.

The real estate market plummeted, leaving many trapped in untenable mortgages. Then the water crisis struck. Hazel died of heart complications in July 2015, living just long enough to witness this final blow.

Since 2005, more than 5,000 homes have been bulldozed in Flint. Where the Cobbs once lived, the houses that remain are ransacked and broken. The blue house on Mary Street is still standing. It is surrounded on three sides by vacant lots.

Shea drives a school bus in Flint, but the job description belies how much she means to the children she delivers to and from school. She is beloved by all. Young women confess to 58 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

distribution site closest to her house—a parking lot where flatbeds of water bottles are piled each morning. She pulls in and opens her trunk, watching in her rearview mirror as a staffer deposits four cases of filtered spring water in the van. “Faster than a drivethrough window,” Shea says.

Shea and Zion were living with Renée when I visited. Shea had been on her own since Hazel died, but was evicted when she refused to pay the water bill for water she couldn’t drink. Renée has insisted on tidiness—no parties, no noise, no mess. The row house is painted in shades of ocean and sand. The towels match.

A yappy white dog bounds around a squat front yard. Renée has installed a table and umbrella on the patio, which she admits she’s barely around to use.

As soon as Shea carries the cases inside, she removes the bottles from their plastic-and-cardboard boxes and stacks them in neat pyramids in wicker baskets in the kitchen. She makes concessions in the car, leaving a shrink-wrapped case of bottles in the trunk for Zion, who seems to get thirsty as soon as they pull out of a driveway. But whenever she parks the car, she takes an extra second to gather the empties and throw them away. Seeing them careen around the floor like that, it makes her anxious. It looks like crisis.

FROM TOP LEFT Shea with her daughter, Zion, and her mother, Ms. RenĂŠe, outside the Social Network banquet hall; Shea drives Bus 38, Route 305, for Flint Community Schools; Shea and Zion at the Badawest Restaurant in Flint.

“I don’t believe democracy exists,” Shea tells me at Captain Coty’s diner, where we stopped during one of our drives. “I think that’s the lie we tell ourselves to believe this country is halfway decent to live in and the system will somehow work for [us] someday.”

A few months ago, Shea made up her mind to leave Flint and follow her father to Mississippi. He moved down in 2000, deciding to retire from General Motors after he had a minor stroke. Shea’s father is the third generation to run the farm where he now raises horses. Shea tells me about a mare called Dolly who Zion is especially fond of. The good news is she isn’t going anywhere; she’s blind in one eye. “No one will take her,” Zion squeals. The farm is 30 minutes from Meridian, an hour outside of Jackson, and a universe away from Flint. Her father had been inviting Shea to join him since she was in high school. But when the crisis started, he made a serious offer. He has plenty of room. Zion loves it there, having spent her own summer breaks on the land.

And so in a kind of reverse Great Migration, Shea and Zion have decided to head South. “Seven pairs of jeans, seven T-shirts, seven underwears, seven socks, and one toothbrush,” Shea says, chanting Zion’s packing list. It’s May, and the move is still almost 60 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

six weeks away. But Shea is hungry for it. “You don’t need anything else in the world,” she says. Zion will “sweat and play and be black. That’s it.” Once Shea leaves, Renée wants to move to Texas or Oklahoma, where she has some distant relatives. Shea has heard her cousins mull over job prospects in Georgia.

When I reach her over the phone in July, it’s been less than a month since she arrived in Mississippi. But Shea is optimistic. “It’s very peaceful,” she says. “It’s quiet. I get to rest.” Demands creep in, of course. She has started to explore what options Zion will have for school in Mississippi. She’s been helping to maintain the fence line and weed the flowerbeds. She knows she’ll have to look for more work soon.

Unlikely as it may be, Mississippi has always been a kind of promised land for Shea, full of memories that offer hope despite dire circumstances. “When I was 12 years old, [my father] took me to this spring,” she says, “and he said, ‘You can drink that right out the ground.’” She cupped her hands; the water was cold. Her father took a photo. A few months ago, he texted her a photo of the decades-old snapshot and then called her: “This water isn’t gonna kill you,” he said. “Come home.”

Too many roads I see Don’t make it to nowhere So Imma spread my wings Go by air ‘Cause it’s my destiny to be above it all My head high I stand tall -Shea Cobb, Dreamin

FROM LEFT F lint residents and students from Northwestern High School await the arrival of President Barack Obama, May 4, 2016; Shea laying vocals for her single, “Dreamin.”

SELF PORTRAIT Much of Frazier's work reimagines the portrait from the perspective of the subject. In all her projects, she works with her subjects to blur the relationship between photographer and photgraphed.

PHOTOGRAPHY

HOW TO MAKE YOUR PHOTO S MATTE R

AN INTERVIEW WITH MACARTHUR GENIUS LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER

By Duncan Cooper

aToya Ruby Frazier grew up in the shadow of a steel L mill in Braddock, Pennsylvania. The mill has been in continuous operation since 1875, and the nearby land has long suffered the ravages of its toxic waste—as have the people living around it. That’s the subject of the 33-yearold Frazier’s unsparing new book, The Notion of Family, which compiles a decade of collaborative portraits of the women in her family alongside photographs documenting Braddock’s demise as it affects the Black community. In this interview she shares her thoughts on power, portraiture, and the camera as a tool to amplify marginalized voices and push back against harmful narratives.

What inspired you to start your project in Braddock? I n my photography

class at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, my mentor, Kathe Kowalski, had us read the book Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes.

He’s a theorist, and he uses two terms to describe the essence and the power of a photograph: a punctum and a studium. A punctum is a thing that you see in the image that pricks you and moves you. The studium is the subject in the photograph. So our assignment was to bring in an image that had a punctum and a studium.

The next class, everyone is circulating their images, and we get

to Dorothea Lange’s iconic photo, Migrant Mother. Everyone was saying, “It’s Dorothea Lange, you know, and it comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, during the Great Depression, where the Farm Security Administration sent photographers to the South.” But no one ever said who the lady in the photo was.

I wanted to know this woman’s name. Here she is in this iconic American image, but they don’t really acknowledge her. In that very moment, the light bulb went off for me.

I identified with her social and economic struggle because of

where I’m from. Her name was Florence Owens Thompson. So I set out asking myself one question: if Florence Owens Thompson could make her own self-portraits, what would they look like? I began collaborating and making portraits with my mother and my grandmother, thinking about how to reclaim our agency, and how to impact the narrative and the history that comes out of Braddock.

Historically, there are no stories about women—let alone African-American women—in steel mill towns. They don’t exist.

Sometimes when artists consider making political work, the size of the world and its problems can feel overwhelming. Why did you want to focus on a small town? Around the time that I had seen that Dorothea Lange

photograph, I also started learning about Gordon Parks. He said that he chose the camera as a weapon to fight all the things he didn’t like about America: poverty, racism, and discrimination.

My views are very much in line with his. I grew up in an area known as “the bottom” in Braddock, next to all the industry, next to the railroads, next to heavy truck traffic. It was one of the worst streets because of its proximity to industrial waste, which definitely contributed to my terminal illness, lupus. You feel disadvantaged, like you’re invisible, like your life has no meaning or value—these are all things that I struggled with.

And these are universal feelings. You could be in Detroit; you could be in Korea; you could be in Palestine, Poland, Chicago — it doesn’t matter. Industries and the economy are controlling our landscape and controlling our workforce everywhere. One way to fight back is with creativity, but to do that you have to look at the situation head-on. You can’t run from it. I would’ve never been able to succeed if I ran from the poverty in Braddock. Instead, I went through it with my camera to analyze the situation as it unfolded. My family was being dismantled and dying in front of me. I didn’t have any power over that. The only way for me to counter it was to make work about it so I could survive.

Your mother, with whom you collaborate, doesn’t have the same art education that you do. Why is it important for art-making to be open to all?

Theory is an abstract form; it’s empty unless it’s applied to real

life. So I wanted to be like a bridge between the theory I was learning at school and the reality of what my family and I were facing at home. In order to do that, I needed to relinquish the power of being the all-knowing photographer. I had to actually get on the other side of the camera and allow my mother to direct the shots as she felt she needed. There’s a mentality in mass media, and in particular in photography, that only the privileged can make P H O T O G R A P H Y | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 63

“THERE’S A MENTALITY IN PHOTOGRAPHY THAT ONLY THE PRIVILEGED CAN MAKE WORK ABOUT THE DISADVANTAGED, AND THAT’S ABSURD.”

to give them a camera. The number one thing is to listen. Spend time with people before you ever even pull out a camera. Ask people what they need. It could be just as simple as asking someone to pick a place: how do they want to present themselves?

Make yourself available and supply your services and your skills and your techniques to someone else, so you can use your talents as a platform for their voice and representation.

Another thing about Migrant Mother is that Florence Owens

MIGRANT MOTHER Florence Owens Thompson was never credited

as the subject of Dorthea Lange’s iconic Depression era portrait.

work about the disadvantaged, and that’s absurd. I just think that it’s really important that we tell our own stories and that we create our own representation. Period.

At the same time, you’ve shown work and taught at some major institutions.

Why is it important for you to be present there, too? I t’s a two-fold thing.

One is the fact of me coming from where I’m coming from. All you’re told in the media is that you’re poor; you’re black; you’re a drug addict; you’re of no use to society. For me to receive an award at a place like the Guggenheim or teach at a place like Yale sets a very important example for the students currently still in Braddock who are struggling to find value, to move forward, and to try and save their lives.

The other side is when you go to museums and galleries. People

of color, poor people, working class people—we can’t afford memberships to these institutions. The exhibitions that are being put on view are not geared toward the majority of us; they’re geared toward a certain demographic of privilege, and in order to disrupt that, my work has to be in there. It’s a way of bringing them to task to say, “Look, you need to put up work that we can identify with on a museum wall.”

A lot of young photographers go into communities besides their own with every intention of making meaningful, productive photos, but, as outsiders, many don’t get it right. How could they do better? I have a really simple solution, and it goes back to Migrant Mother and how they completely ignored Florence Owens Thompson. The way we can correct the misstep that happened in the ’30s is by not assuming that we have the answer but actually allowing the people in the community to speak for themselves. I’m not saying you have 64 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT E R I S S UE

Thompson never received royalties. She died destitute. Her children were never paid. Artists work diligently to make great images that will be collected by institutions, and if you can get to that level, then you can generate some type of revenue. You have to work really hard in order to accomplish that, so you have to be paid of course, but then you also want to set a percentage aside for the person in that photograph. If people weren’t selfish, it would be very easy to do that.

Your book about Braddock has been published, but you’re still flying back all the time to make more pictures. How do you know when the work is over?

Before my mentor, Kathe, passed away from cancer, I asked her,

“How will I know if I’m doing the right thing if you’re not going to be there to tell me?” She said to me, “You know that you’re doing the right thing when your work starts speaking back to you. The work takes you where you need to go.” So I would put the work up in the bedroom. Every day I’d wake up, every day I’d go to sleep, and it would be the first and last thing I would see. It was always on my mind.

After my work was in the Whitney Biennial, I could’ve said,

“Alright, I’m done with this project.” But I received a phone call because someone saw the work and decided, “We would like to invite you to come to the Berlin Academy.” That’s the work speaking for itself, and it took me to another steel mill town, in East Germany. I go to a new place, and I see Braddock everywhere. I see all the same symptoms and issues in all these countries and all these cities. Other people feel like they can confide in me things they’ve never said to anyone else, because it was hurting for so long and so painful—but they saw it in the photographs.

That’s when art and photography transcend everything else. You can’t put a price tag on it, or a declarative description in an art theory book. It’s just something that happens, this spiritual thing that occurs between the photograph, the maker, and the viewer.

And you have to trust that it will always be there. The work is never over. You just know that and accept it.

THE GAME $500,000

RUSSELL SIMMONS

$150,000

BEYONCÉ $82,000 MUSIC

MEEK MILL

$50,000

BIG SEAN $10,000

DJ MUSTARD

$10,000

While government debates solutions and points fingers, many

celebrities — most notably from the hip hop community—are making large donations of water and cash to support Flint residents.

Pictured: young Flint residents wait for their parents to pick up water from the Genesee County Job Corps Center (Getty Images).

HIP HOP RESPONDS TO THE FLINT WATER CRISIS

BY WILLIAM KETCHUM III

The water crisis continues a narrative that rappers have told for years: people in power creating dire conditions that poor people of color suffer through and must band together to overcome. The same systems that lead to police brutality, housing discrimination, disparate educational systems and more, penalizes poor people of color who can’t figure their way out of the maze. Flint could be any of Neighborhoods, U.S.A. that gave birth to these rappers before they got rich — or, in the case of The Game, neighborhoods where their loved ones still live.

“I think most hip-hop artists can relate to the issue due to their previous upbringing and surroundings,” added Tia Scott, a Flintbased writer who covers hip-hop music on her blog The Dope Show. “Many of these artists speaking out aren’t far removed from poverty, violence, and unfair social and economical conditions that personally affect them and their families.” Celebrities around the country have donated their money and time towards the cause, but hip-hop has had an especially large role.

Meek Mill donated money to the Flint Child and Family Health Development Fund, and sent 60,000 bottles of water. Detroit native Big Sean launched a Heal Flint’s Kids initiative, donating $10,000 of his own money and raising more than $57,000 at press time. On Friday, Snoop Dogg popped up in Flint to meet with Flint Mayor Karen Weaver before a show in Detroit. The Game, whose sister and children live in Flint, teamed with the Michigan-based Avita Water to donate $1 million (including $500,000 of his own money), and challenged Madonna and Jimmy Fallon to increase their donations of $10,000. Def Jam founder Russell Simmons donated 150,000 bottles through his company RushCard, including taking some of the water door to door, and spoke at a town hall meeting in Flint on Monday. Others within the culture have moved relatively silently: Pusha T sponsored a group from Virginia that brought two semi trucks worth of bottled water to Flint and delivered them to homes in the area.

Flint’s rap scene is mostly known for acts such as MC Breed and Dayton Family, but plenty of rappers can see themselves in Flint. Game can see his own family; his sister and her children live there. The city has a primarily African American population

of 100,000 people, and seems to consistently be down on its luck.

General Motors was founded there, but it took most of its factories out of the city before the implosion of the auto industry. And when jobs decrease, crime rises, which happens virtually every year. Flint ranks among the top five most dangerous cities in the country in terms of murders per capita. Flintstones (as residents often call themselves, a nickname made popular after a Michigan State basketball team of primarily Flint players won the NCAA Championship in 2000) are used to their city either being ignored completely, or being seen as a punchline.

Detroit battle rapper Quest Mcody initially pitched in by joining a friend to raise money and ended up donating 30,000 bottles of water to distribute in Flint, setting up shop at an defunct Kroger’s grocery store. Last week, Quest hosted and helped organize a the Detroit stop of superstar producer Timbaland’s “King Stay King” tour as a benefit show to raise money for people impacted by the crisis. The show raised $3,000. #JUSTICEFORFLINT Flint residents have always persevered through obstacles and struggles. Star athletes like Olympics gold medalist Claressa Shields, middleweight champion boxer Anthony Dirrell, and Heisman trophy winner Mark Ingram have all hailed from Flint, along with award-winning children’s author Christopher Paul Curtis, star ‘70s band Grand Funk Railroad, just to name a few.

About all of them return to Flint to give back in some way after they make it. Artists like Tunde Olaniran make activism as much of a priority as their music careers.

“The truth is that, by and large, the world’s most popular and talented entertainers often come from the Flints all over this country,” said Grey’s Anatomy star/activist Jesse Williams. Williams was in Flint, Michigan with filmmaker Ryan Coogler, comedian Hannibal Buress and at least a dozen other performers, who traveled to the Rust Belt city to express solidarity with residents.

The show was the same evening as the Academy Awards, which were under scrutiny for a lack of black nominees. Coogler, the writer and director of feature films including Fruitvale Station and Creed, insisted days before the show that despite the scheduling, MU S I C | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 67

SEAN COMBS

1 MILLION BOTTLES

MEEK MILL

60,000 BOTTLES

PUSHA T

2,000 CASES

TIMBALAND 30,000 BOTTLES

Despite pushback from Governor Snyder, the State of Michigan is federally mandated to provide free bottled water to residents until the lead crisis is resolved. Pictured: young Flint residents wait for their parents to pick up water from the Genesee County Job Corps Center (Getty Images).

“THE TRUTH IS THAT, BY AND LARGE, THE WORLD’S MOST TALENTED AND POPULAR ENTERTAINERS COME FROM FLINTS ALL OVER THIS COUNTRY.” — ACTOR JESSE WILLIAMS, SPEAKING AT #JUSTICEFORFLINT

the event was not a response to the awards show. The goal, he said, was to give residents a good show, and “humanize the issue” so viewers watching the show on a live internet feed could hear about what residents are going through.

“America and other bureaucracies are very effective at creating Flints, and Blackout was constructed in part to repave the roads between those who supposedly ‘made it out’ and these issues related to the rest of us, and to do that publicly,” Williams said.“We asked, can we let you kick back, and share some of our talents with you, and let you know that we see you, and that we are a collective, we’re a family.”

A surprise appearance by Stevie Wonder ended a night of performances that included Grammy winners Robert Glasper and Estelle, Grammy-nominated artists Janelle Monae, Ledisi, Andra Day and Musiq Soulchild and Empire star Jussie Smollet. On her Twitter account, Duvernay said the event raised $133,000.

Celebrities didn’t dominate the event; Flint told its own stories through music, poetry and testimonies. Flint residents — a woman who lost her unborn twins, a group of four children, and doctor named Mona Hannah-Attisha, whose whistleblowing helped spread the word about the water — all

shared onstage. The event aired live on Revolt’s website, and will remain online for 24 hours after the show.

“A lot of them are tired of talking about it, but they know they have to, to be heard. When you talk to the people, it’s so much different from hearing about it in the paper, or reading about it, or seeing a picture,” Coogler said. “It’s incredibly heartbreaking, but it’s incredibly hopeful. The strength and resilience. You still still see people wearing Flint hats. ‘Flint strong.’ ‘Flintstones.’

Their sense of pride can’t be damaged, which in turn is a lesson learned for all of us who came in here.”

“Flint didn’t exist in a vacuum before this happened, before its local and state government decided to systemically poison them. Flint has been a hotbed for racial injustice for decades: from mass incarceration, to school inequity, to really inalienated immigrant community, to unprecedented rates of unemployment,” Williams said. “I’d think this falls into the environmental racism category[…]We find ourselves trying to figure out ways for it not to be about race, but we don’t see it happening in other communities,” Williams said backstage. “You do the math.

These people are poor, these people are brown, there’s a significant undocumented immigrant population here. We don’t need to do the framing; they do the framing for us.”

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MUSICIANS OF FLINT

TUNDE OLANIRAN

By Andy Gensler

MUSIC

Tunde Olaniran, musician and activist from Flint, MI, says it’s an embarrassment that celebrities are having to step in to provide water to his city. Though thankful for their support, he says the situation feels like something out of a dystopian satire.

As fan fiction-like as it may sound, musicians — particularly those in the hip hop community — have helped put a national spotlight on Flint’s water crisis while donating water, money and/or raising funds.

“My skin had been getting rashes and stuff from the water,” says Olaniran, who like many other Flint residents suspected Flint’s water supply was contaminated well before the national media and government caught up to the crisis. “They were putting really toxic cleaning agents in the water, which I hadn’t been drinking, but you still have to shower and brush your teeth. It’s challenging to feel like this super basic thing you need for every aspect of your life can hurt you.”

better term – to the art and music on my albums and videos.”

Olaniran isn’t only dedicated to fighting for social justice in his music, but also in his day job as an outreach manager for Planned Parenthood where he’s in constant contact with the larger Flint community. “Even now, there’s still an awareness issue,” he says, “especially among vulnerable people for whom English is a second language. They’re not as keyed into every form of media and may not be fully aware of things like boiling water actually makes lead poisoning worse. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Part of that work, says the musician and activist, is restoring representative government to Flint. “You saw this wave of black cities across the state of Michigan getting emergency management and essentially the people we elected no longer had the powers we had given them. Ultimately control of the city’s major decisions weren’t in the hands of the elected officials. To me the emergency management is unconstitutional;

“People are intersecting between art and organizing.”

The 32-year old musician raises these and other issues on Transgressor, his excellent full-length debut that dropped in August and is filled with electro-funk, skittering electronic beats, punk urgency, R&B grooves and Olaniran’s powerful versatile voice. In the video for “KYBM (Keep Your Body Moving),” directed by Natasha Beste, Olaniran pours out a pitcher of water while crooning “Keep the truth spilling.” On “Diamonds” he begs, “Just turn my water back on,” a reference to water’s privatization, rising rates and shut-offs.

“There’s been this push to privatize water but for us it’s a basic human right and in my mind that’s what it should be.

We’ve been dealing with really high water bills. I’ve been in solidarity with folks in Detroit who are dealing with large swaths of water shut-offs to poor and working people.” Olaniran is connected to Detroit’s larger cultural and political scene. He recorded Transgressor there, collaborating with Detroit musicians including Britney Stoney, Mic Write and Invincible. “These issues all kind of seep in – for lack of a

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it denied the fact that we are a voting citizenry. To me the Governor wanted to prove he could have a budget surplus, but it was on the backs of children, the backs of poor people and the backs of people of color. I think a lot of people are really upset. And with that you see people intersecting between art and organizing to raise these issues.”

Which brings us back to musicians supporting Flint, for which Olaniran is deeply appreciative but thinks there may be better ways to help. “Honestly, it’s amazing that people care, the people of Flint appreciate it so much, especially because our own government ignored us and what we were saying for so long. But I would say we need filters. If you really want to put money towards this, get some families house filtration systems, shower head filters, CDC approved lead filters. That’s a more sustainable solution and it’s better for the environment. It may not be as big a PR picture to have giant trucks delivering water, but if you can give 100 families a home filtration system, that’s going to benefit generations.”

MUSIC Photo courtesy of Joe Ryan.

MUSICIANS OF FLINT

JOE RYAN

By Keli Thiel and William E Ketchum III

Flint rapper Joe Ryan has been on a star on the rise for several years. After moving to LA and enduring homelessness for his music, his commitment paid off: after being picked up by MC Lyte, recent sessions have resulted in placements for eight-time Grammy nominee Ledisi, and a collaboration between Grammy-nominated singer Kem and iconic rap star Snoop Dogg. His songs have appeared on television, he did the musical score for a reality television series – and this is just the beginning. But Ryan remains committed to giving back to his community in Flint not just through building awareness throug his songwriting, but by mentoring local youth.

Eternity Guerrero’s goal in life is to help save someone’s life, and she plans to do that through music. The 14-year-old North High School student has already had her fair share of struggles in her young life, including dealing with depression and the absence of her mom for the majority of her life.

She’s hoping that some of her experiences — some of which she’s put into writing and is working to craft into an album — will be an inspiration to others. She’s already recorded one song, and she has two more in the works.

“I want to post [the finished album] on the Internet, spread it around so that other people can hear that they’re not alone, that there’s more people out there who are going through the same situations every day,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero is one of about seven girls in the county’s Supervising Teens At-Risk program, or STARS, who is involved in recording original songs with the help of local rap artist Joe Ryan.

Ryan began his “music mentorship,” as he calls it, in 2009. Larry Samet, a now-retired county social worker, piloted a program within the Sheboygan Awrea School District that paired Ryan and a music teacher with troubled teens.

The progrma was put on hold when Ryan moved to the West Coast for several years to pursue his budding music career.

However, he returned to Sheboygan in the spring to be closer to his twin children, and he has since picked up where he left off.

In addition to the girls in the STARS program, Ryan works with other youth who are referred to him through the Sheboygan County Health and Human Services office. In total, Ryan said he’s currently working with about a dozen kids. Ryan helps the teens put their thoughts and experiences to paper, with the results then used to create songs recorded on his own equipment.

“Most importantly, it gives them confidence,” Ryan said. “When they come in and learn to structure these things that are coming from their real, absolute life and turn them into song format, it’s teaching them how to be a leader, because when you put your things into public form for other people to hear and other people to take in, it’s like you’re telling them, ‘Hey, I’ve gone through that too. I’ve been here. This is what I’ve been through. This is what I’m dealing with.’”

The process also can be therapeutic, said STARS founder Lorrie Ruiz. “It’s amazing how they get some of their feelings out through the music,” Ruiz said. “They go to individual counseling, and a lot of times in those kinds of environments I don’t think they like just sitting one on one and just looking at each other and talking, but I think through the writing and as they sing, I just think it helps them open up more.”

Ryan said he hopes to open a center someday soon where youth can come and be part of a creative and positive environment.

“I see the gap in positivity on the youth side, especially with the lack of things for them to do,” Ryan said. “It’s not like I’ll be the person to change the world, but if I can spark the imagination or the thought process of someone who will, or a group of people who will, I’m fine with that.”

Guerrero said Ryan has not only helped her creatively, but emotionally as well.

“He’s been there for me,” she said. “He’s probably one of the few people who has been there.” In her future, she’s hoping to do the same for another.

“My only goal in life is to save a life and that’s really what I want to succeed in doing in my life,” Guerrero said. “And I want to do that through music.”

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MUSICIANS OF FLINT

JON CONNOR

By Mike Pizzo

MUSIC

“As kids, we used to joke about how terribly disgusting the Flint River is. All of us knew, You don’t drink from the Flint River!” recalls Dr. Dre’s Aftermath recording artist and Flint local Jon Connor. “So why would government appointed officials make the decision to get water from the Flint River? I wouldn’t have made that decision at ten years old. Those are the things that begin to hurt.”

Jon Connor, born Jon [pronounced “yahn”] Freeman, wasn’t always sharing studio time with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. He had been releasing mixtapes on the hip-hop blog scene over the last few years, eventually catching the ear of rapper Xzibit, which led to the two of them touring together.

Then one day he got a call from Dr. Dre. “I packed one bookbag of clothes and I was on a plane the same day. That was it, I didn’t come back. I hadn’t been home since, it was on. That was around summer 2013.”

After signing with Dre’s Aftermath imprint, Connor laid down two tracks on Dre’s final album, Compton, with “One Shot, One Kill” alongside Snoop, and “For The Love of Money,” a nod to the Bone Thugs ‘N Harmony song of the same name, also featuring Anderson .Paak. Connor is currently recording his Aftermath debut album and hopes to see it released in the summer of this year.

Despite spending the last two and a half years in California, Connor is currently staying in Flint, lending support to his friends and family, as well as helping with local charities.

“For the past two years, I’ve watched the gradual deterioration of my city, via this water situation. It’s not pretty at all, says Connor. “People have to understand that, for everybody else it’s a headline, it’s a cool topic to talk about, it’s the charity of the moment. For me, this is my mother, my friends, my little cousin.”

Connor has teamed with the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan and the Flint Boys & Girls Club to help out. “I first started talking to [Dr.] Dre about this, probably about a month or two ago [...] We wanted to find an organization that was actually going to help the people. The Food Bank of Eastern Michigan was that, because they were helping people get food and water before the crisis,” says Connor.

74 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT E R I S S UE

“Think about it like this,” he says. “So much water is being donated to Flint that they are running out of manpower.

They’re sending semis and semis of bottles, but there are only so many people that work at these establishments that they need volunteers,” he says. “I talked to those kids at the Boys & Girls Club, looked them the eyes and told them that it’s going to be okay. I’m watching these little kids play on stacks of bottled water in their gymnasiums. It’s a harsh reminder that their innocence and their childhood is being affected by this.”

Connor says that he and his people noticed something was wrong after the city issued the boil advisory in August of 2014, just four months after they unhooked from Detroit and switched to Flint water. “Flint as a whole are a really resilient people; we try to see the best in everything. At first, we thought ‘Okay, this water thing is going to blow over. This is going to be something that we can fix.’ But then it didn’t get better, it just kept getting worse.”

Connor says that he has seen his family and friends directly affected by the water poisoning, yet some do not yet know to what extent the damage has been done. “It’s really sad to see,” he says, “especially when this is a situation that is man made. It’s not like a natural disaster, this is somebody who made a decision that knew that people could die from and it still happened.”

While countless bottles of water have been delivered to Flint — 6.5 million from Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Nestle alone — Connor insists that this is only a temporary solution to a much more grandiose conundrum.

“When Flint, Michigan isn’t trending on Twitter anymore, the residents are still going to be going through this. At the end of the day, the people of Flint still have poison water.

Let’s fix the problem instead of putting a Band-Aid on it. And the people and the children that are already poisoned, what do they do from this point on?”

Connor is less concerned with the politics of the issue and more with fixing the problem. “I don’t want to make it solely about race, because there are white people that live in Flint, there are Hispanics that live in Flint. I think it’s a human issue [...] I’m not going to get into that. I’m not into this to talk about it to just be a headline. These are human lives.”

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INDIVISIBLE A TRIBE CALLED RED CREATES A FEARLESS BLEND OF EDM, TRADITIONAL POW WOW MUSIC, HIP HOP, AND TRUTH

BY SOWMYA KRISHNAMURTHY MUSIC

“We have been called the Indians. We have been called Native American,” intones the renowned activist and poet John Trudell over powwow chants and a distorted hip-hop beat. “We have been called many names. We are the Halluci Nation. We are the human beings.” This is the invocation for Canadian DJ collective A Tribe Called Red’s third album, We Are the Halluci Nation, which arrived September 16. Trudell, a former chairman of the American Indian Movement, recorded the intro before he died of cancer in December. Despite a generation gap, Trudell was a fan before they met, DJ Bear Witness tells the Voice. “When we finally connected, he already [wanted] to collaborate with us. There we were, meeting a hero, and he was telling us what our music meant to him.”

Trudell wrote several poems that circled the idea of a unified, awakened nation, which ATCR extended to the concept of using music to save the world from colonialism. “I had this idea of us being superheroes, like the Justice League,” says Bear, who, despite being a comics fan, grew up “not having superheroes and icons that reflect yourself as an indigenous person.” The album sees Bear (Cayuga) and fellow DJs Ian “DJ NDN” Campeau (Nipissing Ojibwe) and Tim “2oolman” Hill (Mohawk) “creating our own heroes” as members of the borderless Halluci Nation. “It was the words that [Trudell] gave us in that poem that ended up giving us our storyline.”

The collaboration with Trudell is the most prominent of ATCR’s career, which now spans almost a decade. “When we started making this music, we were making it for indigenous people,” explains Bear, recalling how he and his bandmates plastered Native student associations and clubs in Ottawa with promo posters. “[But] after our first album, we got the huge surprise that everybody else was interested.” Setting First Nations activist messages to hip-hop and EDM turned out to have broad ap76 FALL 2016 : T HE WAT ER I S S UE

peal: In 2014, ATCR became the first indigenous group to win Breakthrough Group of the Year at the Juno Awards, essentially the Canadian Grammys. They had submitted their music to that category, and not Aboriginal Album of the Year, because, as Campeau said in an interview at the time, “I’d rather be in a category with music of the same genre [as ours] than to be nominated because of race.”

Halluci Nation also includes a wider variety of collaborators than ATCR has incorporated in the past. Black Bear Singers, a drum group from Quebec that has appeared on ATCR’s other albums, offer the same drumming, singing, and dancing they perform at Native gatherings. But, says Bear, “for the first time, we went outside powwow music as far as indigenous music goes,” adding American hip-hop (“R.E.D,” featuring Yasiin Bey) and spoken word (“The Virus,” featuring Saul Williams) to contributions from Australian Aboriginal band OKA and Swedish-Sami singer Maxida Märak. Colombian singer Lido Pimienta adds Afro-Colombian influences with “The Light,” an airy duet in Spanish, and “For You (The Light Part II),” an English version of the same song. “With them, everything is a road to experimentation-land,” Pimienta says with a laugh.

These inclusions are intended to reflect the parallels between First Nations peoples and people of color elsewhere in the Americas. “There’s a shared experience of colonization,” says Bear. “When you’re connected to an indigenous community, you have that history. You find allies there really easily. You don’t have to explain to someone who has gone through similar experiences.” On “The Virus,” this history stays front and center: “They harvest the mountainside/They divided us according to the regional filters of their minds/We are now the conquered people.”

What’s wisely left unchanged is ATCR’s signature merging of First Nations musical traditions with the hard beats and big drops popular at EDM festivals worldwide. Bear says this

FROM LEFT: I an “DJ NDN” Campeau of the Nipiss-

ing First Nation, Dan “DJ Shub” General, and Bear Witness of the Cayuga First Nation. Dan General left the band in 2014 for personal reasons and was replaced by Tim “2oolman” Hill of the Mohawk Nation and Six Nations of the Grand River.

ILLUMI-NARCY/ EMERGENCY ON PLANET EARTH/ THE CURRENCY IS MURDER, YOU A MAN OF WORTH/ THEY SAY THE DAY IS COMING, DRUMMIN’ THAT YOU CAN’T REVERSE/ WATCH THE BANNER BURN, BEFORE THE CANNON BURST - R.E.D FEAT. YASIIN BEY

seemingly incongruent pairing works because there’s a strong, if not immediately apparent, thread. “It’s dance music. That’s the connection between electronic music and powwow music.” He continues: “Powwows are social gatherings. You’re there to dance, going out, getting dressed up, going to shows. The same elements as club culture.” Jennifer Kreisberg, a Native women’s activist who sings the soulful Halluci Nation love song “The Muse,” agrees that the mixing of indigenous and non-indigenous genres feels organic: “In all the different communities I know and come from, Native people have always loved hip-hop, rap, soul, funk, jazz.”

As Native activists in North Dakota work to block an oil pipeline from snaking through their land — and as thousands of supporters flock, in person and online, to join the resistance — Halluci Nation’s message now seems not only timely, but prescient. “We need to remember our connection to the earth, to the sky, to each other, and [to] our place within the natural world,” says Bear. “What’s happening right now in Standing Rock is a manifestation of the Halluci Nation the album envisions — one nation, under humanity.

This isn’t Nation-specific,” says Bear of the record’s call for change.

“This is for all people.”

MU S I C | R E SI S T M AG A Z I NE 77

A TRIBE CALLED RED X PROLIFIC THE RAPPER (REMIX)

2016

BLACK SNAKES One family If we don’t stand who will?

One earth The wind comes in four corners Four directions Four colors And death rides on four horsemen A black snake with some black tanks How much money do these companies need to make?

They contrived a product but they wanna save a buck Already extracted billions When is enough enough?

I used to be in the oil fields Getting paid But I quit Cause oil water I can’t drink Look down and see la comunidad Down in the mud I looked up and told myself that enough’s enough Money does not own my soul Living comfortable Is not in my plans My hands in the sand Some things worth more than gold There are some things that can’t be sold Some things can’t be replaced The earth is your mother The fresh water is her veins Turtle island not black snakes The fresh water is her veins What is going on Have we all lost our minds?

Every human needs clean water to survive Love is the strongest This path is the hardest But if we weren’t strong enough to do it we wouldn’t see it

Why is the fossil fuel continued destruction nothing new Live in the system Taking our children Shifting our fields til nothing’s true I had that money in front of me but I left it Cause oil money’s dirty if my mother gets disrespected We’re disconnected These times are hectic and feeling heavy But still we are all living beings and suffer for the many We are peaceful people That’s why we walk with prayer And if that wasn’t true We wouldn’t be standing here We’re peaceful people We walk with prayer Turtle island Have no fear Despite what they show In the media We’re calm people Hold your ground Change is coming now.

Our prayers would not be needed This movement’s very needed Indigenous wisdom unheeded and sacred things depleted A mexicano malaxota and I’m white too I’m mixed with everyone so part of me’s just like you Every group of human beings shares the same stars And if the earth is not your mother Are you from mars?

This side of the planet’s been in the klan Since 1492 500 years and counting surviving the genocide they call colonizing my turtle island