Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna and Paiute) ’15 will perform, teach, and share her poem, Moose Hide Love. Afterward, she will engage the audience in a conversation and demonstration about her work with tanning hides. Shaginoff’s work in the Common Thread exhibition is a video installation curated by Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq and Athabaskan).

Aslaug Magdalena Juliussen (Sámi, Norway), Várddus – Vy – View, 2017–2023, textiles, fibers, animal skin, 71” x 51” x 2”, photograph courtesy of Kunstnerforbundet.

Common Thread: Indigenous Perspectives from the Arctic

For millennia Indigenous peoples of the North have lived in harmony with the land and sea. The twelve artists and activists in the exhibition Common Thread: Indigenous Perspectives from the Arctic continue this relationship. Their artworks examine important issues, including land rights, borders, environmental concerns, language and cultural preservation, identity, self-representation, and violence against Indigenous peoples. These works also highlight artists’s connection to place, the natural world, and their communities.

Northern homelands are some of the first regions in the world negatively affected by climate change. Living in environments altered by unprecedented rates of sea ice loss, temperature and sea level rise, ocean acidification, animal population declines, reductions in wild plant yields and diversity, permafrost thaw, and severe coastal erosion, many Indigenous peoples find their way of life also threatened, causing profound physical and emotional damage. The physical, spiritual, and cultural health of their communities is intertwined with activities practiced over countless generations. The imposition of colonial social and work customs continue to fracture relationships to the environment and its plants, animals, marine life, and birds—all essential to the well-being of Indigenous communities. Common Thread artists use their works to provoke a discussion about the changing North and effects of colonialization, fostering opportunities for positive change and healing. The exhibition was guest-curated by Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq, Athabascan, Alaska). Among the artists are Jenny Irene Miller (Inupiaq, Alaska), Holly Nordlum (Iñupiaq, Alaska), Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna and Paiute, Alaska), Maureen Gruben (Inuvialuk, Canada), Taqralik Partridge (Inuk, Canada), Marja Helander (Sámi, Finland), Julie Edel Hardenberg (Inuk, Greenland), Jessie Kleemann (Kalaaleq, Greenland), Sissel M. Bergh (Sámi, Norway), Aslaug Magdalena Juliussen (Sámi, Norway), and Britta Marakatt-Labba (Sámi, Sweden).

For more information, please contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.