Settlement was originally conceived as a month-long encampment in Central Park, Plymouth, UK. It was to be held during summer 2020, within the context of a multi-national quadricentennial celebration of the Mayflower’s historic voyage. Settlement intended to actively practice decolonization by way of an Indigenous-led radically immersive onsite experience. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Settlement has been reimagined as a vibrant digital occupation, now known as STTLMNT.
This is the story of our project’s evolution.
A settlement is an official agreement intended to resolve a dispute or conflict. It is also a previously “uninhabited” place where people establish a community. These two terms came together to inform a project that questions the appropriateness of both. Situated within Mayflower 400, a massive cultural festival remembering the historic voyage of the Mayflower, Settlement was envisioned to reassert the presence and perspectives of contemporary Indigenous people from various tribal nations throughout North America and the Pacific.
Image: Settlement Native American concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger during the second research and development trip planning onsite with The Conscious Sisters, 2019. Luger is mapping the site for the group’s encampment at Plymouth’s Central Park, UK. Photo by The Conscious Sisters
Settlement was intended to physically occupy Plymouth’s Central Park, UK in summer 2020…
Conceived by Native American artist Cannupa Hanska Luger in collaboration with Plymouth-based collective The Conscious Sisters, Settlement was designed as a groundbreaking way to link communities across the globe. Settlement was envisioned as an Indigenous-led month-long performative encampment in which over 27 acclaimed artists from across North America would travel to and activate Pounds House and its surrounding grounds in Plymouth’s Central Park.
Within the context of a colonial celebration, Settlement was slated to unfold as more than an arts festival. It would become a necessary space for Native American artists to investigate and interpret their lives as the survivors of settler colonialism and in turn to support settler ancestors in moving towards a more relational understanding and acknowledgement of the contemporary Native American experience.
With practices ranging from performance, social engagement, installation, film, poetry, dance and immersive theater, the range of contemporary Indigenous artists planning towards Settlement was unprecedented. Daily programming was to include a series of workshops, performances, installations and talks, creating a live human-to-human experience of Indigeneity. In addition to the Central Park encampment, each Settlement artist was slated to produce a related public engagement elsewhere in the city of Plymouth.
Pounds House, Central Park, Plymouth, UK; Settlement’s intended month-long occupation site. Photo credit The Conscious Sisters, 2019
Prior to the COVID outbreak, Cannupa Hanska Luger had invited artists from various North American tribal nations to join in Settlement. Over the course of a year, each invited artist was developing new work with Luger’s support and in concert with the other artists. All of their work was designed to explore colonialism and its effects on Indigenous people beyond first contact. For one-week intervals throughout the project’s month-long run, the artists were to overlap on-site with Luger and several others creating a large-scale installation of living public art.
Settlement was designed to reclaim public space in order to consider the continued long-term impacts of colonization on tribal nations. Through contemporary artworks and live engagements, Settlement would create opportunities to address the questions and traumas around colonization while also presenting a complex example of Indigenous resilience and intersection. The Settlement project went far beyond conversational decolonization to present vibrant and evolving contemporary culture expressions, thereby enacting Indigenization.
Settlement has been reimagined as STTLMNT, a vibrant digital occupation. This online space facilitates an honest, complex, and living representation of Indigenous cultures, highlighting an intersectional and Indigenous vision of the future. STTLMNT archives Indigenous art practice, relationship, stories, technology, theory and philosophy while disrupting colonial tropes and assumptions.
Image: each/other call for participation project by STTLMNT artists Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2020.
STTLMNT: a digital world wide occupation…
In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and with over two years of planning, we have pivoted away from onsite engagement. In the spirit of survivance, we have reimagined this monumental site-specific project as an innovative year-long digital occupation. Participating artists have gracefully adapted their projects as a succession of online performances, artist discussions, social engagements, and films. Presented here for one year, this new work invites global audiences to have meaningful interaction with the Indigenous people of North America and the Pacific.
Our STTLMNT Winter Program includes dozens of new projects, performances, artist discussions, social engagement opportunities, new interactive apps, as well as a mini-series of documentary films. Stay tuned through March 2021 for an evolving series of highly curated and deeply considered online events.
STTLMNT maintains the ethos of Indigenization as well as the strategy of occupation. By reclaiming (digital) space as Indigenous people, we not only find ways to disseminate our post-colonial art works but we stake a radical, visionary claim on the future. You are invited in to experience this digital occupation, and as you do please practice respect and understanding. This is our work, our world vision, our heart, our future dreaming, our technology, our stories, our complexity, our resilience, our pain, our beauty, our art and our community. Together we hope to learn deeper and question further, ultimately dismantling the amnesia wrought by Colonialism.
“With Settlement moving into an online digital occupation we are able to use innovative media approaches of idea sharing; our art practices can now reach a global audience. This digital occupation is becoming a space to map our stories, on our own terms, in a landscape unhindered by borders.”
-Cannupa Hanska Luger, Settlement/STTLMNT Native American concept artist
“As an accomplice, I am proud to support this project which is actively dismantling contemporary colonization and historical amnesia while aligning Indigenous centered dreams of future sovereignty, providing space for complexity of Indigeniety to exist. I am humbled to support in creating this digital platform, a space where we all may be in solidarity, to connect, find deeper relationship to each other and explore Indigenous artwork and thought on the terms of the artist, providing an opportunity for us all to become more respectful in the global perception of Indigenous people."
-Ginger Dunnill, Settlement/STTLMNT US Producer
"Telling the story of the decimation of North American indigenous culture is central to this commemoration - Mayflower 400, without it we will continue to support a damaging myth which is no longer an option. Settlement has provided a unique opportunity for The Conscious Sisters to start to decolonise our practice and use our privilege to develop work that is authentic and timely. We have only just begun this journey and it has not been easy but we will continue to be solid allies and throw light on the complex ways we have benefitted from colonisation. We are from Plymouth in the UK which has been the starting point of many colonising endeavours. Now is the time to peel back the facade of acceptability and see these moments in history for what they really are.
We wholeheartedly encourage others to work with indigenous artists to produce fresh work that takes risks or provide a platform for the exceptional contemporary Native American work that is flourishing across The States and Canada. Never has the indigenous voice been more relevant. Start by listening...."
-Fiona Evans, The Conscious Sisters, Settlement UK Producer
Support for Settlement initial on-site occupation strategy and STTLMNT online occupation as active through October 2021 was provided by the following partners:
Settlement on-site occupation was conceived in tandem with the Mayflower 400 programming in Plymouth, UK and was supported by Arts Council England through National Lottery Project Grants and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport through the Cultural Development Fund. Further support for the Indigenous conceived and led STTLMNT digital occupation project was provided on behalf of artist Cannupa Hanska Luger through the American organizations A Blade of Grass, NDN Collective and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
The Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants are the national development agency for creativity and culture in England. By 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high quality cultural experiences. The Plymouth Cultural Development Fund assists with the development of Plymouth’s cultural scene by helping to engage more Plymothians with arts and culture. These channels of funding have supported 30 artists Indigenous to North America to develop and present new work to share with a global audience.
The A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art supports courageous artists in creating exchanges, experiences, and structures to enact social change. STTLMNT lead/concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger received the 2020 A Blade Of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art in support of this project and its development over the course of 2 years.
NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms. Together, we decolonize and transform systems while providing tools and strategies for Indigenous self-determination and movement-building.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship (TAF) is committed to fostering an equitable environment where a diverse and inclusive community of artists and arts workers have the opportunity to thrive professionally. TAF has generously sponsored the participation of three STTLMNT artists who have been awarded their fellowship in the past, continuing their mission to support the work Indigenous artists.