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In Kinship Fellowship is Lilah Akins, Cory Tamler, Jennie Hahn, Emilia Dahlin, Devon Kelley-Yurdin, Darren Ranco, and Tyler Rai. The Fellowship is a collective formed out of a two-year (2019-21) research and creation process that followed the tradition of Wabanaki Guiding, connecting Native and non-Native people to place through experience, language, and story. Defining social repair and environmental care as public, creative acts, Fellowship activities have been led by Penobscot Nation partners, our group learning situated to center Indigenous knowledge and experience. Following two years of collaborative learning, the In Kinship Fellowship group produced a sunrise to sunset performance gathering in September of 2021. This event was held at multiple sites along and with pαnawάhpskewtəkʷ, the Penobscot River. We are now collaborating to create new interdisciplinary works in conversation and relationship with Wabanaki guides and places.
In Kinship Fellowship originally emerged from a year of conversation between Darren Ranco, Ph.D., Jennie Hahn, and Cory Tamler about how settler colonial individuals can ethically participate in shifting public understanding of our shared environments and histories, and how creative intersectional dialogue between Native and non-Native people might productively function. We view a plurality of voices situated within Indigenous guidance as an approach toward, and modeling of, equitable cross-cultural practice.
This work has been supported by the Network of Ensemble Theaters’ Travel & Exchange Network (NET/TEN), supported by lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and by the Kindling Fund, a grant program administered by SPACE as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program.
Lilah Akins is an artist and filmmaker, who recently earned her second BA at the University of Southern Maine's Geography-Anthropology program with a focus in Cultural and Natural Heritage Management. Lilah has been the Wabanaki Outreach Coordinator for Nibezun. She was born and raised on Oahu, Hawaii, and is an enrolled member of the Penobscot Nation and also of Jewish, Cherokee, and settler-colonial descent.
Emilia Dahlin (http://emiliadahlin.com/) is a singer, songwriter, and teaching artist who's interested in what creates and sustains healthy communities. She garners great joy from collaborating and co-creating with young, budding music-makers to elevate their voices. Emilia believes that music and storytelling are are essential to our being and some of the most powerful tools to foster connection between people and to create positive social change. In 2020 she was named a Music to Life Fellow, an artist-activist accelerator founded by Noel "Paul" Stookey.
Tyler Rai (https://www.tylerrai.com/) is an improvisor, dancer, and collaborative artist currently based in Amherst, Massachusetts (Nipmuck/Pocumtuc territory). Through performance and movement improvisation, her research questions how we embody kinship and relational empathy with the other/more-than-human-world. She is currently developing a body of research focused on grief and reverence for the glacial bodies of this earth.
Cory Tamler (www.corytamler.com) is a writer, translator, and interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in theatre, performance as research, and community organizing. She has created research-based performance projects in the U.S., Germany, and Serbia, and is a core artist with civic arts organization Open Waters (Maine), which she has worked with since 2010. Cory has been a DAAD Scholar (Giessen), a Fulbright Scholar (Berlin), and a Fellow at the New Museum for Contemporary Art. As a Ph.D. student at The Graduate Center, CUNY, she studies water dramaturgies and the intersection between physics and performance. She is the co-project coordinator for Social Practice CUNY, a new Mellon-funded initiative that supports and amplifies socially engaged artists, faculty, and staff across the City University of New York.
Devon Kelley-Yurdin (http://www.devonkelley-yurdin.com/) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural organizer based in Portland, Maine. They were born and raised in Vermont and hold a BFA in Communications Design & Cultural Studies from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. They are grounded in the belief that creativity can be found everywhere and plays a deep role in holistic community care; play, curiosity, queerness, accessibility, equity, and skill-building drive their work, relationships, and life experiences. Their work spans traditional media (printmaking, cut-paper, installation), design/illustration/art direction, event production, arts administration, and community organizing.
Darren Ranco, Ph.D. is a faculty member with the University of Maine’s Department of Anthropology, as well as the Chair of Native American Programs and Coordinator of Native American Research. His research focuses on the ways in which indigenous communities in the United States resist environmental destruction by using indigenous diplomacies and critiques of liberalism to protect cultural resources, and how state knowledge systems continue to expose indigenous peoples to an inordinate amount of environmental risk. Ranco is a member of the Penobscot Nation, and is particularly interested in how better research relationships can be made between universities, Native and non-Native researchers, and indigenous communities. Ranco is also involved in developing mentoring programs for Native American students at the University of Maine and developing a statewide STEM education program for Native American students.
Jennie Hahn (www.openwaters.org) is an interdisciplinary civic performance artist committed to social repair and environmental care in Wabanaki/Maine, a place with which she is in multi-generational, settler colonial relationship. As a producer of community-based theater and performance, Jennie has developed multi-year and multi-partner performance projects with Maine farmers (Farms & Fables, 2011), municipal/state agencies (Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, 2014), and fisheries biologists (In Kinship, 2016). She is a co-creator of In Kinship Fellowship (2018-2021). Individually, Jennie works in video, writing, and performance to create speculative storytelling processes that practice equitable relations between and among humans and the more-than-human world. Jennie’s work has been supported by the MAP Fund, the Kindling Fund, Maine Arts Commission, Maine Humanities Council, the Network of Ensemble Theatres, Ella Lyman Cabot Trust, and the Center for Performance and Civic Practice.
Additional Content:
A co-created digital journal record of 3 guided days in October 2019 on the Penobscot River & Sugar Island, from the perspective of the guided. The journal format replicates ways in which Wabanaki guiding has been recorded & archived in the past.
Time-lapse footage of In Kinship Fellowship building a sə̀tikkαn (zih tee gan), an evergreen shelter, with artist & guide James Eric Francis, Sr. on Sugar Island, October 2019.
Institution/Business Type:
Performing Group
Legal Status:
Nonprofit - Unincorporated
Year Founded:
2019
Institution/Business Type:
Performing Group
Legal Status:
Nonprofit - Unincorporated
Year Founded:
2019
Primary Discipline:
Multi-DisciplinaryAdditional Disciplines:
Activities and Services:
Populations Engaged:
Geographic Reach:
Fee Range:
$2,000State of Residence:
MaineMinimum Number of Performers:
2Maximum Number of Performers:
7Fee Range:
$2,000State of Residence:
MaineMinimum Number of Performers:
2Maximum Number of Performers:
7