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Wavelets Creative,
iNMiGRATiON

In front of the historic Union Depot where trains arrive and depart multiple times every day, and just downstream from the sacred confluence of two mighty rivers, a swirling, dynamic sound and video performance installation reminds us of how we got here, and where we come from. Life first formed on Earth in Water. Water was the necessary ingredient for all those molecules to configure themselves into the miracle of life. Water is life, and life is movement. Everything is constantly in motion – our cells, bodies, families, communities, and planet. Movement and migration is a defining aspect of our pasts, presents, and in our increasingly climate-changed future. We are all “iN” MiGRATiON, moving through our lives, interconnected in our movements and the ripples they create in all directions. Wavelets Creative, Oyate Hotanin, and Take Action MN present iNMiGRATiON, an immersive sound and video performance installation that brings audiences on a sensory journey filled with migration stories and live poetry, with an opportunity to listen, to share, and to add their own migration stories to a collective mosaic tapestry that grows throughout the night. We hear our elders speak, reminding us to protect the water that birthed us and to recognize our common origins and common destiny. At Sunrise, we walk to the great river, and pour our prayers into her, surrounded in song and community.

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Director / Composer JG Everest creates immersive, site-specific performance installations and transformative environments. Everest founded Wavelets Creative and launched the iNMiGRATiON series in 2015, featuring Sans Le Systeme and the Free Range Orchestra & Choir. Other projects include Monarch Magic! at Lake Nokomis Park, where he is Artist In Residence.

Thomas LaBlanc, Tatanka Ohitika, (Strong Buffalo) is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota, and a decorated Vietnam veteran. He has been writing poetry before there was anything called native poetry, starting last century. His words, translated in more than 17 languages, 3 published books, 6 CD’s, lectures and performances contribute to a world where we use creativity and options other than war, racism, classism, and exploitation to solve the problems that we all share, by just being alive…

Brian Dehler creates video artworks in the form of the remix, often blending social documentation from his own camera with archival found footage. Through a process of live projection manipulation and re-appropriation, he creates wholly new bursting textures of rhythm, color, and movement. His video artworks have been broadcast by MNTV, shown at the Walker Art Center, the Square Lake Film & Music Festival, screened at Sound Unseen and Intermedia Arts, and have been a central part of the iNMiGRATiON performance installation series, and The Buffalo Show.

Jacqueline Ultan graduated from YALE University with a Master’s Degree in performance. Jacqueline’s unique versatility as a cellist, composer and collaborator has put her in demand among some of the world’s foremost artists in new and creative music, including The JAYHAWKS 2011 release Mockingbird Time, DAN WILSON, E. Carlos Nakai, Anthony Cox, The New Standards, Huun Hur Tu, Kevin Kling, British pianist and composer Tony Hymas, and French artists, songwriter/bassist Imbert Imbert and cellist Didier Petit.

Annette Schiebout a traveler, consultant, and freelance writer. She participates in literary and musical performances throughout the Twin Cities, including TIC, Saint Paul Almanac, Cracked Walnut, iNMiGRATiON, Goth Mom, Prairie Fire Lady Choir, and Lock and Dames. Annette is the recipient of the Loft Literary Center – Creative Non-Fiction Mentor Program 2014-15, and an Intermedia Arts SASE Mentee. She has received residencies from Ireland for Writers, WritingXWriters, Mont Blanc, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She is published in rps, and Ó Bhéal and others. Her poetry film “A Short History of My Addictions” won Audience Choice Award at the Co-Kisser Poetry and Film Festival. Annette received an MFA from Hamline University. She calls Minneapolis, MN, home.

Tim Blighton is a self-taught sidewalk chalk artist, stencilist and poet. His visual artwork employs and repurposes popular culture, whether rendering his daughter’s favorite fictional character, reassigning new identities to his childhood superheroes, or subverting traditional art with his cow-headed “Moo-na Lisa.” Tim is influenced by artists such as David Zinn, Federico García Lorca, Banksy, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath and Erik Ruin. Tim Blighton’s poems have been published in Ibbetson Street Press and Mush/Mum. For the past two years, he has crafted poetry-on-demand at the Powderhorn Art Fair, and at the Midway Revitalization Project, and has read at Powderhorn’s Poetry and Picnic in the Park. His chalk art was part of the Monarch Magic! Outdoor Performance installation at the 2016 Monarch Festival, but is readily found around his front steps.

Rosetta “Rosie” Peters is currently an undergraduate student at Century College pursuing an Applied Associate of Science degree in Horticulture/Landscape Design. She has obtained the Creative Writing Certificate offered at Century College. She is a poet, an author, a public speaker, and an activist. Rosetta’s plans are to continue on to the University of Minnesota where she will pursue a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a second major in Native American Studies. She is excited to be a part of the revitalization of her ancestral language, Dakota, which is currently being taught at the University of Minnesota. She is of Yankton, Crow Creek, and Oglala descent. Rosetta hopes to learn the language and pass it on to future generations. She is a single mother of six beautiful children, four daughters and two sons.

Al Gross is cultural bridge builder and community advocate, born on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in 1968, moved to Minneapolis, MN upon graduation from high school. Alan has a life partner of 25 years named Julie, and a beautiful, talented daughter named Ashley. “I know there are many, many tribes out there in the world, now let’s try intertribal.”

Nancy Bordeaux is Sicangu Lakota. Her upbringing upon the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota by her Grandparents enabled her to retain her Lakota thought and language. A practitioner of Lakota ceremony and celebration, she is grounded in the women’s protocols. Her culture played an influential role in her former capacity as an Indian Child Welfare Act court liaison in Minneapolis for out-of-state-tribes. For a decade, she directed the Indigenous Women’s Life Net, a domestic violence and sexual assault program she founded and directed at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. She also provides cultural and experiential-oriented presentations, workshops, retreats and staff trainings for professionals and community members in transcending the impact of historical trauma through cultural intervention and healing work.

LeMoine LaPointe is a member of the Sicangu Lakota, the Titunwan division of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires). The living legacy of his indigenous people enlivens his more than 35 years of engagement – centered facilitation and leadership of youth at risk and adults in culturally-exclusive and multi-cultural settings, from geographically isolated tribal communities to ethnically diverse inner-city neighborhoods. His infusion of indigenous culture and contemporary adventure-based practice in his consultant work restores the extraordinary in a field too often saturated with ordinary experiences. His integration of environmental, nature based, and wilderness centered experience offers a fresh approach to organizational and community engagement. He chairs the boards of the American Indian OIC and AIM Interpretive Center. He is a founding board member of the Tiwahe Foundation and Native Youth Alliance of Minnesota. LaMoine also is a member of the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis.

Wakinyan LaPointe is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and is a traditional singer of Indigenous songs. He has worked as a community youth worker in indigenized experiential learning and as an advocate of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He recently graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. Wakinyan’s vision in life is to nourish the gifts of Indigenous Peoples.

Thorne LaPointe is Sicangu Lakota and comes from Little Crow’s camp on the Rosebud Reservation located in South Dakota. He is an experienced youth worker in the Minneapolis Native American community, and is known for his human rights advocacy in the United Nations as a delegate of AIM-West. Thorne has a deep relationship with both communities on Rosebud Reservation and in Minneapolis and is committed to youth development. Through the advancement initiatives for the future protection and recognition of Indigenous people’s rights, he is dedicated to succeeding generations of empowered future thought leaders. Thorne believes in an Indigenized community building process that is designed by, for, and with the community. By engaging in community-centered approaches, he hopes to develop a more just and equitable society so that the effects of colonization can be overturned by an informed Indigenous worldview. Thorne carries within him a great responsibility – a vision, where through community building and self-determination, a collective activation of traditional knowledge will be translated to many forms of prosperity: socioeconomic, communal, and cultural.

Tiana LaPointe began her work as a documentary filmmaker at the age of 13 living in the Twin Cities. Her first film told the story of the Two Bulls family who were fighting to protect a sacred site in the badlands located on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It was being desecrated by the National Park Service and other outside entities. The film was received into film festivals such as The Walker Arts Center’s “Girls in the Director’s Chair”, Cine Las Americas, & the Native Voices Film Festival. The experience of presenting and speaking about a story told on behalf of her people was transformative. It began to set the tone of her life’s work which is to be a story-keeper for Indigenous communities and to teach other Native people to do the same.

Sharon Day, Ojibwe, is executive director of the Indigenous People’s Task Force. Sharon is 2nd degree Midewin and follows the spiritual path of the Anishinaabe people; part of her spiritual practice is to care for water. In 2003 Sharon Day, Josephine Madamin and other Anishinaabe women began Mother Earth Water Walks to bring awareness about water issues. By walking long distances with water and praying for it with each step, the women raise awareness about how water is connected to our lives. In spring 2013 she led a group of Ojibwe women on a two-month walk from the headwaters to the mouth of the Mississippi River to raise awareness about the water’s diminishing quality. She is an artist, musician, and writer and has received numerous awards, including the Resourceful Woman Award, the Gisela Knopka Award, BIHA’s Women of Color Award, The National Native American AIDS Prevention Resource Center’s Red Ribbon Award, and most recently, the Alston Bannerman Sabbatical Award. She is an editor of the anthology Sing! Whisper! Shout! Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World (Edgework Books, 2000).

Lead Tech: Judd Rappe
Projection Assistant: Rich Solomon
Choir Captain: Karen Townsend

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Site(s)

Union Depot - Lowertown In front of Union Depot: 214 4th St E, Saint Paul

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Hours

8:59pm - 5:26am

Hashtag

#iNMiGRATiON
Wavelets Creative
(b.) St. Paul, MN
(works) Minneapolis, MN
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