An Interview with Tania Willard on Beat Nation, Indigenous Curation and Changing the World Through Art

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, pp. 218-224 An interview with Tania Willard on Beat Nation, Indigenous curation and changing the world through art Jarrett Martineau Jarrett Martineau: First, many thanks about your own creative and curatorial from everyone at Decolonization for taking practice? What guides or informs the art the time to participate in this interview! you make and curate? We are pleased to have you join us for this special issue on “Indigenous art, aesthetics Beat Nation has grown and become and decolonial struggle.” Please introduce something less intimate than how it started yourself and what nation you are from. and I have learned lessons in that. So, first of all, I never really set out to be a curator; I Tania Willard: My name is Tania Willard, come to it as an artist and an activist, which I Secpwemc Nation... and mixed Euro- think is a well understood trajectory in Indian Canadian. At times other white people and Country. We have amazing models and family have asked why I don’t define the histories to see of all kinds of creative minds, other ‘half’ of me. For me it is political to philosophers, and leaders who sought uphold my Secwepemc heritage: first, as an creative ways to have their voices heard. attempt to address the purposeful erasure of Aboriginal story, place, culture, spirituality I went to art school at the University of and land. I reassert my Secwepemc heritage, Victoria, before Taiaiake Alfred and all of story, land and rights in recognition of the the Indigenous Governance programming whole story of these Indigenous territories there now. I think I was the only native we call a country. student in Fine Arts at the time, or at least the only one who actively identified that way - You’re the curator of Beat Nation, an and the Gustafsen Lake stand-off happened exhibit that focuses on hip hop as while I was at UVIC. I was active with things Indigenous culture; can you tell us a bit like Food Not Bombs and an anarchist, ©2014 J. Martineau This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. An interview with Tania Willard 219 youth-run info shop, so I was already encompassed a lot of other ideas. So, then, as politicized. But it was in this period that I part of the music and the politics of hip hop started making prints and artwork outside of there was also a whole lot of fashion and art art school for political means. This is all to and ideas floating around out there that many set the foundation for my approach to Beat different artists were working with. I had Nation. After travelling through anarchist phased out of Redwire by this time; we had squats in Europe, I landed in Vancouver and always run it as a youth project (I think I was after some time got back in touch with almost 27) and it felt like we needed to have Redwire Magazine, who I had encountered fresh young minds in there, so there was a before leaving Victoria and was really turn over. Redwire was one of these projects inspired by them. Redwire was largely born where, at different times, it was not radical out of the Native Youth Movement and native enough and, alternately, too radical, youth stepping up and calling out the BC depending on who you were taking to. We Treaty Process for not acknowledging our were funded. I was good at writing grants needs and futures and also negotiating away and we were a unique project, I think, but our rights. So, I got hooked up doing stuff there were lots of internal political with Redwire for years; we did a magazine disagreements and ideals and one of the most distributed throughout Turtle Island that was dominant was this idea that we shouldn’t be native youth led and expressed our ideas, funded by the government. Which definitely stories, politics, histories and more. We has its ins and outs but, anyway, I wanted to organized art shows - Tahltan artist and be more liberated, less political dogma; more curator, Peter Morin, and I both had art experimental and conceptual ideas that were backgrounds, so we went to demonstrations freed from fitting, even into a radicalized and conferences and did community engaged politics, were engaging to me. I was making work. We hosted conferences and at times art as an artist and still active in many ways raised a stink. We were banned in schools for within a social and cultural community; a while. We almost got sued… I think even curating felt like a way to organize and years later, a news story ran in the right wing present some of these ideas. media (Sun News network) asking why the government funded us because, they alleged, At least that is what I thought when grunt we printed some illicit material around gallery asked me to curate. Most of the early sabotage. work was online curation, including the original beatnation.org, which I did before Anyway, so hip hop was all a part of this; being accepted for a Canada Council for the Native Youth Movement folks were out at the Arts aboriginal curatorial residency with Indian conferences using hip hop to talk grunt gallery. So, in some ways, the original amongst our communities about things like Beat Nation was somewhat before I started the BC Treaty Process, how it was not in the curating... kind of. Anyway, Glenn at the interest of our overall rights to the land and [grunt] gallery had asked Skeena Reece and I our children’s futures, and all of that to co-curate this idea around native youth and 220 J. Martineau hip hop. Skeena was an amazing performer, are not articulated. One of the behind-the- involved in hip hop herself, and an activist. scenes negotiations was around sponsorship. She had recently started a Native youth art I didn’t feel I could hold the ideas in the collective at Knowledgable Aboriginal Youth show together if I felt compromised by Advocates (another UMAYC funded sponsorship from major resource extraction program like Redwire and involving similar projects, since almost all of those kinds of people). projects are contested within Indian Country. People have different views on that, and I am I am giving you a lot of backstory here not steadfast one way, but for this work and (laughs). But it is the more holistic version of for me it wouldn’t have worked. things. Skeena and I set about doing this for the website. And because it was coming from In other ways I think I didn’t do enough, as artists we knew and worked with and the hip much as possible. I was involved in the tour hop movement, music was a part of that and but in reality a touring exhibition and its it had to be part of the art - we were logistics have these entire systems and purposeful about that. Skeena later became processes. And, at times I let myself say, an artist - I saw her performance in the ‘hopefully the show can speak for itself’ Sydney Biennale in Australia and she blew because, you know, I can’t be there to define me away - and her work was really important and program and babysit everything. And to Beat Nation as an exhibition. thank goodness there were so many people who got it and stepped up in ways that were I trusted Kathleen [Ritter, Associate Curator supportive and in solidarity with the at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG)] and we exhibition and my ideas. And, other times, it worked well together, I gave space and she was merely another art show, part of many gave space and we negotiated Beat Nation that a gallery produces. So I am left with into what it was at the VAG. We pushed for both amazing experiences and lots of certain works like Duane Linklater’s questions about art and its effectiveness “Tautology” [2011], other works fell into when it comes to social justice, politics, place and they just had all these curating. And I haven’t figured it out yet… conversations with each other in some ways; so that propels me in my own process of the works had a way of storytelling with each unwinding and rewinding to find meaning. other. Working at the VAG was new to me, I never intended Beat Nation to be a big show I approach curatorial work with curiosity; I or a tour; it grew into that in ways I couldn’t let passion and a sense of justice lead me, have predicted. and I let myself open up to other ideas and mediums. And I try to do my best to keep to I have lots of questions about what it means those ideas while negotiating all the many to bring political work into institutions but I bureaucratic and logistical things curators do. am also aware of the chasms that are left when the work is not there or those politics An interview with Tania Willard 221 Is there a word for art in your language? possibilities differently than reading, or hearing a talk. It is very experiential, in some There are a few; there is a word for drawing ways, even less direct than music.

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