From February 27th-March 2nd, Fayetteville’s Center for Art as Lived Experience will host Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship, a gathering of contemporary Indigenous artists, musicians, activists, and scholars taking creative approaches to visualizing collective memories and Indigenous futurities in the land currently known as Northwest Arkansas. The event is free and open to the public. 

The second day of the program will begin on February 28th at Parker Hall (Parker Hall, Mount Sequoyah, 150 N Skyline Dr.) at 9am and end at Sculpture Studio room 205e. The day's schedule is below:

9:00 am: Breakfast & Indigenous Student Meet & Greet
All Indigenous students and attendees are invited to meet available panelists in a more intimate setting.

11 am: Additional Welcome & Land Acknowledgement 
Aaron Turner, Elise Boulanger (Osage), Serena Caffrey, School of Art and Art of the Americas Program Representatives

11:30 am: Retracing the Trail of Tears
Jay Benham (Kiowa), Andrea L. Rogers (Cherokee), Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation), Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds, Ph.D. (Diné/Navajo), Sean Teuton, Ph.D. (Cherokee), Ashley Holland, Ph.D. (Cherokee) 

1 pm: Catered Lunch 

3-4:30 pm: Representation in Museum Spaces & Future Monumentality
Joel Garcia (Huichol), Demian DinéYazhi' (Diné), Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation), Yatika Starr Fields (Cherokee, Osage, Muscogee Creek)

Room #205e, Sculpture Studio, 687 W Praxis Ln, Fayetteville, AR 72701

7 pm: Drowned Land Screening

Colleen Thurston, RSVP required
 

The program, supported by a $25,000 Terra Foundation Convening Grant, will take place as a series of public round table discussions, artist talks, and musical performances spanning the four day period across two locations: the Studio + Design Center on MLK, Mount Sequoyah’s Parker Hall, and Miller Lodge.

This program aims to recognize strategies ranging from restorative funding and land repatriation to artistic interventions in public space. Conversations will offer pathways toward re-Indigenizing spaces where Native people have been historically removed and erased, as well as understanding the ways rapid gentrification further obscures and reaffirms the settler-colonial histories of that removal. 

For more information and to register please visit: https://art.uark.edu/news-events/resounding.php.