My Lingít name is Xéetl’ee and I am of the Kiks.ádi Clan's (Raven/Frog), Kax̲átjaa Hít (Jumping Herring/Shattering House) in Sheet'ká (Sitka, Alaska). I am a tribal citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

 

I am an artist/scholar, filmmaker, 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 homelands and currently live and work in Sheet’ká. I danced professionally before receiving my BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 2011. After living in the Bay Area where I began filming dance, I moved to Berlin where I lived for several years working in film, movement, and drawing. 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 for 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 Sitka, Indigenizing the education system, 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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