CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Choctaw multimedia artist Tricia Rainwater’s wide-ranging work is rooted in themes of identity and grief. Her artistic practice offers a perspective through the lens of a Choctaw survivor. In her most recent series, Falama: to return, she shared a sustained desire to repair ties to ceremony and culture. To create Falama, she set out on the Trail of Tears, the route followed by five southeastern tribal nations—including her own ancestors—when they were forcibly displaced from their homes to areas west of the Mississippi designated as Indian Territory. 

In this episode, Nunatsiavut Inuk multimedia artist and writer Chantal Jung joins Tricia for an engaging conversation about her ongoing explorations of return, reconnection, and repair with her Indigenous family, culture, and land—past and present.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on July 25th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Chantal Jung: Hi, everyone. And thank you for joining us online too. Love the small little group in person too. Today we're going to have more so of a conversation between each other than like a strict Q&A. And before we start, we kind of wanted to go into how we met. And so Tricia and I have now been online friends – I think we've been two to three years online friends – and we met over Instagram. And I've always admired Tricia's work because it's something that I can really relate to and also somewhat similar to what I'm doing. And we met for the first time last year, if I remember right. And have been growing closer ever since. And so I'm really excited to share the stage with Tricia. I just want to share a little bit about my art practice. I've been doing art now for about 10 years or so, professionally, I should say. And focus a lot on collage and have been slowly getting into video and filmmaking, which has been sort of a crazy journey. But it's been quite fun. And I focus a lot with about my Inuk identity and also what it means to be a mixed indigenous person. And yeah, pass it on to Tricia. 

Tricia Rainwater: Love her being here. I really appreciate it. So I'm Tricia Rainwater, Choctaw and white artist, multimedia. I've been making self portraits for over 17 years now. I have a large documentation of myself through many stages of life, which I'm really excited to be working with now. And I did travel the Choctaw route of the Trail of Tears two years ago. And from Louisiana to Mississippi to Arkansas, all the way to Oklahoma. And I photographed myself along the way collecting bits of earth as a way to ground myself and where my ancestors had been. 

Chantal Jung: And just to get us started, I wanted to read the statement that Tricia made about her art. So “Returning to ourselves, that is when we can tap into ancestral care into what our ancestral lands have for us. What we need to learn and how we grow. Rainwater brought home to the Bay Area ziplock bags of soil she collected along the way. An archive of finding place in home. The photographs in the series depict the artist in California landscapes holding the soil. Sometimes directly in her hands, often still in the bags they were carried home in. The plastic bag serves as a way to keep the collective soil safe and – in a way – separate, a physical manifestation of a feeling. In these large prints, self-portraits created in the landscape, the artist begins to see herself anew, consciously resisting received ideas of what Native women should look like or what fat women should wear or be. Often gazing directly into the camera's lens and therefore into the eyes of the viewer, she takes a powerful stance. The size of the print is substantial, reclaiming the space the artist has often been denied. She's not only reclaiming her heritage and homeland but also her body and her image.” So you took our mutual friend, Marina and I, to the Cedar Art upstairs on the fourth floor. Can you share a little bit more about your art installation? 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I guess I'll go back to that day that we all met here. I think having Indigenous women see your work is quite an experience. I haven't had a lot of that other than folks coming up to me exhibits as my friends are all over. But having you two view it with me and tell me your thoughts and ask questions was really overwhelming, honestly, in a good way. But the work began when I met Kija who curated that show. And she encouraged me to go back to film photography and I was terrified of film. I have a lot of anxiety around shooting film correctly. And it feels very mathematical to me. And so Kija was like, no, you can do this. It's going to be great. And got me access to a large format camera. And my first four packs of large format film – and if you know large format film, it's very expensive – were all black. They were all overexposed and had light leaks, and I was like, Oh I’m not doing this anymore, like, forget it. And the guy at Glass Key was like, no, you have to keep going. You're going to get it. You're going to get it. I don't know if he was trying to sell me more film. But the next pack I took, every single photo was clear. And I was like, okay, all right. And I had this idea that I wanted to start working with the bags of dirt and my body in areas where things had happened. I had a friend that I drifted away from years back who would have parties in the woods during the pandemic. And we would all go to the woods and these parties would happen. And they were these beautiful sweet moments in the middle of this pandemic. So I went there and I photographed myself with Earth from the trail there. I went to where a long-term partner and I had photographed myself in Golden Gate Park. And I started introducing my ancestors' homelands, my homelands in the south to my home here. This idea of introducing them. And then the mural on the other side of the wall of photographs is archival images from Mississippi and Oklahoma archives. Really, because I don't have access to my family's archives, we really don't have photographic archives. And so I wanted to imagine myself within these archival images of Choctaw women specifically. And what it would be like to have their care and imagining a new way of living together.

Chantal Jung: So much of your artwork incorporates yourself with the lands, such as collecting the dirt from the trail. And in this current exhibit here at CIIS, your homelands are the center of the photography. Can you share more about incorporating shots of yourself and the importance of the land and the images that you take? 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I shared a little bit about– My work really centers around trauma and pain. I think a lot of artists can like shy away from this or want it to be, have like prettiness to it. And I really want my images to show the pain in place, the disconnect from place. Specifically on my homelands in the South. It was lacking like, I wanted to be grounded there with my father or my grandmother. I wanted to like find grounding in family. And so I don't know if that's making sense, but photographing myself here in places that there's been pain, pain points feels very familiar. Yeah. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. Can you share a little bit more about creating an archive of your own life? I know you talked a little bit about how it was difficult to like get family archives for this specific thing, but how does this kind of tie in with creating your own archive? 

Tricia Rainwater: I love talking to you about this because we talk about archives all the time, including, you know, the archival documents and images that come from our families when we lose people. Or we discover things and yeah. I don't have an archive of images from my family because there's a lot of trauma and a lot of separation. I said in a poem I wrote years ago that we kind of lost each other on purpose. And I still feel like we continue to stay away from each other on purpose because there's so much pain there. But I was telling my friend, I was telling Chauncey and my friend Adrian tonight that I speak to my ancestors and I believe now I'm making work with them. And through that, I believe that we're healing things that have happened and pain that's been caused by each other and by the systems that we live under. So this archive I'm making of my own work, of my own body, photographing myself feels like healing and it feels important as a person without a spouse, without family ties, to say I'm here and to again like share the work I'm doing on myself and the healing work. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah, kind of tying in with that. I use a lot of images of my own family whenever I do collages. And I thankfully do have access to a lot of images that were passed down to me from my mom specifically. But there is a lot of pain and also a lot of resentment I think also amongst Indigenous people with images of Native people in general because it's often so tied to anthropology and the practice of anthropology. And often get lumped in in the same kind of realm of like taking pictures of animals that are no longer alive or taking pictures of animals that are going extinct or having them mainly in black and white. And so often, for me at least, for my practice, it's important to kind of reclaim those images to like showcase that like we're still very much here and we're still very much also living humans and not just should be associated with animals in the past and with history. And even when you look at let's say Wikipedia pages, it's always often like black and white pictures of people sort of re-stating that idea that we're also going extinct or we're also not really valuable in the way to like have images taken of us that are really valuable just as any other artwork or any other selfies I should say. And so I do really, really like that you take images of yourself and sort of tie it back in with your family to kind of reclaim that. 

Tricia Rainwater: I was thinking how much I love your collage because it incorporates so much joy. There's so much joy in your collage. I feel like it might have an image that's a bit more subdued and grounding but it also has like you do bring nature in in these ways that doesn't feel extractive and feels very additive. And I think I've definitely gained a lot of inspiration from you and your collage with how I do wheat pasting. Because before I think it was it was kind of flat and thinking more about the subjects that I'm working with, not just as subjects but as ancestors. Thinking about the use of flowers and like I know everything you put in your in your collage is like very specific and important. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah, I really learned a lot, mainly from my collective fellow collective members, specifically about how grounding yourself with the land and also grounding your art with the land is mainly also making sure that when we portray a person in a collage or in our artwork to also tie it back into the place that they're in or to the place that's important to them. And it doesn't necessarily always have to be flowers or flora and fauna in some way but it can also be an animal that's important to them or being any kind of being that could be alive is important to them and so highlighting that whenever you ask a person like, hey, what is really important to you, like what is your favorite flower? What is your favorite like animal? Like how, how can I make sure that this collage is actually you and not just something that I think looks pretty? And often people get really excited and really happy and often are much more– share a lot more with me about their personal life and also why this is important to them and that's really grounding and– 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I think the archive can be really dark, a really dark place. I, I think about that– two stories, I think about that – I forget his name, Frank Whalen, yeah, native rapper. And he went to Harvard on a tour, and they opened a drawer to show him some bones and it was his great great grandmother, and it was this experience where the, the person who was touring him was like, oh this was an accident and it was like, but, but our bones are here. That's not an accident. I think about that a lot. When I go into the archive. And I think about, I think about whether I'm extracting, or whether I'm trying to find place and home, and how you do that in a good way. I was talking to a friend who's a professor and is Choctaw and she was asking me about some images I was using on my mural here, and she asked where I found them. And I found them in the Mississippi archives and she was like, oh well, I think I know about those images and they're of these women standing and they're weaving baskets and I– They don't look exactly like peaceful. And again I could be reading more into it but we started to talk about the images and she started to talk to me about this process in, after removal, when we were in Oklahoma on the res and how they had these like things where like folks would be made to like, teach a skill so white folks had come onto the reservation and view, native folks like Choctaw folks doing the skill like weaving or carving or something so this so they could watch, which is so gross.  And then to think about me placing these women in this mural. It, it just added this whole other layer to it and this responsibility that we have as artists to know the images and know where they come from and know their history and their story. Yeah. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. Whenever I see your images that you use upstairs for your installation, I can like feel the emotional journey that you went through. And your images give such an intimate look into what return feels like and also looks like as a Choctaw person. And can you share a little bit more why you selected the certain areas that you did in your images. 

Tricia Rainwater: So, I talked a little bit about this earlier but, just really wanting to get in touch with, and, and, like, remember places that have held a lot of like pain and angst for me. So, I've done that in other series, my Golden Gate Park series. I went back and took another series there when I closed out, I was like, I'm not going to photograph in Golden Gate Park anymore. I've done that for four years. And then when I shot these photographs I thought oh I have to go photograph in Golden Gate Park I need one image there with this with this with the earth. And so I think I really wanted it to be kind of full circle moments in all of these areas. And now I'm going off topic but now that the earth from the trail and from my homelands has sat in my home for like two years. I don't think it wants to be here, like I feel like I need to return it. And, yeah. 

Chantal Jung: Thank you for sharing. Well with that, also we both actually don't live on our homelands, we're actually both guests on this land right now, and I love that also San Francisco has brought us together in a way that I don't think I would have ever thought about. And we also both have felt pain about separation from our families, and seeing the Bay Area more as home to us for similar and also for different reasons. And I feel like it's a quite common theme amongst especially queer indigenous people to have that experience and also finding fam– chosen family within a different city or within a different place. And so, it's so important I think to also tie our art back to our homelands, even if we're like in a separate location than where we are now. And often as I mentioned earlier my art focuses a lot on my family up north, and I'm originally from Nunatiavut which is by the Canadian government standards, considered Labrador Newfoundland. And it's like the northeastern Arctic but the most southern port part of the Inuit Nunangat, which is just the Arctic area that the Inuit inhabit, and my family originally comes from a really small island. I still have family there, my brother still lives there, my nieces still live there. And it's quite hard to like want to go back home, but also sort of imagining quite often to go back home and just the journey of like getting there and how much it costs and all the other things and practicing our cultural things still even at a distance is quite weird. I don't know how to describe it, but it's nice to be able to connect with people that are going through the same thing, even though we have maybe different cultural practices, but that we somehow manage to think like, cool, these archives are really important to us. 

Tricia Rainwater: What has returning been like for you? 

Chantal Jung: Yeah, it's been, it's been weird. I haven't really been back to the island very in a while. I didn't have the money to be completely honest to go back. It's been, it's been in the works, but it's been nice to be able to connect with my mom on her homelands, not that she considers her homelands now, which is Vancouver Island, and connecting with the First Nations there, and sort of having another chosen family there, which has been really nice. And also art actually made me reconnect with a lot of Inuit artists in Toronto, which is somewhat closer to where I'm from. And so it's been really nice to be able to do that as an adult now and having a different perspective on it as well. And I don’t know, Tricia, if you want to share a little bit more from where you're from in Mississippi and–

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, my grandmother was in Mississippi and then my father grew up in Oklahoma, and then eventually they moved to Arkansas. And those places don't, Mississippi has been the closest to feeling like at home when you go back to your homelands and you're like searching for this like feeling, I think. I was in Mississippi and going to yard sales on the reservation there as I was like, kind of photographing and I was looking at some regalia that this woman had made and it was like so beautiful. And we were talking, and I was walking away. And her son said that's a city Indian. I was like, okay. But having these moments where like folks are asking me like who my grandma is and who my dad is and just feeling, you know, feeling kind of displaced like, where is, where is home. I feel like I do these things where I'm like, I'm going to go hit up like, I'm going to watch stick ball and feel like I'm going to feel something and Mississippi definitely felt grounding as I was like photographing but still missing you know, I think, I think it would be different I imagine sometimes like what would life been like, if, if colonization wouldn't have taken its toll on my family the way it did, if trauma wouldn't have been so strong. Maybe I could have returned home with my dad and like learned from him what it was like and his favorite places. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. Speaking of, you recently returned home for an art residency and this is your second time returning home. You were on your own this time, compared to your first time going, so what was that like. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I traveled last time with a partner. And this time I went to Louisiana on my own, and New Orleans is like quite a place. The last time I went I felt like there was a lot of fear over being in the south as a queer couple, and I went when I went with my ex. There was just like so much fear. We walked around very very fearful. And this time being on my own, I think I spent a lot of time looking for place. Looking for something in Louisiana that was like, was Choctaw. And I didn't find that. I went to go get a tattoo and I, I met a friend that I had been following. She's an amazing New York Times photographer and I was like oh my god and she was like Tricia. She was like I'll take you out to the bayous and we'll like go see the swamps and we can photograph you out there like you'll get some good shots so we drove and took these photos and she was like, letting me know that the gators are friendly and crocodiles aren’t and I was like, oh my god. And then we were leaving to go get dinner, and she asked if if I if this felt like home. And I was like, like what a question. Like, you know everything is changed, everything is different. And when you don't have that like guidepost of like, this is where we were this is– Yeah, I think going home is like always difficult. There is a mound that like a group of intergenerational natives built on the runway. Yeah, in, in Louisiana and in Nola, a bunch of. They made this beautiful mound and I went and I was able to take photos on it and of it. And then I was like in the Uber going to the mound the guy was like this is not a good area and I was like, I'll be fine. It was, it was beautiful to be there but sad that that was the only thing I could find in New Orleans that that was like, what we– what we used to be. And, the eraser is just so strong. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. It makes me think of the Bay Area a little bit too. I feel like there's a lot of spaces here that don't feel– like I can't feel an Ohlone presence, and it's been getting better I feel like over the last few years but it definitely was something when I first moved here too, I was like, where are all the native people? And it was like really hard to find folks unless I went to like the Stanford powwow or like some really bigger events that are happening out here. But I think often what non-native people don't realize that there are specific areas in the US that do feel distinctly native so like for instance when we go to Santa Fe, or when you go to Albuquerque. There's such a large presence of indigenous people there that I can feel that the people there are like, present and on the land and also managed the land, and it's similar for myself at least on my home lands when you go up north, it feels distinctly Inuit, and it's like, mainly us out there rather than like a lot of non-native people because often people don't want to go that far out into the Arctic because it's either too cold or intimidating, or whatever it is and so I feel like often people don't realize how painful that actually is when you find that you're like gearing up to go home and you're so excited to go to your home lands and then you go and there's like, not much there. And, yeah, so I'm proud of you for going. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, when I was in Mississippi I was, I spent a lot of time. You know, I had places like Bayou LaCroix and Devil’s Bayou that I wanted to get to. And I said that in my last talk here, everything was locked off, like specifically Devil’s Bayou, there was a gate with like nine locks on it. Really trying to keep people out, which made me wonder like how many Choctaw folks are going there and trying to go to this place that we were like removed from. And it was like really heartbreaking. I tried two different different entrances on Google Maps like maybe this one and then drove a half hour to try to go in the back way, and then realized it was too muddy so started walking it and it felt very. It just felt very heavy - the energy - I was like, oh like, it's private property, I don't know if I can be here. Like when you're in the south you just, you know, like, am I safe walking down here? Like if I tell the person what I'm here for. You don't know how people are going to react and that was sad to be like locked out of those places and not feel– I mean, clearly not feel welcome, you know? 

Chantal Jung: I know, for instance, some of the trails out here have like those weird like summaries when you're like, this is where Ohlone people used to be. Did you find any of that at all when you went or was it all private property? 

Tricia Rainwater: No, there is nothing like that, really. There's a park in Arkansas. That was a town that was established during the Trail of Tears. It was just like this piecemeal town. But they had led people on the trail there. And when they got there, people started to fall really ill. Everybody was getting sick with smallpox. And the people who were leading them on the trail were like, well go spread out and take care of yourselves and like of course folks didn't like have any like supplies or– So the park is like, I talk about heavy energy but it's just a very dark park and it shouldn't be so dark like the light should be getting in, but you can feel it. And there is only one little plaque, it's like under grass they don't take care of it and across from it directly is this house that is built by the Daughters of the Confederate Revolution. Confederate, yeah. And that is like in impeccable care, like it's been taken care of so well. So just like the juxtaposition of that was really hard to tolerate. And as I was leaving, I started to see that rocks had been stacked up along the wall and I was like oh like maybe this is like us saying like, we're coming to honor this, we've been here. But no nothing really, other than that small. And places talking about like you know Natchez Trail and saying that it was like the Trail of Tears but like no like real I mean monuments are such shit, you know. Yeah. 

Chantal Jung: I'm going to shift a little bit. You shared that you made more community on your second trip back home, and that wheat pasting was really something that you were doing during this trip. Can you share more about why wheat pasting speaks to you?

Tricia Rainwater: So, my older brother was a street artist, which is part of why I wanted to move to San Francisco. He was a really great tagger. And when I first like came I really wanted to be able to like, do that. I was just like, not good at it, like spray paint running down my arms, it was very funny. But I started making stencils and I worked on stencils for a really long time. And I, I really, when I thought about going back this year I wanted to take images from the Trail of Tears and put them back in a place that was one of the starting points of being like removed. And when I was there the first time I learned that Choctaw folks had sold filet in markets. And I started to put together that like a lot of violence against native women had started at that point too. And I do a lot of work, I'm making a really big piece right now about violence against native women and two-spirit folks. And because my grandmother and I are both survivors and so I started to think about all these things and these ideas of taking these images, where I had, I had earth from my homelands and placing that back in a place we were removed from. And the residency turned out to not be so great but like the community I made and the people who were like, oh put something up here and so I just started to walk around and put things on walls and folks were so loving like the street art community there is amazing they're like I'll look out for you just put it up here and would cover a wall and folks be just like so sweet to me. I really felt like cared for there and yeah, um, there's something about wheat pasting that feels so fleeting. And there were a couple pieces I put up and I came back and someone had ripped it down but you could still see my hands and my stomach and I was just like, oh wow, the way it had ripped was so beautiful. And, and yeah that really, I love how it is, it's fleeting you know, it's not there forever. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah, also strangely very political at the same time. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, we had this moment during this residency where we had been told we got a wall to put up stuff, and me and the cohort of artists that I was working with like when to put up work on this wall. And the police were called on us. And there was a white man leading the group and we were like, yo, like you told us that this was, this was our wall and now the police are here. And we had folks who were undocumented with us and it was, it was like, it was kind of a scary moment. But, you know, we were able to like talk to the police and like, it turned out okay but yeah to be, you know, back in a place that. Yeah, all of that. 

Chantal Jung: Speaking of taking care of one another. I feel like that specific moment where you were looking out for each other, while you were wheat pasting to make sure that no one shows up or even to ensure that you're safe is also such an important component of indigenous art, and many folks I think don't realize that when art almost never happens in the silo, like, I don't know a single artists that actually just works on their own without sharing it with other people or just asking for feedback. I’d argue that indigenous artists, impacts our practice so much to be able to connect and talk about it. And we often bounce off ideas off of each other even and run ideas by each other if this seems like this okay, or even this this like something that people would be interested in hearing about. And also making art together. I feel like it's just recently we like had a late night art night where we just got together just to work on our projects but it was so nice to be able to just share that with one another. And since this is the second time for you coming here and I know it was very different for you since the first time has the second time coming back impacted your art practice in any kind of way. And like, going back to the south and also for future projects, if there's anything that you're doing differently or something that you really took with you when coming back.

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I– Well, first I wanted to respond to the first part about really including community in your process. I'm working on this piece right now for, working on this large installation that's mobiles and the first time I made it, it was strips of fabric and I had hand stitched the names of missing and murdered indigenous women and two-spirit folks. And I was so young, and also impressed with my project. It was like, Oh, this is like stunning and beautiful and I'm like really proud of it. It was a few months after it had shown and I had an elder, like, pull me aside and talk to me and say like did you get permission? I was like permission to sew–? then I was like–. And it was this moment where it was like, I like, I have to be working within like native community and asking and and and hearing and willing to listen. Because I will, we will all mess up and cause harm, even when we don't mean to. And I'm remaking that project. That piece. And it feels like so impactful to have been like asking every step of the way like trying to like pull people in and what do you think do you want to be part of this? And I've been, I've been trying and working to collect stories and someone contacted me and wanted to share her story and. You know our work evolved as we like are in community with each other I think, and I think the only way to like have a practice that is evolving is to be in community, which can be painful you know? It wasn't easy to hear that feedback that it that it had hurt, like, you know? 

Chantal Jung: It's quite funny because I think we bonded over this too. One of my first times where I was using images of family, I also got scolded by an elder. For similar reasons of like not really getting that consent I think in the first place of using that image, and I remember the elder would tell me, like, there's a lot of feelings and emotions that come with pictures, and they carry stories like you shared with archives before. And if you don't ask permission, they'll come for you and like, and like follow you until you make amends with them. And so, I was also very young when that happened and it stuck with me as well so now, but I love it now where I'm like actually like oh I get to talk to the people that I'm putting in my images. They feel honored. I want to make sure that they feel honored and I want to make sure that they don't feel like I'm misrepresenting them in any kind of way and this includes also folks that have passed in a way of getting permission from them by either burning medicine or burning something to like honor them in some way and it's hard, but it like, at the end of the day, it feels more like I've been able to connect with folks on a different level than I have before. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, this, the project I'm working on, I'm, I'm hand dying these ribbons, a berry color, and then I am attaching jingles to the bottom of each one, a baby jingle at the top and an adult jingle at the bottom. And they're all over my apartment, as you know, and my dog is like what's happening. But I think before with the names like, which I definitely should have asked for permission but I think it's been even stronger this time to stop and and remember that each ribbon represents a person. And so my home has felt very like, like full and heavy. And when you're making that work, and you have this like you're, you really are sitting with the responsibility you have to these people, to your family, to your friends that you've been in community with who’ve gone missing or been taken. How you do that, I like what you said about like burning medicine. I think sometimes I, I start, my home starts to feel too heavy and I always have to remember like oh have I done that? Have I reset my alter? Like what like what am I, you know, going back to those practices are so important. Do you have practices that you do when your art– with your art? 

Chantal Jung: Mainly, just making sure that my family agrees with them. I often realize that just because in my mind, they're okay to use and look cute and it's like set up in a way that I think is really beautiful does not mean that another person might perceive it the same way. And so for instance I made a collage of my mom. And I thought it was so badass. I was like this looks so cool you're sitting on a car with glasses on you're like in your 30s, and then she was just like, Oh no. Do not show this image to other people. And so it really like took me a second to be like, Oh, just because I like this does not mean that you like this and it's just really important to like remind myself of that. And often, that's the step I take first. But I do like to either burn medicine that was gifted to me of some sort so, for instance I got bear root from a friend that's wiat, and whenever it feels too heavy I either go on a walk or like, do that around me, and just to make sure like reassuring like everything's okay. I'm not having any bad intent with this and also talking, often if it's a commission with the person like, is this okay for some reason my gut is telling me this is not okay, and often, that's right. And so like okay. How can we reevaluate this and rework this in a way that feels more honorable to people. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I think, I think listening to your gut is so big. As– I feel like as native women were taught– I don’t think we're taught all the time to listen to our guts. And it's really important to listen. My mom used to call it that little voice but yeah I think when I haven't listened to it things have been harder. The older I get the easier it is. But it's such a practice. 

Chantal Jung: It is. Yeah. 

Tricia Rainwater: And it, like, it totally applies to art too. Because you, you know when you're getting off track, you know? 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. But I also feel like making art together even just sitting next to each other and kind of reminding ourselves like hey, we need to take just a minute to take a break, or even check in with each other like how we're feeling if this is too heavy to take a second or maybe stop if it’s getting too much. 

Tricia Rainwater: There’s so much joy making art with your friends and your community but it's especially like making art together. We've only had like one night where we work together but you know, like working on these ribbons has been so like just like very laborious. And you came in and were like oh there's so many, and I was like thank you, I’m glad you can see there’s a lot. But also just being in the space to laugh as we created.

Chantal Jung: Or even share stories too which is so cool. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah. 

Chantal Jung: I'm kind of pivoting again. Back to the collages. I think collaging has become such an important art form, including not just for archive purposes but just even for accessibility purposes for other people. And I also think it genuinely connects like different generations with each other, and also different skill sets when it comes to collaging because it's so, I guess grounding to people to like do this, so for instance with my collective I often do workshops where we have a prompt that's like very like broad and often people get very overwhelmed. And we just hand over a ton of magazines to people and are like, here you go. Now you can do it. This is how we do it, but there's not really any rule or rhyme to it. And there's also no pretty or like perfect way of doing this and you can cut, you can glue, you can do whatever you want. And often people are so excited at the end because they made something, and they thought that they weren't able to make something before. And I, what I love about indigenous people making collages, to me often they feel like we're able to dream and imagine something different from what we're used to, and kind of go beyond our trauma all the time because that's often the center of indigenous narratives, especially when other people tell those stories. And I would argue also a form of indigenous futurism and imagining ourselves in other places that we aren't before. Can you talk a little bit more about how you think your installation and also just in general your art practice kind of incorporates that?

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I think that there was this moment when I hiked up, I was like five miles in Arkansas, there was a moment to see the actual trail bed of the Trail of Tears. So you had to hike up and then hike down and the park ranger told me that the road would bow, and you wouldn't be able to miss it. And I had been following the route that my tribe had had given me up until that point but I hadn't touched the actual trail but I had been there. And it was this moment where I was like, like, it was just, again, very overwhelming to be there. And yeah, I, I, I had this moment where I was just like thinking and wondering if my ancestors had imagined me here. If they had imagined me coming back, if there was this, and if there was any wondering if, if their grandchildren and great great grandchildren would return, if they would have wanted us to return. I think when we think about genocide like there isn't a moment where we stop and think about. There isn't a lot of time where we stop and think about the land and people's relationship to the land and what's what happens after. But indigenous people know, know what comes after, and I think those moments– Yeah, I spent a lot of time wishing things were different. But the work– I've made quite a life for myself in San Francisco. I've been here, 15 years. I'll be 40 next week. And which is a feat, is a feat, you know? I shouldn't have made it at a lot of points and and yet like we keep going. And I think, I think my art is just that, like proof that I've kept going. And returned. You know, whether or not my family was there to see it, I returned. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah, you're archiving it. Sorry, I feel like it's very heavy topics, and just want to acknowledge that–

Tricia Rainwater: Have you seen my work? 

Chantal Jung: Speaking of, I mentioned a little bit that often there's a lot of heaviness and also a lot of trauma, often with our histories. And I do see the themes of identity and also grief in your work, and how has your practice evolved over time from that? I know you talked a little bit about like how the jingles have changed for you. Has your photography also shifted in a way? 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, I started making photos at my first therapist’s urging 15 years ago. I had just started therapy to work on looking at childhood trauma and moving away from homophobic white family and putting boundaries up with my native family. And my therapist, I had entered a new relationship and it was tumultuous as like we tried to figure out as young queer people to love each other. And with like no guidepost right like you don't just like hop into that and just like know how to live and love in healthy ways. So my therapist said, you seem to be having a lot of big emotions, why don't you photograph yourself? And what came out of that was like over a decade of self portraiture, where, you know, I had, I had an aunt and uncle that were in a border town in New Mexico who who passed away during the pandemic. They were unhoused. And I, I went to our bedroom and I photographed myself. And as that relationship ended I photographed myself in front of their moving boxes and I photographed myself in my bed after they moved out. And I just kept going, and I continue to keep going because for a long time it was like I'm going to have a child and it will be the thing I leave this child and then it didn't happen and I as I get older I'm like I don't– I’ll leave it for a friend. Maybe I need to find a friend who will who will honor my archive. And, but it feels important. I think I lost the plot of that question but it feels important that I'm archiving my work and I think about Laura Aguilar actually. I'm really excited I'm going to be in a show with with her some of her archive next year. I'm really excited about that. I've been like the biggest fan forever. And I don't feel like she really, her work really took off until she died. And then, when people hear that she died, they ask how she died, because she was a fat dyke. So people want to know what– did her fatness kill her? And so there's still stigma, when people ask about her death, and they're looking at her archive. And so, my goal- you know when I, when I photograph myself, and then when I install, you'll see a lot of times the photographs here in this show are a bit small but still large. I usually print my work really big because I want it to overwhelm people. I want them to feel what I felt. And often, white men have a really strong reaction to it. I was at the Berkeley Art Center for a show last year, and this young man came up and was like, but like why do you only photograph yourself? And why do you print them so big? And I was like, that's the point. And he, he was so like frustrated with me. And I think I think it's okay for in society for a for a white man to center himself. And, but I think we need to start taking back that power and centering ourselves a bit more. Because there's so many narratives that need to be heard and stories that need to be told. 

Chantal Jung: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. I'm kind of going to tie these last two questions together because I really like them. In the spirit of being intergenerational and also getting advice from elders, not calling you an elder, but what advice would you give to emerging indigenous artists who are navigating their own journeys of cultural reconnection and artistic expression?

Tricia Rainwater: You go first.

Chantal Jung: Me?

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, what advice would you give?

Chantal Jung: I would say, honestly this goes out for any artists and also indigenous people in general, like, I highly encourage you to pick up art, even if you haven't done it before. Just gotta go for it. I know it's really intimidating and I know that people often have this perception that it has to be painting landscapes or painting portraits or whatever it is and most often it's like not that at all. And that it can actually be really healing to just be able to express yourself in ways that you might have not thought about before. And so I always encourage folks to just start writing freely, or even just to make a collage out of a magazine that you might still have laying around somewhere. 

Tricia Rainwater: I love that. I think one thing I would tell like indigenous artists like Native artists specifically is that we're all storytellers, right. I think the thing I love most about jives with you Chanti is like there's no silence. We're gonna, we're gonna talk the whole way and there's going to be so many exchanges of stories and it's an honor to like witness our stories and witness each other's stories, and so I think, as you look at like creating art or documenting your life, telling your story, telling the story only you can tell because you know you're in those places. No one else is there. It's like to you and your perspective, and especially as queer people, really important.

Chantal Jung: Yeah, I also think about how often genocide erased so many things so it's important to keep that going. And to tell the stories. 

Tricia Rainwater: Yeah, those archives are gone. 

Chantal Jung: They are. Yeah. And I just want to thank you for sharing your beautiful art with us. And just to wrap it up. Are there any upcoming projects or themes you are particularly excited about exploring in your future work?

Tricia Rainwater: Themes. I shot 100 nudes years ago in June Jordan School for Equity, and they were shown and not received very well and I'm really excited to revive them. I'm working on a new project with them right now. And I'm really looking at my Polaroid work. I took a lot of Polaroids while I was in the south, the first trip, and excited to look at those and start working within art I had. If you're an artist you should look at your archives and your old work that you like, were like, no this isn't good enough because it's great. It's really good. How about you?

Chantal Jung: I am hoping to work on some more personal films to record something about returning home and what that means for me and to explore my animation skills a little bit more. So, excited for that. 

Tricia Rainwater: Alright.

Chantal Jung: Thank you all.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

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