My Lingít name is Xéetl’ee and I am of the Raven Moiety, Kiks.ádi (Frog) Clan, and Kax̲átjaa Hít [Jumping Herring/Shattering House] in Sheet'ká [Sitka, Alaska]. Women of my clan are known as Kax̲átjaashaa [Herring Ladies] through our oral history of the Herring Rock Woman. I am a tribal citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. My ancestors are both Indigenous and settlers from Norway, France and the UK. 

 

I am an artist/scholar, filmmaker, dancer, educator, and a PhD candidate in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of California, Davis. My community-based research crosses into critical Indigenous Studies, Improvisation and Performance Studies, and Feminist Science and Technology Studies. My current creative projects and dissertation centers the rematriation of Herring Lady performances and protocols that enact deep relations to Herring relatives and interconnected ecosystems. As a Herring Lady, my work is embedded in my own relationships and responsibilities to my Lingít community and more-than-human relatives. 

 

I grew up on the Central Coast of California on Northern Chumash land and currently live and work in Sheet’ká. I have danced in different contexts such as performing in the Civic Ballet Company of San Luis Obispo, training with Kathleen Hermesdorf in La Alternativa, apprenticing with Joe Goode Performance Group in San Francisco, and I currently dance with the Sheet'ká Kwaan Dancers in Sitka and create my own work that is informed by my movement practice. I received my BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 2011 where I focused in figurative drawing and began creating short films. After living in the Bay Area where I began filming dance professionally for Rapt Productions, I moved to Berlin where I lived for several years under an artist visa. While abroad, my film works were screened internationally and I engaged in community-based projects such as Rhizophora: a collaboration with young Vietnamese living with disabilities caused by the chemical Agent Orange. In 2019, I returned to California to begin my graduate studies in order to focus on work with my Lingít community, and in 2021 I received an MA in Native American Studies from UC Davis. I am deeply engaged in the Herring Protectors movement in Sheet'ká, decolonizing education, and creating more equitable futures for our youth. 

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*This space is mostly for archiving my creative research projects over the years. 

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Gunalchéesh hat yigoodí! Thank you for coming!

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