TIFFANY LETHABO KING on The Black Shoals [with brontë velez], Part One /315
High contrast black and white photograph by Jeremy Bishop of two white-crested waves lapping the land.
This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part One of a two-part conversation between brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This simultaneously intimate and expansive dialogue allows us to rethink the stories and structures we’ve been told regarding Black and Indigenous relations. Guided by a unquantifiable love and trust in Black and Native freedom dreams, Tiffany prompts us to explore ritual, space, and connection as antidote.
“To those who dance, share drum skins, chase smoke rings, and brush tongues to know each other’s languages.”
Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life. Can I Get A Witness “traces two queer black-latinx femmes, brontë velez and Stephanie Hewett, dancing before and being danced by the ecology, memory, and stories of the Tongass National Forests and Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska–unceded Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit territories, scored by field recordings and music by Jiordi Rosales and José Rivera, and interviews from For The Wild Podcast episodes with Tiffany King, Wanda Kashudoha, and Kasyyahgei.
♫ The music for this episode is “Map and Territory” by Larkhall, “Melt” by MonteQarlo, and “Oracle” by Stoney Creation.
Tiffany Lethabo King (her/they) is a descendant of African people enslaved in the US South. She grew up in Lenapehoking and currently works/resides on Monacan Lands. King is an associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Virginia. She is also a co-director of the Black and Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute (BIFFI) funded by the Mellon Foundation. Tiffany is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (Duke University Press, 2019). As a scholar and teacher, she is committed to thinking about how centuries long relationships between Black and Indigenous peoples have provided openings to alternative pasts, presents, and futures. Black and Indigenous liberation struggles informed by feminist and queer politics, as well as artistic production, and quotidian acts of survival and experimentation inspires her forthcoming scholarly and community building work.
brontë velez’s work/rest is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). as a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, trickster, jibarx and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration, and death doulaship. they embody this commitment through serving as creative director for Lead to Life and ecological educator for Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and practicing pastoral care as a co-steward of a land refuge in Kashia Pomo territory in California.
Episode References
After Kent State by Lucille Clifton
Katherine McKittrick
Electric Marronage and Dark Laboratory
Jacqui Alexander
Bettina Judd
Holiday Simmons
Blackpenetecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility by Ashon T. Crawley
Sharon Holland
Amber Starks
Harriet Jacobs
Tricia Hersey
Jessica Marie Johnson
Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock
We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff
Cutcha Risling Baldy
Lindsay Nixon
The Red Nation
TIFFANY’s Recommendations
Tiya Miles and Sharon Patricia Holland, eds. Crossing waters, crossing worlds: The African diaspora in Indian country. Duke University Press, 2006.
Leanne Simpson Simpson. As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. U of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Frank B. Wilderson III. Red, white & black: Cinema and the structure of US antagonisms. Duke University Press, 2010.
“Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom” Leanne Simpson and Dionne Brand in conversation
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead
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For The Wild is a slow media organization dedicated to land-based protection, co-liberation, and intersectional storytelling. We are rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy, endless growth, and consumerism. As we dream towards a world of grounded justice and reciprocity, our work highlights impactful stories and deeply-felt meaning making as balms for these times.