5th annual Native American Cultural Celebration at Bentonville to salute Indigenous ingenuity: ‘Indigenuity’

The word "indigenuity" is a portmanteau made by combining "indigenous" with "ingenuity."

This relatively new term plays a big role in the fifth annual Native American Cultural Celebration, which runs Thursday-Saturday and is presented by the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville.

"Indigenuity: Building a Bridge to the Future" is the theme of this year's celebration, which brings together American Indian scholars, NASA astronauts, craftsmen, authors, artists, pop culture geeks and musicians for three days of workshops, presentations and concerts.

While the museum is open to visitors, most of the cultural celebration events will be online with a few taking place both in-person and virtually.

Daniel Wildcat, a professor at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., coined the term indigenuity and is this year's host. He will speak during the Opening Address at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, along with cultural celebration founder Bobby Bridger, museum founder and chairman David Bogle and museum director Charlotte Buchanan-Yale.

"This idea has been floating around for about 15 years," Wildcat, 67, says of indigenuity. "I think there is a recognition among many Indigenous people and particularly Indigenous scholars that tremendous wisdom resides in our intellectual and cultural traditions."

Indigenuity is an effort to educate people on the idea that Indigenous knowledge is something more than "things that might have been relevant 100, 200, 500, 1,000 years ago," Wildcat says. "The point that indigenuity makes is that there is tremendously deep knowledge that we believe could help modern humankind solve a lot of the problems we face today."

Among the 23 programs on the schedule are "Pathways to STEM Careers for Native American Women and Girls," "Indigenous Futurism: Choosing Which History We Repeat," "Birchbark Canoe Craft with Ms. Josee at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian," "Looking Backwards to Move Forwards: Space Exploration," a conversation with astronauts John Herrington and Jose Hernandez, and more.

Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, will speak Thursday with Robin Kimmerer, author of "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants."

"Robin and I are going to have a conversation about the triangulation of indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants ... what plants can teach us," Wildcat explains. "That gets into our Indigenous intellectual traditions. We don't view plants and animals as objects or resources ... that opens up a different perspective about what you can learn by paying attention to landscapes, seascapes, plants and animals."

On Saturday, Wildcat will moderate a conversation with NASA astronauts Jose Hernandez, who is a former migrant farm worker, and John B. Herrington, the first member of a federally recognized tribe — Chickasaw — to travel in space.

"That is going to be awesome," Wildcat says.

INDIGINERDS

The resilience of Indigenous people is viewed through a pop cultural lens — with a nod toward the living dead — in the Friday presentation "Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Rez Style: A Pop Cultural Lesson in Indigenous Survival and Resilience."

Johnnie Jae, an Otoe-Missouri and Choctaw journalist and founder of social media platform A Tribe Called Geek and #Indigenerds4Hope, is the presenter.

"I really love doing this workshop," says the 42-year-old Jae, from Los Angeles. "It's a sneaky way to discuss Indigenous survival while also addressing mental health and suicide without mentioning suicide and mental health."

The reason for this approach, she says, is that in many native communities there's a belief that things can be spoken into existence.

"Words have power, and by speaking them you give them life or a spirit," she says. "So there are communities that ask you not to use words like suicide, depression, addiction or alcoholism."

She says #Indigenerds4Hope is a suicide prevention initiative aimed at native youth. In the indiginerd community, "a lot of us have struggled with mental health issues, whether it's depression or anxiety. On top of that we have to deal with kind of feeling like we don't belong. Within native culture, it's OK to be a scholar or an athlete, but when you're involved with different subcultures like comic books, Goth, heavy metal we end up having marginalized communities in marginalized communities and people tend to get left out."

POP CULTURE AND ZOMBIES

Also on Friday, Jae, who grew up in Oklahoma, will join fellow indiginerd Lee Francis IV, artist Johnnie Diacon and writer Weyodi Oldbear for "Ditching Stereotypes and Building Prototypes," to discuss and take questions about American Indian people in pop culture.

Francis, 44, of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe, is head indiginerd and CEO of Native Realities, which is said to be the only native and Indigenous pop culture company in the U.S. He is the author of the comic book "Sixkiller" and the 2019 graphic novel "Ghost River." He is also a partner with Jae in A Tribe Called Geek.

"We'll be talking about indiginerds and indiginerditry, what that means and how that has been shaping a lot of the creative work that has been coming out of native communities," he says of the "Ditching Stereotypes" panel. "Native identity has been tied up into pop culture since the inception of America. We will be talking about how are we inspiring and creating new artistic media for ourselves and the next generation."

Younger native pop culture consumers are looking for more representation in movies, books, comics and other popular media, he says.

"They now have the means to produce that, which you didn't necessarily have 30 or 40 years ago," he says, from North Carolina. "For us, it's always been about how do we unleash the Indigenous imagination. That was our mantra in starting this work ... this idea of creating a space where you can unleash your imagination and find joy in a superhero that looks like you, or in an astronaut like John Herrington or the Navajo engineer Aaron Yazzie who worked on the Mars rover."

The museum is open to visitors, and a few of the celebration's events will have limited in-person audiences along with being presented online. These include "Indigenous Imagery: Large and In Charge" with Johnnie Diacon; "Hear Our Voices" with Gayle Ross and Gaby Nagel; and a musical performance by Lauren Nicole Clare.

"I see this festival that the Museum of Native American History is putting on and honoring the theme of indigenuity as so hopeful," Wildcat says. "Indigenous peoples, in spite of everything, have maintained worldviews, values, beliefs, customs and habits that contain some very rich wisdom that we need today."