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Video produced/hosted by Disability Futures Fellows. Funded by the Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Disability Futures is an initiative administered by United States Artists that aims to increase the visibility of disabled creative practitioners across disciplines and geography and elevate their voices individually and collectively.

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Video Transcript

 [inspirational music plays]

 [music continues]

EMIL KANG: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the Disability Futures Virtual Festival. It is my pleasure to introduce our next session, "A More Inclusive Community: The Power and Presence of Indigenous Disabled Stories." My name is Emil Kang, and I have the honor of serving as program director for Arts and Culture at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is funding the Disability Futures Initiative in partnership with the Ford Foundation. I am a middle-aged, Asian American, cisgender male with a graying head of black hair. I am seated at a desk, wearing glasses, a blue shirt, and a blue sweater. Behind me is a bookcase with books and a photo of my daughter, Emma. I use he, him, his pronouns. I'm a proud Queens, New York, native and the son of Korean immigrants. I'm greeting you today from the unceded lands of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, the Shakori, and the Eno peoples, also known as Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Created by, for, and with disabled practitioners and administered by United States Artists, Disability Futures is an initiative to resource and spotlight the work of disabled creatives across disciplines and geography and amplify their voices collectively and individually. By partnering on this work, the Mellon Foundation advances its mission to center equity and justice and build just communities. We celebrate the truth and grace of creative expression and also recognize that institutional structures have not served disabled artists in the past. We see and support art and artists at the center of thriving communities. In doing so, we aim to add complexity and justice to our understanding of the world and foster societies that value all artists as the chroniclers of our humanity. Disabled practitioners continue to shape our humanity through their work using the different lenses they carry, including their disability. We all benefit from engaging with these critical points of view. Disabled practitioners, particularly those who are women, trans, nonbinary, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, have been historically under-resourced in the arts, journalism, and film, in addition to the compounding effects of inequality they may face. Our hope is that this investment in disabled creatives will prompt more field-wide advancement around issues of disability-led creative practice, content, productions, and projects and will spur additional support for their work. This virtual festival celebrates the art, performance, and ideas of the inaugural Disability Futures fellows and their collaborators. This session will address the power and presence of Indigenous disabled stories who spirit artistry and the digital divide. We are thrilled to welcome Disability Futures fellow Jen Deerinwater, whose preferred pronoun is Jen. Jen is a journalist, nonfiction, creative writer, memoirist, photographer, and the founding executive director of Crushing Colonialism, a multimedia platform by and for Indigenous perspectives and creativity. Jen's collaborators on this session are Marcy Angeles, writer, painter, and musician, and Tony Enos, singer-songwriter, producer, live stage entertainer, and activist. Our friend from the Ford Foundation, Rocío Aranda Alvarado, program officer on the Creativity and Free Expression team, will moderate. My thanks to these participants, my Mellon colleague Yasmeen Allen Martei, and colleagues at USA for their work behind the scenes and our partners at the Ford Foundation who are hosting us today. And thanks to all of you who are joining us from across the globe. I hope this festival will help deepen your awareness of current and emerging practices and content, elevate your engagement and support of disabled creatives in collaboration across artistic and disability communities. To support access needs for this session, we are providing American Sign Language, which you'll already notice on your screen, closed-captioning, which can be turned on or off at any time, and audio description. For more information on how to access the audio-described version of this video, please refer to your program guide, which was emailed to you and can be found on the event page. If you have any needs, questions, or ideas for ways to enhance your experience, please write to AV@FordFoundation.org. Together, as an extraordinary community of shared interest and purpose, we can advance disability futures. With that, we are going to begin today's session with an original song written and recorded and produced by Jen Deerinwater, Marcy Angeles, and Tony Enos. Thank you for joining us.

[thunderous, driving music]

 ["Others Like Me" plays]

TONY ENOS:  I know the pain you're feeling inside

 I know the voices in your head

 Keep telling you you'll never make it

 But this is a battle you can win

 I'm talking to the beaten-down

 I'm talking to the broken-down

 The warriors of the first degree

 This one here goes out to the others like me

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 This one here goes out to the others like me

ENOS and JEN DEERINWATER:  They ask me why

 I keep on going

ENOS: Why do I keep on going?

ENOS and DEERINWATER:  And why I just

 Will not give up

ENOS: I'll never give up.

ENOS and DEERINWATER:  Colonizers

 Can't keep us down forever

ENOS:  Oh, no

ENOS and DEERINWATER:  'Cause every day

 We're rising up

 Our Indigeneity

 Oh, disability

 Still sacred two-spirit beings

 They won't take one more of us

 Not others like me

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 This one here goes out to the others like me

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 This one here goes out to the others like me

MARCY ANGELES:  I've felt in you

 What I've felt in me

 It's like crossing paths was destiny

ENOS: It's our destiny.

ANGELES:  We are reclaiming

 Our tribal identity

 We were forgotten from our oral history

 There's something left to do for you and me

 We are Indigenous two-spirit beings

ENOS: Two-spirit beings.

ANGELES:  Inseparable from our identity

 We'll restore our place in sacred

 You and me

ENOS:  I'm talking to the beaten-down

 I'm talking to the broken-down

 The warriors of the first degree

 Yeah, this one here

 Goes out to the others like me

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 This one here goes out to the others like me

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 Weyha

 Woh-oh, oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh

 This one here goes out to the others like me

 Others like me, others like me

 Weyha

 Others like me, others like me

 Weyha

 Others like me, others like me

 This one here goes out to the others like me

ROCÍO ARANDA-ALVARADO: Thank you, all, so much for being here today. Thank you, Emil, for the welcome. We're so grateful for the opportunity to experience this amazing work of art. My name is Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, and I'm a program officer on Ford's Creativity and Free Expression team. I'm a Latina woman, a mestiza. My family descends from European colonizers and also the Inca and Mapuche Nations. I have graying black hair. I'm wearing pink glasses, gold hoops, and I'm sitting in my apartment welcoming you from Hell's Kitchen, New York City, the land of the Munsee Lenape. My pronouns are she and ella. And before we start today's conversation, I wanted to give our amazing artists a moment to introduce themselves. So, Jen, Marcy, and Tony, we'd love for you to go ahead and introduce yourselves.

DEERINWATER: This is Jen Deerinwater speaking. It's really wonderful to be here today with everyone. I am in Washington, DC, which is occupied Piscataway land. I am a white-coated, Native, femme two-spirit. I have brown hair that I'm wearing back. I'm wearing black, sort of nerdy-style glasses. I have on long, dangling earrings that are sort of like a copper and a black that hang down to my shoulders. And, then, I'm wearing a black and bronze, copper-beaded necklace and a black shirt, and I am sitting in a brown office chair. And behind me, you can kind of see into my kitchen and my little desk/office nook. Wado. Thank you.

ANGELES: [speaking native language] Hello. My name is Marcy Angeles. I am a Nednhi Chiricahua Apache and Guamares disabled two-spirit. I live my life with complex PTSD, bipolar disorder, OCD, seasonal affective disorder, and asthma from the stress. I am a working artist, writer, musician, and journalist. I am wearing a black dress with gold sequins, black glasses. I have long, dark-brown hair and a little nose ring. And it's a pleasure to be sitting here with you all.

ENOS: [speaking native language] Greetings. My name is Tony Enos. Many blessings from the Echota Cherokee Tribe. It's really an honor and a pleasure to be here with you. I'm coming to you from South Philadelphia, but traditional Lenape land. I have on a gray ballcap with a yellow bandana underneath it. I am light brown with, I guess, a flush of red and--[laughs] A dark goatee and chinstrap beard and eyebrows. I have on a snakeskin print that's probably pol-- a little polyester and polished cotton blazer. With a gold T-shirt underneath. And I have a suede strap around my neck with my dear toe that I always wear, keep them close to my heart. On the walls behind me-- They are white walls. To my left is a painting that my sister did for me for my birthday. It's a painting of the Broadway musical "Wicked" kind of playbill and soundtrack cover. So you got a little green Wicked Witch of the West and some sparkly ivory-colored Glinda together. And to my right is my drum, my red hawk wing, dance fan, and a traditional lacrosse stick, which I also dance with when I dance men's traditional at our gatherings. And then directly behind me is just kind of my little throw-- Native-print throw blanket. [chuckles] And that's me.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: Beautiful. Thank you, all, so much. I think we should start with the song. Just so amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of collaborating on this work? I think of collaboration as this really—a crucial tool in broadening audiences and also--and the reach of advocacy. And especially in terms of crossover and gender blending as you've done, I think you all have three very different kinds of musical backgrounds. And it just reminded me. Like, the most recent Latin Grammy Awards, Dolly Parton performed her 1974 classic "Jolene" with Chiquis, who is a US Latinx Colombia singer, blending, essentially, two very different genres but at the same time highlighting the similarities in the histories of these musical styles and broadening the audience, right? I mean, I googled it immediately when I heard it, so it's great to see. In your song, you've blended your artistic expressions, so maybe you could talk to us about the challenges and the joys of combining these different styles and voices into a single work of art.

ENOS: I'll go first. This is Tony here. Jen and Marcy and I initially talked. You know, you try and find common ground. I've been singing and writing and producing pop music since 2008, professionally. And as a songwriter, I always try to, regard-- I know what the lyrics know to me and what it is I'm speaking about, but I do my best lyrically so that the listener can sort of apply it to their life and whatever they feel. And so in our case, we were talking about, what have been challenges or disabilities in our lives? But I think the general message of the song-- And even though we do touch on things like colonization, the effects of colonization, identifying as two-spirit-- But I think, as people, you know, every living thing is just trying to survive. Every liv--Everybody wants love. Everybody's just trying to survive. So it's really about facing challenges head on and not giving up. I think that's a really important cornerstone of the song. You know, there's that saying the day you gave up would have been the day it all came together. So for me as a songwriter and as a producer, that's really the message that I'm trying to convey to whoever is listening, to keep going. It's better than the alternative.

DEERINWATER: This is Jen speaking. Um, yeah, I think-- I mean, we do. We all come from very different musical backgrounds, which I think, for me, was very intimidating but was also really fun. It was, like, a fun and scary challenge to try to bring it all together. I also haven't done anything musically in about 20 years. So other than singing along with, like, Spotify, I am out of practice. I was a nervous wreck when we were recording. Poor Tony got saddled with trying to keep me calm during it all. [laughs] But, you know, it was also my first time writing a song, like, taking part in any of that process. Like, I'm a classically trained vocalist. Back when I was still singing, I was a soprano. And, you know, I sing music written by dead white men, you know? It's very different than what we did for this song. It was all really new and really challenging but also really great. And I can't imagine doing it with anyone other than Tony and Marcy because there's just-- Like, we just have a love for each other and an understanding for each other. And, like, if one of us starts to feel stressed out or whatever, the others are just like, "It's okay. Take a breath." You know? We were all really great at being able to communicate what our needs were. If we--If one of us just didn't feel well, we would reschedule meetings. Like, there was a camaraderieship there that I don't often feel in a lot of professional spaces that I've been in. But in terms of the song itself, you know, some of the lyrics I wrote-- And it was just from some thoughts one day. I just got so frustrated and fed up with the world, you know, constantly telling me that I'm not even supposed to be here, that, as a Cherokee person, you know, a Cherokee Nation citizen-- The US government and the colonizers before the US was created, they didn't mean for me to be here. They didn't mean for Tony or Marcy to be here. They meant to kill us. And when they couldn't do that, they tried to culturally kill us, you know? And I think about it, too, as a disabled person, especially living under this pandemic, you know, seeing how Native people have been thrown away and left to die, but so have disabled people. And it's been really terrifying. You know, and also as a queer person, like, it's just scary trying to survive in this world. And, so, one day I was just sitting down, just writing out my feelings, trying to process it, and we ended up using that for the part that I sing, which was-- It just was--It was really great. It was really cool. And then something that's really interesting, I really want to encourage people to watch the documentary "Rumble." That documentary is amazing. It's all about the Native influence on the music that comes from across the so-called US. Whether it's bluegrass, it's rock, it's jazz, you know, there is Native influence there. So, I think I just--I want to encourage people to go watch that documentary, go learn about Native musicians and--and support Native musicians.

ANGELES: Hi. This is Marcy speaking. And I just want to reiterate that, you know, we all come from very different backgrounds, and it was actually something that brought us closer together. I think what made it come together was that we shared similar experiences, you know, asserting your identity in a post-colonized world that is-- And the colonization never ended, mind you. But we've had similar experiences, self-acceptance, you know, surviving through heartbreak. You know, like, just the need to go on and, like, finding that resilience in yourself, and so one of the most important things was, like, okay, well, this is not about overcoming disability. This is about embracing disability and embracing the human experience because disability can be our superpower. And part of embracing the human experience is embracing our spiritual experience because we are spirits with human bodies. Sometimes some people feel like that may not have gone right. For some of us, we do accept-- Everyone's journey is different, and everyone's journey is sacred. And everyone's mode of survival is completely valid. But, for us, I think the biggest concern was speaking for the people who can't speak up. There's people who are healing and struggling and surviving in quiet, dark spaces. And as hard as it can be-- and trust me, it was hard this morning-- we're going, you know?

ENOS: Marcy brings up a really good point, and I won't belabor it, but giving people language is so important. I think giving youth language is so important. And I always have our youth in the back of my mind when I am writing and producing a record, especially something that's supposed to be empowering. You know, youth, a lot of time, they just know it's a feeling. They just know that they feel something, but they don't always have the language to say, "I feel anxious," or, "I don't feel safe." They just know that they feel something. So to be able to give people language and to be able to put a name with a feeling, I think that's an important thing to do as an artist, and it's a-- Language is an empowering tool.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: That's a really good point, actually, and it really--it goes well into the next thing I wanted to ask you all about because it is about language, but the different kinds of language that you all use. Your creative practices are so expansive, from visual arts, music, writing, and journalism. It seems to me like the activism and advocacy are also crucial to your work, as you've already talked about here. And I wondered some of the ways in which you brought these multidisciplinary experiences and practices to this collaboration and also to your own work, adapting these different disciplines for the language that you're helping people to access. Maybe you could talk about the advantages you feel like you've had in working across these various disciplines and how they've been helpful to you and your work.

ENOS: Hey, folks, it's Tony. I'll go first. I have to acknowledge the really brilliant people that I've learned from over the past 14 years, amazing singer-songwriters, producers. So, for me, that's been a tremendous advantage. I've had really talented people to learn from. And, so, the other part of that is I have had tremendous support. I've had amazing support from our Native, Indigenous, and First Nations and two-spirit communities, from my own HIV-positive community from Philly. And that's great, because, you know, the caveat to that and to art is somebody's always going to hate it. [laughs] And that's okay. And I think, you know, that's part of the job. And I think that it makes it that more special, that much more special when people really do get it and identify with it. But those are some of the advantages that I've had and have been able to learn from over the past 14 years and hopefully, effectively, brought to this project.

ANGELES: This collaboration was very personal for all three of us. And the fact that I'm Apache and they're Cherokee, it's so essential for all of the tribal communities to work together because we need each other. We absolutely need each other, particularly the two-spirits. Because of colonization, a lot of our own tribal communities became so colonized that they rejected two-spirit people, when we predate this country, we predate Zoom, and we predate the conversations. We were sacred beings that were living in a beautiful way and bringing healing to our communities. And now we find ourselves in present day constantly trying to heal ourselves. And so I think one of the most important things is just, like, bringing voice, I mean, on the days that we can. I mean, I've--In the past, I've written songs about, like, "I want to be invisible today," where in other cases, I'm like, "I want to be visible today because I can." And so a lot of it, too, is, like, tending to your own needs. But I think it's just important for--for this kind of work to be out there. And, you know, I do-- Everything I've experienced I put into every little bit of work I do, and that's why I have so many different musical projects. And it's just really an honor to work with such beautiful siblings that do such incredible work. And they inspire me, and they help me feel like I want to keep going, so ...

DEERINWATER: This is Jen speaking. I love you, Marcy. I'm having some stuff going on in my personal life right now, and I'm, like, all in my feelings and was struggling not to cry when I was trying to put on my makeup earlier. And I swear, Marcy, you're going to end up making me cry. So if I look like a hot mess, it's all your fault.[laughs] Um, I don't know. I guess the interdisciplinary nature of my work, it's based, one, in just my love for the arts, which really goes back, I think, very heavily to my mom and to my Degee, who's my maternal grandma. You know, Degee would sing all the time. She was a visual artist. She really encouraged me in my writing and music, all my artistic pursuits. My mom really loved dance when she was younger, you know? So from a very young age, I was introduced to the arts, which is probably not the norm for people who grew up where I grew up. You know, my childhood was spent in rural parts of my nation's reservation in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, and in Abilene, Texas. We don't think of these as places that have a lot of arts, but, one, the arts are everywhere. Culture is everywhere. It's just whose culture and arts we define as worthwhile, worth patronage. Yeah, for me, it just goes back to being a kid. You know, I took dance classes, I sang. I was in the school band for a little while. [laughs] You know, I remember having my first camera when I was eight years old. So I don't know. It's just-- Some of those things I've kept going in my life and my professional career in the arts. Some things I've expanded on. You know, I feel like there are some days where I'm just like, "Why can't I write about meaningless things like lipstick and shoes?" But my communities are suffering. They're not being seen and not being heard. Genocide has never ended. Anti-queerness has not gone away. Misogyny hasn't ended. Ableism sure as hell hasn't ended. You know, so I really try to devote my energies in my artistic practice to uplifting the voices of my communities. And in that process, in a way, it’s also uplifting my voice. It’s saying the things that I need, which can also--it can be difficult, but it also can be very healing in some ways.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: Thank you, Jen. This is Rocío again. Our next question is a little bit about inspiration. So I thought I'd start maybe with Marcy. Marcy, when I was preparing for this, I watched some videos, including an interview with you, where you talked about some of the inspiration behind your work, personally. We'd love to hear a little bit about that.

ANGELES: I live my life with PTSD, and I'm going to do myself the favor and not relive that. I feel like, so often, we're expected to relive that, and I know that's not what you're asking, but I don't want to. But for everything-- I have these different musical projects. Like, I make trip hop. I’m sitting in my studio right now. I make trip hop. I make indie rock, psychedelic rock. And right now I'm currently recording a house album, a deep-house album. And, you know, I've done industrial for when I'm angry and noise rock and stuff. And every-- I believe strongly in getting out what you have. You need to feel it and let it go. And so it's the same thing with this particular collaboration. You know, um, the glue that put us together. And I feel like me and Tony and Jen, we're just stuck for-- We're stuck with each other, and, you know, I really enjoy our group chats. We've been so supportive of each other. I think it's just that we experience a lot of the similar things, maybe not entirely the same, you know, because I do identify as a trans woman, not just two-spirit. But to give more context, I am a trans woman. You know, these days, transphobia is all over the news, and I find myself trying to do self-care. Don't read the comments on that article post. And not only that but loving what I see in the mirror. You cannot go your whole life hating what everyone's telling you to love, because I am sacred and everyone is sacred. And I think that everyone, not even just trans people-- And a lot of the theme of my music, it's not just for trans people or Indigenous people. It's just for people that felt like they are black sheep or misfits and they don't have anywhere to fit in. Well, my music and my art is Misfit Island from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." And, so, yeah.

DEERINWATER: This is Jen. I feel like I kind of have talked about the influences in my work. I think the one thing I would also add is that, just as a writer and as a journalist, like, I'm just--I'm a very curious person. Go figure. A journalist is curious. And I've just always been that way. And I really enjoy research. And I quite often find myself going down this huge rabbit hole of research that leads to all kinds of writing projects and, you know, media projects and things. And it's interesting where it takes me and some of the places it takes me to. I mean, I ended up doing quite a bit of writing about the 2020 Census, for example. I never thought I'd want to write about the Census, but it ended up just kind of pulling me in, you know? And I think that as Native people, and then also as a Cherokee person, we were the first people in the so-called US, at least, to have a written syllabary. And we also created and still run to this day the "Cherokee Phoenix," which was the first tribal newspaper in this country. So I feel like in doing the work that I do, I am--I'm continuing the tradition of storytelling. And that's really important to me, and making sure that I'm telling those stories of all of my people and I'm doing it authentically, that I'm honoring the people who trust me with their stories and that I'm honoring-- I'm honoring the ancestors. And that also means, unfortunately, sometimes carrying a very heavy weight of those stories and these realities.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: Thank you. Tony, I know that pop and hip-hop have also influenced your work. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about those in your work.

ENOS: I grew up a child of the '90s. I'm also a big disco baby. And I would have recorded a lot more, like, 1979 Motown style disco if I didn't have a lot of producers in the beginning saying, "That's too old for you. You're too young for that. "But I love disco. I love all music, really. So I am influenced very much by not only pop and hip-hop. Classical. Disco. You name it. Rock. I'm totally a frustrated rock musician. But, yeah, I think the--the common thread in trying to blend all those genres as a producer-- For me, at least, my work has always been about resilience. I have Cherokee ancestry, but I also have Black, Puerto Rican, Italian, Pakistani, and Melanesian ancestry. And I've learned to be very careful about saying "I have" and saying what I am, because I am that I am. You know, as an artist, all-- You come out in the wash. That comes out in the wash. So resilience, I think, has been the arc of my work, I think, over the past 14 years.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: This is Rocío again. I think it'd be great to talk a little bit about the-- the messages that you want listeners to go away with after they've heard the song. And maybe, Jen, you can talk about how-- Thinking about the digital divide, maybe you want to tell us a little bit about that and how that inspired this collaboration.

DEERINWATER: Sure. So, this is Jen speaking. So, something that I've been trying to think on and work on, you know, as a media maker, a journalist, and as somebody running Crushing Colonialism, which is an Indigenous media organization, is, how do we bridge the digital divide in this country? I think many people in this country take for granted their access to high-speed broadband internet and cellphones. Or, before cellphones, landlines, you know? Telecommunications infrastructure is not something that a lot of Native people have access to. You know, in 2016, it was only 63.9% of total tribal lands had high-speed broadband services. And I want to say in this that all of this-- all of this is tribal lands. However, the data I'm going to give you is based on what is recognized tribal lands. But these rates of access to telecommunications infrastructure vary so wildly. Only 31.6% of rural tribal areas in the continental US have broadband access. Only 43.5% of native Hawaiian households have access. And that's because telecoms infrastructure just stops at reservation boundaries. You know, the government loves to pick and choose when we're sovereign nations. When it comes to funding its trust and treaty responsibilities to us, for health care, or for making sure we have roads or telecoms infrastructure, or anything of that nature, "Oh, you're sovereign nations. You're on your own." But the minute it comes to them putting pipelines or dams or anything through our lands, then we're not sovereign nations. And so this is one of those problems that we have. We also have just really high rates of poverty within our communities. So even if you have internet or cellphone towers, you have that--that infrastructure access, you may not financially be able to afford it. The poverty rates, they vary wildly across our nations. Some are in better positions that others. But just to give you an idea of how severe it can be for some of our people, 97% of Pine Ridge Reservation residents live below the US federal poverty line. And median household incomes range between $2,600 to $3,500 per year, with a 90% percent unemployment rate. That's severe, you know? I mean ... So we have to think about those things. And even urban Natives, which--71% of us actually live in urban and suburban areas. Also because of poverty, we often don't have access to internet and so forth. And so with all of this said, in this project, this collaboration with Tony and Marcy, one of the things that we really wanted to strive towards is towards making sure that the work that we're doing is accessible, that it's accessible across disabilities, that it's accessible across geographic locations and across that digital divide. And so in part of doing this, you know, we're going to--we're releasing this talk, as well as our song on a hard-copy DVD, CD. We're doing everything we can to try to make this work accessible to all of our relatives and all of our community members. Because if we're not doing that, then what is the point of the work that we are doing?

ANGELES: So, I completely agree. And this is my Marcy speaking, by the way. I completely agree with everything that Jen had to say. And, you know, when it comes to telecommunications, you can see stuff like the blatant disrespect when it comes from Hollywood. It's more than just saying, "I love Native people," because two-spirits and disabled Indigenous folks are Native people. You cannot separate us from our indigeneity. We are one. That's like taking my leg off and saying that that's not me. No, no, no. Whether my leg is on right now or somewhere else, that's still me. You see a lot of things like that. And I totally agree with Jen on the whole pipeline thing. How come you can get a pipeline onto a reservation, not a suburb, but you can't get, like, lines in to bring water so they have water on the reservations? Like, you look at what happened to Navajo Nation, and a lot of their biggest struggles with COVID was because they didn't have access to water and they had to drive miles and miles to go get water. And so those are things that we have to take into consideration.

ENOS: Hey. This is Tony again. It's so interesting to talk about access. Access is a really big issue right now. And we talk about it as though it’s not the immediate result of a system that is broken. It doesn't work. It never worked. But I think the business of America, the capitalist system, would have us believe that it did work. Who gets to say who has access? There is somebody or groups of people who get to say who has access, you know? We're not living the old ways where we have to go out and hunt our own food. There's somebody, there are corporations in charge of our access and saying who has access and who doesn't. There's a commercial. I can't remember the entire story, but she's someone who feeds people. She goes out. Kind of like Meals on Wheels thing. And with the help of Amazon, she's been able to feed more people. And she says, "I've been able to feed X hundreds amount of people, and that's the power of having a company like Amazon behind you." And nobody sees the issue with that? That Amazon gets to say who eats and who doesn't? Like, I understand it, and I get it, and I'm grateful that they are using their status as an extremely wealthy company to do good, but the fact that someone gets to say who eats and who doesn't is an issue. It is a world problem. And a lot of it--and a lot of that conditioning and propaganda starts right here in the United States. It starts in the business of the United States. Moreover, being a person living with HIV, we're still fighting for access. You know, almost 40 years later, we're still fighting for access. COVID has been a really terrible thing. It’s been gut-wrenching. But it doesn't take away the sting as a person living with HIV and being a part of something that's almost gone on for 40 years now. It doesn't take the sting out of watching the business of the United States fall over themselves to find a vaccine when thousands of people had to die before we were even given access to life-sustaining medications. So I won't belabor the access conversation, and I don't have all the answers. But it is a problem. What we're doing doesn't work, and we have to include more people. We have to be conscious and aware of who's at the table, whose voices and narratives we uplift, and who's granting the access. Where is it coming from? Why is access a thing? So, again, I don't have all the answers, but I hope that we can be aware as we move forward and being a part of creating access.

DEERINWATER: This is Jen. I just wanted to add something else in talking about who gives--who gives access, who gets access. And something that I've talked about you know, behind the scenes with Disability Futures fellowship organizers was how to make sure if this fellowship continues, which I genuinely hope it does. It's a desperately needed fellowship that has made a vast difference in my life, in my work. If this moves forward, how are you including Indigenous people in this? Are you including Indigenous people behind the scenes and organizing this? Are they in leadership? Are they making decisions on who gets the fellowships? How are you reaching out to Indigenous community? You know, I recognize that despite all the multiple marginalizations I have, I have certain privileges. Like, I live in a major city. I have Internet. I have the social capital of a bunch of degrees from fancy-ass universities. You know, so, because of that, I'm a more appealing Native to offer funding or resources to. But, personally,  that's-- that's just a crock of bullshit. These resources should be available to all of us, not just, you know, one or two of us here and there. And, you know, I'm going to say it. I might upset some people. But the philanthropic world, the nonprofit industrial complex, the whole arts community, they play a role in who gets to be heard and who gets to be seen. And people like the three of us and our community members are not often allowed to have resources. We are often silenced. And some of the people who are watching this are in a position to make a difference, and you better damn well listen to everything we have to say today, and you better start centering our voices and our work because these are our lands. And just, like, as disabled and ill people, are creative work is important, it is as Indigenous people and as two-spirits and as a bisexual or a trans woman, you know, someone living with HIV. You know, the arts community and the whole-- the nonprofit community needs to start getting behind us and taking our direction in this work.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: Thank you for that, Jen. What you just said was really, really crucial and so important. I think we have the statistics. We have the reports. People have done the studies. I think that less than 0.8% of all philanthropic dollars go to Native organizations. And so this is something that I think philanthropy as a whole can work on. And the access question, I think, is also sort of the other side-- both sides of the coin of these legacies of colonialism that you were listing before, Jen, which have continued to demarcate who gets access and how access is created. And in terms of, you know-- The arts community, especially, I think about the lack of knowledge of the contemporary Native American art scene. Artists who are working now, they're rarely featured in contemporary art museums. I'm calling this whole period Museums on Fire, as they realize the things that they have to change desperately. And I wonder if part of it-- One of the things we talked about was access. And how about the issue of the creation of work that's happening in communities that is not being disseminated because of this lack of access? In other words, artists who are constantly creating, but because they don't have access to talking to people about their work, posting it online, having relationships with collectors for, you know ... Maybe we could talk a little bit about how you see that could change or what steps you think could be taken to change that kind of access.

DEERINWATER: So, this is Jen speaking. I think the first thing I want to say when I think about museums and arts institutions and such is give our ancestors back. [chuckles] Let's be real. Museums and universities across the world go in and pilfer and steal. I don't even go in natural history museums because they're just so triggering and disgusting. The blatant racism and colonialism, you know? So, right there, if you're a university, you're an arts institution, you better return our ancestors to us. Return our sacred items to us. They were never yours to take. So that's number one. [laughs] But I think in doing that kind of work and recognizing that these institutions have been able to exist and in some cases thrive because of the Native genocide they have taken part in, because of the colonialism they take part in and still take part in, they've been able to thrive at our expense. And part of doing right by us is taking our direction and listening to us and doing what we tell you you need to do, like giving our ancestors back. Seeing those actions, that's where I'll say for myself, as a Native and as an artistic person, if I see that, that's when I go, 'Okay, this is an institution worthy of me, of my support. This is an institution worthy of existing. This is an institution that we as Native people can begin to work with and build relationships with." Unfortunately, I don't see that often. What I often see, if I see anything at all, is tokenization. And tokenization is not what we need. Just because you have a Native here or there does not mean that you are pro-Native. And so building those relationships means you have to give up your privilege as a colonizer. You have to acknowledge that you have taken part in our genocide, and you have to make good by that. So that right there is the first step towards building these relationships with our communities and with our Native artists.

ENOS: What I see--You talk about tokenization. And I think what's even more obnoxious than that is backhanded tokenization. As such, there is--there are museums that have Native art, who will exhibit Native art, and they get to check that box off. "Yes, we have Native artists. “And so you go, and you look at the Native art, and it's under "folk art" nine times out of ten. Because this person learned their artistry the traditional way from their elders in their nation and their tribal community and doesn't have a degree from NYU or, you know--or Harvard saying, "Yes, I paid X amount of dollars and studied this for four years. “This person has been learning this trade their whole life. They've made a lifetime of it. They live their tribal ways. But it is diminished and minimized because they don't have a piece of paper from an institution. So that institutional oppression is definitely something across all art platforms that needs to be addressed. I think--I think people need tools. If anybody's going to change their life in any way or coming from a place of self-efficacy and wants to create any kind of change, the people need tools. People need tools to do that. So making sure that, you know, if we're not reaching out in direct ways with money and funding and things like that, do people have the tools to—Do they know how to put together a press release? Do they know how to create a social-media post to gain "attention," you know, and sort of present their work to the world? Do people have tools to create any kind of change and combat the systematic oppression?

ANGELES: This is Marcy speaking. And I totally agree with everything that Tony and Jen were saying. And I think one of the things I want to stress the most is it's really ironic that not only do most Native people not have resources, but colonizers and non-Native people continue to use us as a resource. We are more than just resources, and you've more than depleted us, you know? And I think of here in the area where I live-- I live alongside El Paso, Texas, which is in Apachería and also Tigua Pueblo lands. And I think of the art scene here where they couldn't tokenize me. And because I was talking two-spirit and trans issues and Indigenous issues, I couldn't get gigs anymore. I had to go to the virtual world to make a presence and to try to make some kind of living, because I'm a disabled person and Social Security office has treated me like dirt, and I've had to cancel my Social Security, that I'm trying to do what I can with what little tools I have. And yet you see people, like, here in the scene, that, one, I'm not allowed to be there, but I was fine when they could tokenize me. Two, the issue of what was going on with Standing Rock, they were holding an event with very few artists on the roster. An event about Standing Rock, but where were the Native artists? It can't just be me Not only that, but even them having-- They had this, like, spiritual gathering where it was just a cultural-appropriation gathering, where they were stealing people's cultural customs and stealing, you know, spirituality. And you have non-Native people getting, you know, traditional medicine and opening the sweat lodge to public against the wishes of us local Indigenous groups that asked them not to. Furthermore, a lot of it is just exploitation. You know, stop exploiting us. And most importantly, you know, don't buy Native-inspired. Buy Native-made. And when you go onto these reservations, there's people that don't have access, and all they can do is get to town for the flea market and sell their item. Not only that, but in present day, they're underselling themselves. They're selling a well-made item that's authentically made, made out of real materials, for a low price just so they can survive. But then you see fashion designers, and we had one here in El Paso, to bring up. He is not a Native person, but he was stealing Native textiles and styles for his own brand. And no matter what, they make excuses or they try to just--There's no justification. It isn't Native. If it's Native-inspired, it's not Native anything. You know, it has to be Native-made. And that's why I feel it's important to make different kinds of music and different kinds of art, because, like, I get to make my outreach to other Native people that are living in urban settings, and I get to speak in places where they don't often hear us. So, okay, who's expecting a Native person to speak in a deep-house genre? They're not. But I will. Because I'm going to reach to other people that are Native, that are in the urban settings or people that are understanding or people that, you know, consider themselves progressive and are forever in a state of learning. And, so, not to say all non-Native people are awful people, because there are people that feel like they're constantly evolving and want to learn. And I want to reach those people, too. And so I think a lot of it is just focusing on buying authentic Native art and highlighting authentic Native art. And, you know, I thank you all for giving us this platform to speak, and it's so awesome of you all to take the initiative to include us in this platform because we rarely get these platforms. But at the same time, for the other people that are not doing the same thing, they should. It shouldn't even be a question. When are you going to? Because you need to. It's not just the killing of our physical bodies, which has done-- And we've lost so many people to American Native genocide, and we still don't have a Native American Holocaust Museum on Native land. But at the same time, it's, you know-- Taking our artifacts and putting them in a museum, and we can't touch them. They're behind the glass. You know, putting us in your history books but then changing the story and sugarcoating it and, "Oh, they were so considerate, so they moved onto a reservation." Which was basically a concentration camp. And now we can leave the concentration camp, for those of us that are still on it. But the narrative needs to be changed. A lot needs to change. And these conversations need to continue. They don't need to just be once in a lifetime. You know, Native survival is-- Surviving the genocide, it's not just a physical genocide. It's the cultural genocide and, most of all, the genocide of our spirits. Because if you kill our identity, who are we? What survived? And it took so much of us keeping stuff sacred and private, as many of us that could, and then there's so many people-- ike, you mentioned the word "mestiza." That's the killing of somebody's identity, you know, and somebody has to struggle in the place. I'm not one hundred percent full-blooded myself. I understand, but I answer to the Native inside of me, and there's no reason to feel guilty about being mixed. But you need to--you need to walk back towards home, for all those--all those people that are mixed.

ARANDA-ALVARADO: Thank you. Thank you. Marcy, you expressed your thanks to us. And we just want to say that we are so grateful. We're the ones who are grateful to artists like the three of you for your brilliant wisdom. I'm humbled by your words and really appreciate your participation. Thank you to all of us for joining today. We invite you to experience all the content from the Disability Futures Festival on the main event page. Please continue to enjoy the content. And, again, thanks to all of you for your participation. Beautiful words.

 [inspirational music plays]

Adios.

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