UNTANGLING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Indigenous Art, Law, and Collective Ownership

UNTANGLING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
Indigenous Art, Law, and Collective Ownership

A conversation with Venancio Aragón and Darrah Blackwater
Monday, September 28, 6–7:30 PM
ICA Santa Fe

Join us for a conversation about Diné weaving, traditional knowledge, and the settler frameworks of copyright and the art economy. How do these systems disrupt, and become disrupted by, Diné understandings of holding, passing, and “owning” knowledge?

Diné textile artist and educator Venancio Aragón and Diné attorney and artist Darrah Blackwater will explore cultural appropriation from the perspectives of legal jurisprudence and collective Indigenous knowledge systems. Together, they will consider the tension between intellectual property law, which generally locates ownership with an individual creator, and cultural knowledge that is collectively held and carried across generations. Where does the law offer protection, where does it fall short, and how might ownership, appropriation, sovereignty, and responsibility be understood differently?

The backdrop to this conversation is ICA’s current exhibition, Woven Futures, Unbound Patterns: Contemporary Diné Weaving, curated by Aragón.

Venancio Aragón is a Diné textile artist and Navajo weaving and textile design instructor at Diné College. He was the 2020 Rollin and Mary Ella King Native Artist Fellow at the School for Advanced Research, where he researched and reconstructed lesser-known Diné weaving techniques.

Darrah Blackwater is an attorney and conceptual artist focusing on telecommunications law and legal issues affecting Indigenous communities. Born in Farmington, New Mexico, Darrah graduated from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and earned her law degree at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona in 2020. Darrah lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Woven Futures, Unbound Patterns: Contemporary Diné Weaving is on view through October 11.