VIRTUAL ELSEWHERE/S: DECOLONIZING CYBERSPACE IN SKAWENNATI’S DIGITAL TERRITORIES A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Abby Lis Hermosilla May 2021 Thesis written by Abby Lis Hermosilla B.A. Kent State University, 2018 M.A. Kent State University, 2021 Approved by ___________________________ Shana Klein, Ph.D., Advisor ______________________________________ Marie Bukowski, M.F.A., Director, School of Art ______________________________________ John R. Crawford-Spinelli, Ed.D., Dean, College of the Arts TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………….……………………………………..iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………….……………………………………..v CHAPTERS I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………….………………………………1 II. LOCATING INDIGENEITY IN CYBERSPACE…………….………….......................8 III. LAND: CYBERPOWWOW (1996 - 2004) AND ABORIGINAL TERRITORIES IN CYBERSPACE (2005 - )…………………...……………..………20 IV. NARRATIVE: TIMETRAVELLER™ (2008-2013) AND SHE FALLS FOR AGES (2015)………………………………………………………...34 V. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………48 FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………….50 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………...…….72 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Installation view of A Thread That Never Breaks exhibition at AbTeC Gallery….………1 2. Nam June Paik. Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii……...........8 3. ab. Skawennati. Imagining Indians in the 25th Century: paper dolls, time travel, and a millennium of First Nations history. Website………………………………….…15 4. Skawennati, Imagining Indians in the 25th Century. Ink on paper………………...…….15 5. ab. Skawennati. Imagining Indians in the 25th Century. 2000 Katitsahawi.…...……......16 6. “Longhouses, Past and Future” at AbTeC Island…………………….………………….19 7. Skawennati, Image from CyberPowWow 2………………………………….………......25 8. ab. Installation view from CyberPowWow. 1996 with work by Bradlee Larocque……..27 9. Michelle Nahanee. Lilgirls from onguard…………………………………………….....28 10. Marilyn Burgess. Git yer cowgirl avatar here!.................................................................29 11. “AbTeC Land” at AbTeC Island………………………………………………..…….....32 12. Skawennati. Face Off………………………………..…………………………………..34 13. Shaney Komulainen. Face to Face…………..………………………………………….34 14. Skawennati. Dakotas Raise Weapons……………..…………………………………….38 15. Skawennati. Saying Goodbye…………………………...……………………………….40 16. Skawennati. Native Love……………………………………...…………………………41 17. Skawennati. Celestial Tree: She Falls for Ages…………………..……………………..43 18. Skawennati. She Falls for Ages……………………………………….…………………43 19. Skawennati, screenshot from She Falls for Ages…………………………..……………43 20. Skawennati. Falling Asleep…………………………………………………….………..43 21. Skawennati. Renewal: She Falls for Ages……………………………………….………44 22. Skawennati. Dancing With Myself………………………………………………….……49 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several people in my life helped me get to this point in my academic career. Firstly, this thesis would not be complete without the guidance of my advisor Dr. Shana Klein, who first introduced me to topics of contemporary Native art and decolonization studies. I took her class upon returning to Kent State during a time of much uncertainty in my life path and the experience transformed how I saw my future. I will be forever grateful for her in terms of my graduate studies and see her as a personal role model as an art historian and human being. Moreover, my thesis committee members Dr. Joseph Underwood and Dr. John-Michael Warner were incredibly influential in my decision to discuss subjects of colonialism and frontier/borderland studies within contexts of cyberspace. Their individual support was invaluable as they always challenged me to push myself as a writer and critical thinker. I also must thank my mother Olga and my father Luis for exposing me to the humanities from a young age and always encouraging me to pursue my passions. Their sacrifices and lived experiences have shaped who I am today and everything I do is to honor them. I would not be able to submit this thesis without their undying love and support. This would also not be possible without the compassion of my significant other Ethan, and my friends, including my fellow cohort members, specifically Maria, Maddy, and Gloria. We really did it! I never doubted us. Finally, I want to thank the artist Skawennati for speaking with me in 2019 when I was initially crafting this research. Her kindness and personal insight sparked my fascination with cyberspace as a tool for decolonial processes and I will always be indebted to her remarkable artistic practice for this. v 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION It is Indigenous Fashion Week in Toronto (IFWTO). Some of us are flying, others are dancing, and still, a few of us are simply standing and watching. There is mild commotion of voices as the curators prepare their opening remarks and some visitors figure out how to move around the gallery. It is January 28th, 2021, nearly a full year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are all awaiting the gallery opening for the exhibition A Thread That Never Breaks curated by Lisa Meyers (Anishinaabe) and Sage Paul (Dene) [Fig. 1]. Skawennati, or as she is known in Second Life, xox Voyager, addresses the crowd and we gather around the central steps of the gallery space. The artist, depicted by her Second Life avatar as a cyber-punk heroine with spiky pigtails and a black tutu, begins the event by reciting the Thanksgiving Address, a spiritual address of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy spoken in the language of the Kanyen'kehà:ka (Mohawk) peoples. A few of us are still dancing or flying in the air, unsure of how to fully control the algorithmic actions of our digital avatars, but we are all closely listening to Skawennati’s recitation. She repeats: Akwé:kon énska, “we are all one,” as she gives thanks for elements of the natural world, Our Mother the Earth, such as the gift of Her waters, fish, grass and plants, fruits of harvest, creatures of the land, and Our elder brother the Sun, Our grandmother the Moon, among many others.1 Amid the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, artists and curators have sought out alternative modes for hosting exhibition openings. One solution for the organizers of IFWTO 1 “Thanksgiving Address: Giving Greetings to the Natural World • KANIEN'KÉHA LANGUAGE INITIATIVE (Mohawk Dictionary),” Mohawk Dictionary (Kanien'kéha: An Open Source Endangered Language Initiative), accessed March 19, 2021, https://kanienkeha.net/blogs/ohenton-karihwatehkwen/. 2 was to turn to the Indigenously-determined space AbTeC Gallery. The aforementioned gallery space is located on AbTeC Island, a virtual extension of the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) in the open-platform online virtual world Second Life.2 Established and co-created by Skawennati as a research-creation network for Native and Aboriginal peoples, AbTeC provides opportunities for Indigenous Internet users to create and produce virtual narratives in the form of machinimas (machine + cinema) and online video games. Additionally, it hosts a virtual gallery space for Indigenous artists and curators to display their work and research. Thus, during this virtual event for IFWTO, Skawennati’s Thanksgiving Address powerfully considers the importance of Indigenously-determined spaces in both physical and virtual senses, a crucial element to her long-established artist practice in cyberspace. Skawennati Tricia Fragnito, or simply known as Skawennati, is a new media artist working in Montreal who has spent the past three decades establishing Indigenous territories in cyberspace. It should be noted that this term “cyberspace” existed long before the innovation of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or the physical laying down of fiber optic cables across the continents of North America. Since the 1960s, “cyberspace” has referred to a figurative non- physical expanse of digital interconnectivity created through new media technologies.3 Over time, it became a virtual destination ripe with undefined potential for anyone with access to the appropriate technological devices. Much like the Western frontier as the subject of art and fascination in the nineteenth-century United States, and the contested borderlands between 2 Second Life is an online virtual world, developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003. By 2013, Second Life had approximately one million regular users; at the end of 2017 active user count totals “between 800,000 and 900,000”. https://www.lindenlab.com/releases/infographic-10-years-of-second-life 3 Mathias Kryger Jacob Lillemose et al., “The (Re)Invention of Cyberspace,” Kunstkritikk (Nordic Art Review, September 22, 2015), https://kunstkritikk.com/the-reinvention-of- cyberspace/. 3 Mexico and the United States that garnered great attention in the twentieth century, cyberspace emerged as a new frontier and borderland to be figuratively and literally negotiated well into the twenty-first century. The act of establishing territory within the new frontier known as cyberspace might appear vaguely entrepreneurial. This notion can be owed to the current status of cyberspace as a host to social media websites such as Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter through which influencer- culture and Internet celebrity has spawned. Whether facilitated by major corporations or an individual with 50k followers, much of our relationships with cyberspace today are based on profit, be it financial gain or social clout. In this way, cyberspace