Join Photographer and Founder of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Jeremy Dennis, Executive Director of Forge Project, Candice Hopkins, and Linguist and Guild Hall Community Artist-in-Resident, Wunetu Wequai Tarrant at Main Prospect in Southampton Village for an intimate conversation on contemporary Indigenous arts and culture, making space for Native kinship, and building community in the region. The conversation will focus on the work and experiences of the artists’ current initiatives within Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Forge Project, and The First Literature Project. Complimentary food and drink from Main Prospect will be served.

The evening is presented as part of GATHER: Conversations Led by Black & Indigenous Changemakers, co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Revenue from the program will equally support Learning & Public Programs at both Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. 

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ABOUT FORGE PROJECT

Forge Project is a Native-led initiative centered on Indigenous art, decolonial education, and supporting leaders in culture, food security, and land justice. Located on the unceded homelands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok in Upstate New York, Forge Project works to upend political and social systems formed through generations of settler colonialism.

Launched in 2021, Forge Project serves the social and cultural landscape of shared communities through a funded fellowship program for Indigenous culture workers, including those working in food and land justice, law and decolonial governance, and art. Forge hosts Native-led public education and events, a lending art collection focused on contemporary art by Indigenous artists, and art-,land-, and food-based educational programming at the Community Learning Kitchen developed in partnership with Sky High Farm.

https://forgeproject.com/

ABOUT THE FIRST LITERATURE PROJECT

The First Literature Project (FLP) supports the preservation of Indigenous stories, culture, and language by utilizing immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology to create virtual orations, one of which will be the first story ever to be translated into the Shinnecock language. The VR orations share treasured Shinnecock history and traditions from interviews with members of the Shinnecock Nation and Leaders of the Padoquohan Medicine Lodge. The FLP is supported by the Creatives Rebuild New York Grant, the Guild Hall Community Artist-in-Residence program, and the Padoquohan Medicine Lodge.

https://firstliterature.org/

ABOUT GATHER: CONVERSATIONS LED BY BLACK & INDIGENOUS CHANGEMAKERS

GATHER spotlights the voices of BIPOC scholars, artists, and leaders, providing lessons on Black & Indigenous histories & traditions, and strategies for moving forward together. The program is co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Founded by Jeremy Dennis, artist and tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, Ma’s House is a communal art space that includes a residency program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), an art studio, and library. The series was awarded a 2022 Engaging Communities Award of Merit from the Museum Association of New York.

Join us at BookHampton for an evening with author, Joshua Whitehead, and author, scholar, & curator, Joseph M. Pierce, discussing Whitehead’s latest book, Making Love with the Land. All attendees will receive a copy of Making Love with the Land, and the program will conclude with a Q&A and book signing.

The novel Jonny Appleseed established Joshua Whitehead as one of the most exciting and important new literary voices on Turtle Island, winning both a Lambda Literary Award and Canada Reads 2021. In Making Love with the Land, his first nonfiction book, Whitehead explores the relationships between body, language, and land through creative essay, memoir, and confession.

In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Deeply rooted within, he reaches across the anguish to create a new form of storytelling he calls “biostory”—beyond genre, and entirely sovereign. Through this narrative perspective, Making Love with the Land recasts mental health struggles and our complex emotional landscapes from a nefarious parasite on his (and our) well-being to kin, even a relation, no matter what difficulties they present to us. Whitehead ruminates on loss and pain without shame or ridicule but rather highlights waypoints for personal transformation. Written in the aftermath of heartbreak, before and during the pandemic, Making Love with the Land illuminates this present moment in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are rediscovering old ways and creating new ones about connection with and responsibility toward each other and the land.

The evening is presented as part of GATHER: Conversations Led by Black & Indigenous Changemakers, co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Revenue from the program will equally support Learning & Public Programs at both Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio.

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ABOUT GATHER: CONVERSATIONS LED BY BLACK & INDIGENOUS CHANGEMAKERS

GATHER spotlights the voices of BIPOC scholars, artists, and leaders, providing lessons on Black & Indigenous histories & traditions, and strategies for moving forward together. The program is co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Founded by Jeremy Dennis, artist and tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, Ma’s House is a communal art space that includes a residency program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), an art studio, and library. The series was awarded a 2022 Engaging Communities Award of Merit from the Museum Association of New York.