Ptáyela

Ptáyela School of the Arts is committed to providing a collaborative environment for Indigenous (specifically Lakota) artists seeking to create material in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ region. Our goal is to create intellectual, artistic, and productive space for artists in our homeland. Currently, most Lakota artists have to travel to different regions to receive training or find supportive environments outside their cultural community. To combat the individualism that is often reinforced through an United States education system, we named our school “ptayela” which loosely translates to “together, collectively, in a group or bunch.” The Ptáyela School of the Arts seeks to solve the isolation of western education with a Lakota specific approach to schooling for artistic endeavors

In the current climate of social change, art has become a visceral way for people to express and process the paradigm shift occurring across diverse communities. The Ptáyela School of the Arts will provide an arts education that is built from a foundation in Lakota arts, language and philosophy. As funding platforms have shifted, art spaces have become more competitive and/or homogenized. We believe in specificity and that is why we, as Lakota scholars and artists, want to create Ptáyela in our homelands. The problem is individualism and the solution is a cultural specific curriculum that first would benefit Lakota people, then Northern Plains communities, followed by the continental North America and finally reach a global community.

Our goal is to start summer art workshops as we continue to secure funding to become an accredited arts college serving Indigenous students of the Northern Plains and Očeti Šakowin region. First and foremost we want to gather Lakota artists, philosophers, intellectuals, learners, and community members to utilize art platforms to express ideas about the future while appreciating the past. Depending on the current pandemic, we would design programs for online platforms or in person for summer 2021.

The Pine Ridge Reservation and Black Hills region is our target population. We are all members or descendants of the Oglala Lakota oyate. We have all worked with and for our communities throughout our adult careers. We continuously maintain engagement on different levels of artistic, intellectual, and philosophical rigor. The Ptáyela School of the Arts would complement the work of Oglala Lakota College, the research entities that exist like Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies as well as be a positive alternative to the art spaces that exist at the University of South Dakota in the east. It would be less travel time for artists to travel across state or to other training opportunities that exist away from our region.

Art responds to challenges presented by an oppressive system. Art does not limit responses to language and cultural loss, or  social and environmental injustices. Lakota communities are equipped with Indigenous knowledge systems that incorporate aesthetically pleasing solutions to current and future issues. Indigenous communities have always used artist measures to solve problems and create new and innovative answers. And art has become another way to combat 500+ years of genocide.

Specificity is our goal and a grounding point for our solution. There tends to be a homogenization of Indigenous people and we seek to tease out a Lakota specific way of addressing issues that arise for Lakota people. In order to help others outside of the Očeti Šakowin region, we have to first uplift and ground our community. We do not limit our ways of knowing and learning, but we want to first understand how our ancestors interacted with the land and place before turning outward. We have to address the first harm to place in order to ensure we interact with other communities from a relational perspective. Our solution to become better relatives and to be good relatives.

A project that reflects our ideas is a current traveling exhibition titled “Responsibilities and Obligations: Understanding Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ” Here is a link to information about the exhibition:

https://www.racingmagpie.com/mitakuye-oyasin-exhibit 

And here is a link to a unpublished article about the exhibition that centers are ideas and goals: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1syKYlJu2ssdLtEozBF0JxkK63eGPvILp/view?usp=sharing

Be a good relative. Create and provide workshops for artists, community, cultural bearers and the like to interact in a positive learning environment. Art creates an imaginative space of Lakota futurisms. The School of the Arts will continue to present and a relative to the community.

Currently serve three people consistently (but this does not count the people we continue to collaborate with). We will serve at least 20 participants in our summer 2021 workshop (pandemic pending). And in five years when the school is established, we will serve at least 100 or more.

Our goal by summer 2021 is to become a 501c3 and establish a summer workshop program (online or face-to-face depending on Covid-19). In the next five years we will have secured a physical location and developed an approved curriculum.

Mary Bordeaux and Clementine Bordeaux (myself) are doctoral students. Mary also works a full time job and takes care of our elderly parents. Layli is a full time poet, professor, and also takes care of an elderly parents. I work multiple jobs to pay for school and I, the youngest of the three, have no children so can take on the work of applying for more funding for our School. We would like to relieve some financial burden of getting the concept off the ground to serve our Lakota artist community.

We do a little at a time and applying for the SOLVE fellowship was on a whim because we had to put our ideas on hold not only due to the pandemic but our ability to work. Ptáyela School of the Arts is our long term goal and if it takes five years to start or 15, we will continue to work towards creating a collective for artists in our homelands.

We are in the process of applying for non-profit status, we just secured a mailing address, and we are seeking other funds to help with our process (which include individual fellowships that go towards our school). 

Three (volunteer): Clementine Bordeaux, Mary Bordeaux, and Layli Long Soldier 

Layli and Mary have been collaborating on Artistic work for the past 10 years. Both are working artists and professionals. Clementine has been a higher education administrator and has worked on the college/university level for the past 10 years. All three have spent their careers working for and with tribal communities.

Racing Magpie (Rapid City, South Dakota) is our main supporter and collaborator.

Prior to Covid-19 we were aiming to invest personal fellowships into achieving the non-profit status as well as establishing a summer workshop. However, because a large portion of artistic gigs have been cancelled we have to put on hold our funding. We are currently seeking grants to raise investment capital.

How can marginalized girls and young women access quality learning opportunities to succeed? As Lakota women, we are guided by what it means to be a good relative. Although our community was not historically patriarchal (we were matrilineal), we now face a male dominated society. Ptáyela School of the Arts would be female led and open to all including cis-gendered, non-binary, queer, and trans communities. We also seek an intergenerational community to guide us as learners and teachers. We want to increase female leadership, strengthen artistic opportunities for women, and promote gender equity. 

As we are in the concept phase we seek support in developing a sustainable model for the art school. We are developing curriculum and scholastic goals for the school.

It would be ideal to see how a school board functions for an academic institution like MIT.