Santa Fe, NM – The Institute of American Indian Arts hosts a creative cultural exchange, “Threads of Kinship: Dialogues with Native Siberian Writers” during the second week of April.
Two of the events that week are free and open to the public: a reading on Tuesday, April 13 at 7:00 p.m. at IAIA’s Library and Technology Center auditorium and a roundtable discussion on Thursday, April 15 at 7:00 p.m. at IAIA’s Center for Lifelong Education Commons Room (the IAIA campus is located at 83 Avan Nu Po Road). Both events feature Native Siberian writers Yeremai Aipin (Khanty), Maria Vagatova (Khanty), Yuri Vaella (Forest Nenets), with scholar/translator Dr. Alexander Vaschenko of Moscow State University along with Native American writers Dr. N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk), Evelina Zuni Lucero (Isleta Pueblo/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos), d.g. nanouk okpik (Inupiat-Inuit) and Sherwin Bitsui (Diné). Dr. Andrew Wiget will join in on the roundtable discussion on April 15, as well. “Threads of Kinship” has been made possible by the Lannan Foundation.
The exchange promises to open new dialogues about the striking and enduring parallels between Indigenous peoples' literature, arts and life ways in North America and Russia. In the last decade there has been an unprecedented amount of writing being done by Indigenous authors in the United States, Canada and Russia; however, due to historical and political circumstances, seldom could these writers speak directly to their counterparts across the planet. Now that this exchange is possible, valuable discussions about the struggles of maintaining traditional ways of life, languages and lands amid the onslaught of globalization will be carried forth through poets and storytellers. “Threads of Kinship” will inspire students and members of American Indian communities through the unique dialogue about similarities that nourish—through oral tradition and ritual practice—youth who are seeking direction in their own life journeys. Related initiatives are a forthcoming book The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature and a documentary film Voices of Kinship: N. Scott Momaday's Journeys to Siberia.
The son of a hunter and fisherman, Yeremai Aipin was born in the village of Varyogan in West Siberia in 1948. He is of the Khanty people and his books include Waiting for the First Snow, I Listen to the Earth, In the Shadow of an Old Cedar, Morning Twilight: A Novel of the Khanty, and At the Dying Hearth. His work has been translated into Hungarian, German and English.
Maria Vagatova, who is from a Khanty reindeer-breeder family, grew up with her parents, twelve siblings and her grandparents under one tent (tchum) with another Komi family. Her first book, Fairy-Tales of Khanty and Mansi was published in 1977. Many of her works are published in the Russian and Khanty languages and include A Little Tundra Man and My Song, My Song. A book of poems, Mother’s Heart, was written in Russian and Khanty with Alexander Kerdan, a Russian poet.
Yuri Kilevich Vaella (Aivaseda) was born in the Village of Varyogan in West Siberia in 1948. He is of the Taiga Nenets people. He began to publish in 1988, writing poetry, short stories, and anecdotes in both Nenets and Russian. Vaella has written and published folktales, poems, and essays and has recorded folksongs. His poetry has appeared in the leading Russian literary magazines. His volume of collected poems, White Cries, was published in 1996.
Alexandr Vaschenko is chair of comparative studies in literature and culture at Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. He is a senior researcher at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature and founder and director of the International Center for Traditional Cultures and their Environments. The University of Minnesota Press will publish an expanded edition of The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature, a collection Dr. Vaschenko co-edited, in 2010.
N.. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) was born in 1934 and spent his childhood among the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo people. Momaday is the author of 13 books, including novels, poetry collections, literary criticism and works on Native American culture. His first novel, House Made of Dawn, won the Pulitzer Prize. Other works include The Ancient Child and The Way to Rainy Mountain. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and the Premio Letterario Internationale Mondello, Italy’s highest literary award. He is also the recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Arts.
James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk) is a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the author of six books of poetry, Tokinish, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, (dis)Orient, Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations, The Mutual Life, and A Bridge Dead in the Water. He is an alumnus of IAIA and holds an MFA from Brown University. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award.
Evelina Zuni Lucero (Isleta/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos) is chair of the creative writing department at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her first novel, Night Sky, Morning Star, received the First Book Award for Fiction from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. She is a past Civitella Ranieri Fellow, for which she received an International Writers Residency at the Civitella Ranieri International Artist Center, Umbertide, Italy.
dg nanouk okpik (Inupiat-Inuit), whose family resides in Barrow, Alaska, is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts and the MFA program at Stonecoast College. She is the author of In the time of Okvik, a chapbook published by Salt Press. Her poems have appeared in Red Ink, Washington Square and Ahani.
Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl'izilani (Many Goats Clan). An alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts, he is the recipient of an Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation, a Truman Capote Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency and a Whiting Writer’s Award. He is the author of Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press 2003) and Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2010).
Andrew Wiget is an associate professor of English and director of The New Mexico Heritage Center at New Mexico State University. He is also the editor of The Dictionary of Native American Literature (1994) and the author of Native American Literature (1985)..
For more information, please call 505.424.2365 or email