The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

Meaning does not lie solely in the words
themselves, but the words do frame our reality.
Sapir and Wharf formalized that theory. 6 So,
it is so important to understand that language
does frame and shape your reality. There
truly is power within it—ways that we can think
more deeply about it, invite alternative forms
of expression, learn from ourselves other ways
of communicating, build our abilities and flexibilities.
I just heard on the news that something
healthy for preventing memory loss is learning
a new language. Now isn’t that fascinating?
For me, personally, this motivates me to further
immerse myself in Spanish for very practical reasons,
but if it can help me not forget and begin
to lose memory, then that’s an added benefit.
Suzanne Benally: I have a different reaction
here. I first want to deeply appreciate the
presenters because, in listening to their stories,
I recognized what leadership is about in those
three individuals. One of the things I heard is
that leadership remains grounded in survival
issues, it is grounded in a form of resistance,
it is grounded in the recovery, that Paul was
speaking of, and I think it says something to me
about our work not being done. There remains
a continuity here in which the new leaders are
emerging and, at the same time, seeking new
strategies and new kinds of tools to interrupt
the way things are. I really appreciate that.
I want to speak to all of these Indigenous
voices. In those voices, the notion of language
and culture is deeply tied to who we are as a
people and how we define our existence. As
a result, when we begin to lose that language,
we begin to lose a kind of identity that ensouls
you to the land. Indigenous peoples understand
their relationship to the land with which they
identity and express artistic forms in songs,
paintings, and other artistic processes, which
are sacred. That to me is the process of becoming
who we are. So I don’t want to lose the
importance of looking back to our cultures. I
am saying we know who we are to become
as a result of those cultures. In many ways, we
are tied to them, and they influence the ways
we engage with this contemporary world.
Finally, I want to say that I see the voices we
heard this morning as recovering that subtext
and, at the same time, becoming the new story
tellers. To me, that is the spirit of the sacred
process.
Samuel Aguiar Iñiguez: Leadership is grounded
in survival, and each of the presenters established
language as an item needed for survival.
Annette talked about the last person to speak
a language, and if it is not documented, if it
is not taught, we have almost a conceptual
genocide here, where this language will be a
victim of genocide. This idea, this artistic movement
like Paul and the kids who don’t respect
his MFA, they don’t care; can he “bust?” This
new form of ciphering, boom, boom, it’s the
new expression that needs an identity, that
needs a tool, a language tool. It just can’t be
pushed underneath the table because you are
genociding that idea. I think in a way leadership
questions and challenges the concept of
genocide, even if it is just conceptual genocide.
Mayumi Tsutakawa: I wanted to follow up on
your strand, which addresses the concept of
audience. My question to all of you presenters
is how do you know which audience will
hear your voice? Who gets the microphone?
I think that corporate mass media has a
definition of who our leaders are. Who is a
greater leader? Al Sharpton or Rosa Parks?
Who recognizes and defines who our leaders
are? So that is my question. Of course,
my answer is going to be that we need to
control the media. I am a great proponent of
community-controlled media, but the newspaper
I worked on in Seattle, The International
Examiner, has a circulation of maybe 3,000.
How will we get to control the microphone?
Paul Flores: That is an interesting question: How
do we recognize our leaders? Who recognizes
that you are my leader? That is something
that I ask myself all of the time. That is why I
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