Arts Across America: Decolonizing Art with Emily Johnson

March 20, 2021

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts joins Emily Johnson for the next episode of Arts Across America.

Emily Johnson is a dancer, choreographer, and writer of Yup'ik descent based in the Lenapehoking region, now known as New York City. An avid land and water protector, Johnson makes body-based work that “considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance” and advocates for justice, sovereignty, and well-being. Emily will join hosts singer, emcee, and activist Maimouna Youssef (aka Mumu Fresh) and poet, actor, model, and activist Sejahari Saulter-Villegas. Tune in as they explore decolonization in and through art.

Presented as part of Arts Across America—a performance and dialogue series presented every other Saturday with a focus on cultural leadership and public healing for our country, communities, and selves.

Office, Minneapolis, MN, US612.597.7400emily@catalystdance.com

Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. We work to pay respect to Lenape homeland, people and ancestors past, present, and future by organizing with communities from the Lenape diaspora to build pathways for Lenapeyok return. We have been taught to name Lenape Nations and say cama’i to our relatives from Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK; Delaware Nation of Oklahoma in Anadarko, OK; Stockbridge-Munsee and Mohican Community in Wisconsin; Moravian Delaware of the Thames in Ontario, Canada; Munsee-Delaware Nation at Munceytown in Ontario, Canada; Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario, Canada. 

We strive to be in good relations with our kin—human and more than human—and in effort to support growing kinstillatory relations and sovereign, liberated futures we are anti-colonial and abolitionist in all capacities. We are committed to on-the-ground water and land protection, consistent decolonization work, and Land Back. 

Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigenous and First Nations people who live in relation to and from Lenapehoking and upon whose lands we work and tour.

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