This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
A new film turns its camera lens onto an art exhibition. "INSPIRED — Horse Nation of the Ochéthi Šakówin" is a documentary that examines and expands the recent Maȟpíya Lúta traveling exhibition on Horse Nation.
Keith BraveHeart is an artist and the filmmaker behind "INSPIRED." He joins "In the Moment" to talk about the stories and culture he explores in the documentary.
Watch "INSPIRED — Horse Nation of the Ochéthi Šakówin."
____________________________________________________________
The following transcript was auto-generated.
Lori Walsh:
I have enjoyed your work in the past. Of course, I've been not secretive about that.
And as I was watching this film, it is just such a gift to be able to sit and spend the time that you spend as a filmmaker and as an artist. Tell us a little bit about the process of talking to people about their stories and letting them tell them.
Keith BraveHeart:
Well, that's definitely the core of this effort, and really I think that's also the generous gift that I was given of the ability to just be in the presence of so many of these great, refer to them as relatives, but these individuals, these strangers, these people, many of them were artists, but also many of them don't see themselves as that, but they give a lot of creative energy to the world.
But just to be in the presence of these very beautiful, sincere, humble spirits was amazing. But also just to be captivated by a lot of the theme of the horse, or as we refer to the Horse Nation, and being an encompassing entity that's really involving many aspects to how a horse could exist to an individual. And so I was definitely really entertained, very kind of quieted, by how I can follow along with these stories, these beautiful narratives, but also how I can imagine these and articulate them in my own mind as a listener, as a viewer, as an artist.
And so I really always advocate for that, more of that. How could we as artists, as a community of creatives, especially here in our homelands, share those opportunities and encourage those opportunities to occur more often.
Lori Walsh:
You said something there about people not really identifying themselves as artists, and you've thought a lot about this, whether there is a word for art, whether you are artists.
Help us understand coming into a conversation with somebody who is doing something that the Western world will be like, that is art, that person is an artist. And why that person might be like, no, I'm not really an artist. I'm just me doing the things that I do as a human being. Help understand that a little more, if you would, please.
Keith BraveHeart:
Well, I definitely think that we do have to identify that the concept of art, as most people are familiar with it and recognize it, comes from this classical world. It's definitely Eurocentric.
And so, whenever we encounter these Indigenous viewpoints, lenses and lifestyles, it definitely has a different way of looking at that concept. It is usually something that, I think for most Indigenous peoples, reverts back to an object. There's something of a commodity, there's a materialistic kind of sense to what art represents.
Whereas for some, it's really more sincerely about creation itself and creation being sacred. So some people maybe will be a little bit more, kind of cautious, to be able to speak about their sacred creations as something that could be thought of as art going back to that materialistic.
But I think people who are giving transcended kind of gifts or qualities of who they are as far as makers, creators, however they express themselves creatively will carry that as it's very meaningful. There's a lot of passion behind their viewpoint that, this is very in their heart, and it's hard to separate that when we get into some of these other topics such as the business of art or the presentation of art.
Lori Walsh:
The curation of art, how is it curated and displayed, which I want to get to in just a minute. But before we do that, there's a moment when Dwayne Wilcox, I believe, is talking about seeing in the film "INSPIRED," where he is talking about looking at a rope that's wrapped with quill and he's sort of looking for the knot and he can't find a knot. And he has this moment of realization like this is not made for an art market. He is having a hard time even getting his mind around it.
So when you look at things that were made 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, artifacts that are from the 1800s, and you're looking at it closely as the artist that you are today, what do you see in some of those objects that are still around?
Keith BraveHeart:
Well, there's definitely aesthetic quality. There's definitely a lot of beauty, which that's where I can make a case that, yes, it is art. The definition of art exists for aesthetic quality and beauty, to evoke emotion in a viewer. And so that's something that all of us will encounter, is the visual if we have that ability to see.
Or the second that I personally always am overwhelmed with is this energy. I definitely think it is a reality of how we can feel what was put into the work, whatever it may be. You can take that away as this feeling like your spirit has been affected.
And I know we can speak the same definitely about music, as an example. When we listen to a song that just touches our hearts or makes us, feel amplified in our lifestyle, we remember that song and no matter what, we'll listen to it forever.
And so the same can be said for other art forms as well too. And I know as a visual artist, I can always point out that some of the most amazing works of art that have really reached out and changed my life, such as Oscar Howe's work, Bobby Pan's work, but even some of these works that were made by our ancestors and those artists that go unnamed a lot of the time, but really that had that master quality and that master class to what they were creating. And so I think Dwayne really does kind of share that with the viewers of this film, that they're able to maybe see and maybe kind of reminisce as their own experience of how that may happen for them at some point.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Keith BraveHeart:
And this can really extend beyond just how we're using this kind of significance of Očhéthi Šakówiŋ art to any artist out there in this world, especially as we think about folk art craft or kind of what we call the common people, the grassroots people, and what they were making. And they still had that same powerful presence just as anything that's protected and well-guarded in any museum out there in the bigger world.
Lori Walsh:
When you mentioned Oscar Howe and I think about horses in motion, the way he was able to paint things in motion and capture it in new ways, when you look at some of the art that people are doing with the horse, how is that motion of the horse showing up in surprising ways?
Keith BraveHeart:
Is very definitely surprising that I have certain perceptions of the horse and I know that there's certain kind of assumptions of how we might see it, because very romantic, very stoic. There is an elegance to a horse when we think about it. And then when we start to visually interpret it, we see this movement.
But sometimes it's also just very much practical. I love seeing the ones, the images of the horse where they're just standing still, but they're also just kind of enjoying maybe the air, or also just kind of sweating. You can see that they really work hard or they're just relatable to it. Just like people, we all have these different moments.
We're not always picture perfect, and not like how we might appear in our social media images and ways that we want the public to see our best side, and that there's just so many different dimensions to the horse.
But the ones that really I think took my breath away the most were those that were very, very deeply rooted in an experience. And sometimes either are sometimes, often hard, because they're involving tragedy and trauma. But I felt like that honesty really does bring this really strong humility to this figure of the horse, but also to this history and this impact that the horse has also played.
Lori Walsh:
And that gets to this idea of the relationship of a horse being not just a working animal or a recreational animal, but being a relative.
And I grew up around horses, not in a way when most people say that they actually have some skill, I have zero horse skills. But I had relationships with the horses that my mother owned and I really saw them as individual. I was afraid of them sometimes. Sometimes they hurt me and I did not have a good relationship with them.
And this documentary talks about people being in and out of relationships with horses, with the horse, and what that might mean culturally. Tell me a little bit about what you learned by listening to people's stories about their relationship with these relatives.
Keith BraveHeart:
It's ultimately like a doorway, is how I understand it. And that it connects or it can connect, it has connected or it can connect, but it's also just about inspiration. How we can view a horse in our own moment of observation and then find a way that we can want to interpret that creatively as artists, visually as artists.
But it could be any way for an artist, they can create a song, a poem, or maybe they take away a certain kind of idea of like, well, I want to go back to my landscape and work within that, with maybe the garden that I'm planting or the field that I hope to maybe cultivate. I think that there's a lot of different ways that individuals will be inspired by just that moment that occurs for them and the horse.
And I think that for me it's always been about just seeing that there is a significance that's unseen, and that's why we call them the Horse Nation.
We can definitely recognize the literal animal, the individual horse, but we see this as a bigger picture. And, if we have this ability to be more humbled ourselves and not think that we're greater than an animal, what does that allow us to then receive? Where can the inspiration go from there? How can we then maybe take that inspiration into some much-needed action?
Maybe it's personal, or maybe it's social, for a larger good cause possibly. And I think that's really how this project came together and how it's still existing. Because this is something that's been put in, it began almost 10 years ago now where everything started to come together and eventually it resulted in an exhibition that we were able to curate and travel. And in this documentary, which was just covering that whole journey, just so for those who weren't there for every moment of it could sit back and reflect, and maybe then they had the patience enough to receive some of those gifts and some of those offerings that were being provided by that Horse Nation.
And this goes beyond just only the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples. Any person that might have attraction or some sort of really good, maybe, curiosity that they want to approach the Horse Nation and be humble themselves, then they will see that they can be become a horse relative as well too.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Keith BraveHeart:
And so I make this mention many times, when we were working on this project to those who are non-Native, that if you have some sort of compassion in a way that you would maybe consider to feed the horse before you feed yourself, or to give them water before you would give water to yourself, that is carrying the same type of values that a lot of these Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples are really holding as the center of their being, and what really becomes the foundation to our culture.
Lori Walsh:
Well, we're going to put a link up to the website where you can find inspired where Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. Keith, in our remaining, like 30 seconds, were there ways that you were changed through listening?
Keith BraveHeart:
Yes, always. That's just a great opportunity for myself to be enriched, to gain inspiration, but also to have that excitement and that urgency to want to go and create after listening.
