There’s so much great decolonizing/re-indigenizing work happening right now.
(To access recordings of past History events @ Virginia Tech: https://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-history/history-events.html)
As for THE KIKLēSE PROJECT for Indigenizing Cinema and INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE. The former is an award-winning, three-part project (formerly known as Virginia Dares). The latter is a ‘preview documentary’ I helped produce with Biko Agozino and an amazing team of students. (More about ‘IE’ further down this page.)
About THE KIKLēSE PROJECT
It’s a semi-annual online film festival, with ‘Official Selections,’ a free public screenings, a website (here’s the first one) and cash prizes!
It was (and may be again) a Nearly-Carbon Neutral Conference: Towards Making and Teaching Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media.
It will one day be a Web Series (or something) created and recorded by faculty and students in the VT's School of Performing Arts, in Blacksburg, Virginia and on the Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, and edited by…
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About the name:
THE KIKLēSE PROJECT comes to us courtesy of Victoria Ferguson, former Director of Virginia Tech’s American Indian and Indigenous Community Center. It’s a word from the Tutelo-Saponi Monacan language, meaning ‘awake.’ Vicky wrote: “I thought about the fact that we want to enlighten people, we want to wake them up.” Here’s a link to the word in a different way: https://livingdictionaries.app/tutelo-saponi/entries/list?entries_prod%5Bquery%5D=awake
Formerly this project was called Virginia Dares, which grew out of an idea for a short film seeking to re-envision the legend of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in “the New World” (c. 1588). This child’s story has hitherto been principally controlled and shaped by guardians of so-called white identity, for whom the appearance of a native-born white female child carried immense symbolic importance and served to legitimize:
• English colonialism and the doctrines of divine right and manifest destiny
• Anti-Indian propaganda; ideological justification for colonialist genocide and expropriation
• White female innocence—a key trope for racialist thinking in America, directed first toward Indians, and later toward peoples of African descent.
After several scripts, and many months of workshopping the idea, we saw there are many better stories that can be told about the meeting of American Indian, African and European cultures—multiple Virginia Dares.
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In 2019, the Virginia Dares Team won a Virginia Tech Presidential Principles of Community Award. This award “was established to recognize employees who exemplify and promote a welcoming and inclusive environment in accord with Virginia Tech’s Principles of Community.” In selecting our team for this award, the Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity recognized “Virginia Dares for its visionary, progressive, and thoughtful leadership.” This award came with an honorarium, which led to…
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THE KIKLēSE PROJECT for Indigenizing Cinema:
Launched in 2020, these film awards promote meaningful cross cultural identifications and helps create the possibility for social change by promoting and celebrating indigenizing / decolonizing media created by artists, activists, educators, and students worldwide.
Award Winners are chosen from the project’s Official Selections and publicaly screened for free*. All entry fees are split evenly and distributed to the winners. No entry fees are paid to , or kept by, the event’s organizers.
For more info: https://filmfreeway.com/VDCAA (Name change coming soon!)
*Please join us for the free community screening of this year’s award winners at VT’s American Indian and Indigenous Community Center, at 7pm on March 21st, 2023
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But what is decolonizing / re-indigenizing media? Well…
Nelson Maldonado-Torres in On the Coloniality of Being, refers to decolonization as “a confrontation with the racial, gender, and sexual hierarchies that were put in place or strengthened by European modernity as it colonized and enslaved populations throughout the planet” (page 261).
In Carole Boyce Davies’ introduction to Decolonizing the Academy: Advancing The Process, she writes: “It becomes clear that “decolonizing the academy” must be an ongoing and parallel feature of attempts to develop new paradigms ... Decolonizing the academy means therefore that in a variety of former colonial sites, including the U.S., the work of making the academy a more egalitarian space as it pertains to knowledge has to become part of the practice of teaching, scholarship and writing. It means as well that various studies rendered peripheral or area studies, must instead become radiating centers from which the various disciplines are reinvigorated. Additionally the embedded hierarchy of knowledge must necessarily be dismantled in any decolonization of the academy” (page x).
M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty argue that a decolonial politics involves both analytic practices of “making sense of the world in relationship to hegemonic power” and constructive practices of building “democratic collectives which are premised on the ideas of autonomy and self-determination" (1996, xxx).
Finally, in Margaret A. McLaren’s introduction to Decolonizing Feminism, Transnational Feminism and Globalization, she writes: “Common threads running through… articulations of decoloniality/decolonizing are attention to both micro- and macro-political structures; a sense of historical consciousness and specificity; a commitment to liberatory practices and values; and an awareness of the effects of colonization not only as political, historical, and economic forces but also as effects on consciousness, theories, research practices, epistemological frameworks, and ways of knowing. Each thread contributes to the overall understanding of decolonization.”
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The Virginia Dares Virtual Conference: Towards Making and Teaching Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media:
This virtual event occurred on November 13, 20, 21, 2020. Here’s a link w/recordings of the conference sessions: https://liberalarts.vt.edu/research-centers/center-for-humanities/conferences/virginia-dares.html
Overall, this ‘gathering’ was instigated to interrogate the problematic colonial-era narratives of Virginia’s first European settlements. It dared to upend embedded systems of marginalization and colonization within our disciplines, and seeks to advance dialogue through an examination of de-colonial, anti-colonial, and re-indigenizing imaginary, creativity, making, and teaching efforts.
It fostered explorations and illuminations of the myriad resonances across myths and inequities from European colonization to today, unpacking myths about European origins of American civilization and contemporary anti-feminist, anti-BIPOC discourses.
Through bringing together educators, filmmakers, researchers, artists, students, community advocates, and Indigenous leaders, this conference provided a much-needed intersection for critical inquiry and research at an unprecedented time and will facilitate a space for sharing of media, production, and pedagogy.
Its Goals:
Develop a network of stakeholders committed to anti-colonial inquiry, equitable making, critical Indigenous imaginary, and the development of media and pedagogy
Uplift research, discourse, practices, and perspectives that champion media equity
Showcase outstanding media works through the inaugural Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Award for Decolonizing / Re-indigenizing Media.
Position Virginia Tech and its Center for Humanities as a megaphone for anti-colonial imagination in making, teaching, and media in Virginia, the American South, and across the globe
Future Dates? TBD!
More Info / Contact email: cdye@vt.edu
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About the Virginia Dares Web Series:
We’re currently seeking demo reels from editors who might wish to edit our footage.
Here’s a sampling of what we recorded: https://vimeo.com/319354270
Contact email: cdye@vt.edu
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The Virginia Dares Project is a collaboration between faculty and students in Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts, the American Indian Studies program, and the School of Visual Arts.
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INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE is…
…a 19-minute ‘preview documentary’ recording how contributions to diversity increased excellence at Virginia Tech—an institution that was initially set up exclusively for white men. Funded via a College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences’ Niles Research Grant.
A review of the film by Dr. Gloria Emeagwali, Central Connecticut State University:
A great documentary. An eye opener. Situates the great Virginia Tech in its true original, racist historical context. A new genre of Campus documentaries has been launched!
Congrats for a great contribution to our understanding of American history, campus history, and the struggle for Human Rights, recognition and Identity.
Another review of the film, posted on Biko’s website: https://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2021/12/review-of-my-video-in-class.html
(Democratically as opposed to Dictatorially) Directed and Produced by Biko Agozino
Co-Produced by Charles Dye
Videographers/Researchers/Editors/Narrators: Kaela Carle, Kale Hall, Micah Untiedt
Production Manager and Consultant: Kerri Moseley-Hobbs
- Official selection: 6th Festival Internacional de Cine de la No-Violencia Activa (FICNOVA) 2022
- Aired on Blue Ridge PBS, 2021
- Premiered at the 2021 VT Diversity Summit