A monthly radio show hosting on the Columbus-based community internet radio Verge.Fm that explores the transformative work of contemporary global Indigenous artists from the explicitly problematic perspective of the settler colonizer. By critically examining our complicity in ongoing structures of colonial violence, the show offers tools for settler colonizers to engage with Indigenous artmaking beyond positions of exploitation, appropriation and other harmful moves to innocence.

More info here:

Episode 1 – January 2021

This episode focuses on what a settler colonizer is (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) via recounting experience of Postcommodity portfolio in Art in America & Virgil’s Aeneid. Having undergone transformative experiences thanks to encounters with the work of Indigenous artists at documenta 14 and in other exhibitions as part of an unfinished exhibition (e.g. Toronto Biennial, Àbadakone, NIRIN), I ask how can I get the balance between communicating and sharing these experiences (in general and through this radio show) while at the same time acknowledging that the work is not for me and my fellow setter colonizers to mediate and appropriate for our own ends? In this show I begin my conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation.

Image: reading Postcommodity portfolio in Art in America, October 2017, on the Oval of Ohio State University campus with text in the Pueblo font by Vier5

(Originally aired January 22nd, 2021 12pm EST).

Episode 2 – February 2021

The episode will focus on collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and audiences across a range of roles, from ally to accomplice, challenging performative settler ‘moves to innocence’. From the Columbus Museum of Art exhibition Object/Set by Gauri Gill to the radical media projects of New Red Order (NRO) and their ‘informants’, the episode continues the radio show’s focus on exploring the transformative work of contemporary global Indigenous artists from the explicitly problematic perspective of the settler colonizer. By critically examining our complicity in ongoing structures of colonial violence, the show offers tools for settler colonizers to engage with Indigenous artmaking beyond positions of exploitation, appropriation and other harmful moves to innocence. In this episode, I am again be joined by Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation and the episode ends with music by STTLMNT artist Black Belt Eagle Scout (used with permission – thank you KP!).

Image: photo from outside looking in at the New Red Order (NRO) “Never Settle” installation at the Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019 with text in Pueblo typeface by VIER5.

(Originally aired February 19th, 2021 12pm EST).

Episode 3 – March 2021

The episode focuses on Indigenous languages and our position as settlers in relation to contemporary Indigenous artists’ use of and engagement with Indigenous language learning, publication and other forms of distribution. At the heart of this episode is a wide-ranging conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, about the place of language in their recent work EACH/OTHER (with Marie Watt) and how Indigenous language learning builds community while also transforming the English language from within. The episode also engages with Potu faitautusi: Faiāʻoga o gagana e, ia uluulumamau!, which translates from the Sāmoan language as ‘Be Courageous, Language Teachers! Reading Room’, an ongoing project at Columbus Printed Arts Center. We hear from guest librarian Dr Léuli Eshrāghi about how they and other participating artists (including Sarah Biscarra Dilley and Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste) gather books on Indigenous art and philosophy and create prints with an Indigenous language phrase, proverb or concept to generate a constellatory syllabus grounded in sensual, spoken and marked languages. Léuli offers a description of their new limited edition print created for the project which includes a precolonial Sāmoan prayer and is now available to buy on the Columbus Printed Arts Center website. Throughout the episode, you will hear samples from Elisa Harkins‘ album Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ mixing disco beats with singing in the Cherokee and Muscogee Creek languages. The album is available from Western Front Recordings and on Harkins’ Bandcamp as a digital download or vinyl LP.

Image: photo of Potu faitautusi at Columbus Printed Arts Center with text in Pueblo typeface by VIER5

(Originally aired March 22nd, 2021 12pm EST).

Episode 4 – April 2021

This episode discusses approaches to curriculum for global Indigenous arts from within and beyond the settler institutions of the university and the museum. In addition to an ongoing conversation on this topic with Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation,, the episode centers on a narrative by Jaime Morse, educator for Indigenous Programs and Outreach at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Focusing on her experience as an educator at the two large-scale exhibitions of global Indigenous art, Sakahàn (2013) and Àbadakone (2019), Morse describes the work of Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango (Sámi Architectural Library, 2019) at the latter as a space of gathering and knowledge exchange, not only for other artists in the exhibition, but also for Indigenous community members. At the beginning and end of the episode are two spoken word pieces by Inuit-Scottish writer, artist and curator Taqralik Partridge: ‘Colonisation is a Pyramid Scheme’ and ‘Untitled’. The former was included in a TV show created by Joar Nango and Ken Are Bongo called Post-Capitalist Architecture TVPost-Capitalist Architecture TV for Bergen Kunsthall, while the latter was included in NIRIN: 22^nd Sydney Biennale, curated by Brook Andrew. ‘Untitled’ was originally written following a performance by Indigenous Brazilian artist Denilson Baniwa in Toronto and Partridge agreed for it to be included in today’s episode with a request for donations to support the South American Indigenous Network Emergency Fund – here is the link to donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/south-american-indigenous-network-emergency-fund.

Image: detail of AKA by Mata Aho Collective (used with permission of the artists), installed at Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada, 2019 with text in Pueblo typeface by Vier5

(Originally aired Friday April 16th, 2pm EST).

Episode 5 – May 2021

This episode focuses on STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, by asking how settlers can change our relationship to the internet as part of the reclamation of digital space by and for Indigenous artists and audiences. The whole episode comprises a conversation between Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT and filmmaker and Red Brigade Films director Razelle Benally.

Through an intimate exchange, the two artists share their experiences at the very heart of the STTLMNT project; how the conceptual core of the project shifted to digital space and how this concept was expanded and enriched through the intense and exhausting labor of Benally’s pandemic-era travel across the country to create the sequence of films devoted to the participating artists and their practices. Expanding on her statement about the project posted on the STTLMNT website, Benally discusses her films as ‘vessels of access’ to the participating artists as a generative alternative to settler colonial methods of occupation, extraction and erasure. Her process in careful dialogue with each artist challenges the very language of documentary film that speaks of ‘shooting’, ‘capturing’, and ‘cutting’ within the filming and editing process. The conversation offers a compelling insight into the making of the STTLMNT project that shows how its uniqueness as an Indigenous online art project cannot be simplistically accessed or consumed by curious settler audiences, but must be engaged as part of an ongoing process of unlearning entrenched ideas about what it means to occupy space across, even across digital networks.

On May 29th, Benally will present an online premiere of a very special Directors Cut using footage she has gathered over the course of her work on the STTLMNT x Red Brigade Films short documentary series, incorporating behind the scenes and previously unseen footage. She will again be joined with Cannupa Hanska Luger in a post-screening conversation and Q&A.

For more details about the event see https://www.eventbrite.com/e/151983443571

Image: taken on-site in Tulsa, Oklahoma at Wild Mountain Studios while gathering footage of participating artist Elisa Harkins as part of the final region of the Red Brigade Films short documentary series for STTLMNT. The image features Director Razelle Benally, Cinematographer Adam Conte, Executive Producer Ginger Dunnill and was taken by Jade Begay 2021, with text in Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired Friday May 14th, 2pm EST)

Episode 6 – June 2021

After five episodes engaging with STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, grounded in an ongoing conversation with STTLMNT concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, this is the first in a sequence of three transitional episodes, each engaging with the implications of the STTLMNT project for expanded dialogues about art, indigeneity, and resistance to erasure by historical and contemporary colonial and imperial violence, both in the US, the UK and beyond. Through a wide-ranging dialogue with artists Mona Gazala and Christian Casas at their (recently closed) exhibition Willfully Neglected at the Ohio State University Urban Arts Space, this episode engages with core issues raised in earlier shows (from the use of text in visual artwork and the medium of radio to ideas of land acknowledgment as appeasement and settler shame when confronted with living legacies of colonial violence) in terms of their respective perspectives as Palestinian-American and Cuban-American artists. Comprising a tour of their exhibition, the episode focuses on Gazala and Casas’ work created to engage experiences of forced removal and migration and racist exclusion in terms of institutional and familial archives and histories. Throughout the episode we address the very context of the exhibition in the removal and profiting from Indigenous peoples and cultures of the land grab that created Ohio State University and how this context continues in forms of exclusion for non-white students on campus. The episode also includes music specially chosen by Gazala and Casas, by Canaan Ghoul, Daboor, Gente de Zona, Yotuel, Descemer Bueno, and Christian Casas. An extended version of the episode – called None and Three Chairs – is available to listen to on Minus Plato’s Soundcloud– is available to listen to on Minus Plato’s Soundcloud. The title of this extended version refers to the three chairs we sat on during our recording of this episode placed within the empty space of Gazala’s work Intentionally Blank. To learn more about this work, visit https://www.gazalaprojects.com/intentionally-blank.

Image: installation view of Mona Gazala’s Intentionally Blank at Willfully Neglected with three chairs and text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired Friday June 18th) 2pm EST)

Episode 7 – July 2021

This episode engages with settler colonialism from a specifically Ohio context. It was recorded as part of World of Colonial Hills: Past, Present, Future, a collaboration with Ohio-based artist Rebecca Copper, recorded on a rainy night in Colonial Hills, a neighborhood in Worthington, Ohio. Copper’s work as part of her MFA in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University seeks to engage the settler community of Colonial Hills in a dialogue about what ‘colonial’ means for them. Due to the rain, the conversation was more intimate than expected, with only former Colonial Hills resident Copper, her spouse Al Marietta and son Adrian Rosser – a former teacher and student of Colonial Hills Elementary respectively – taking part. In spite of this small group, they still shared space huddled under a canopy in the rain, and their conversation ranged widely, moving from the etymology of the word ‘colonial’ and the Colonial Hills of British Imperial in India, to pivotal moments in Ohio’s settler colonial history, as well as timely and pertinent reflections on Copper’s earlier project Auditing Ohioas well the impact of Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, and specifically her discussion of imperial temporality, on her social practice artwork.

Inspired both by the rain as soundscape and the conversation in and about colonial space and time, including complex questions of Indigenous survivance and the constant need for careful listening and attention by white and settler allies, the episode also includes works by artist Maria Chavez, one of which is The Rain of Applause, made in response to the murder of George Floyd and which comprises moments of applause at Black Lives Matters protests.

This episode is the second of three transitional episodes that engage with the ongoing resonances of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, grounded in an ongoing conversation with STTLMNT concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, focused on expanded dialogues about art, indigeneity, and resistance to erasure by historical and contemporary colonial and imperial violence, both in the US, the UK and beyond.

Image: the canopy and chairs in the rainy setting of World of Colonial Hills: Past, Present, Future a collaboration between Rebecca Copper and Minus Plato with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday July 16th) 2pm EST)

Episode 8 – August 2021

This third and final transitional episode engages directly with the ongoing resonances of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, grounded in the conversation with STTLMNT concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger from episodes 1-5, focusing on expanded dialogues about art, indigeneity, and resistance to erasure by historical and contemporary colonial and imperial violence, both in the US, the UK and beyond.

Part of this episode comprises a soundscape recorded on site in Plymouth, UK. As originally planned, STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, was going to be a month-long residency located at Pounds House, at the north end of the city’s Central Park, as part of the citywide Mayflower400 commemorations, before the COVID-19 pandemic caused the project to transition to an online format. As part of a family holiday back to the UK – my mother lives just north of Plymouth – I took a daytrip to what would have been the site of the residency in which 30 plus Indigenous artists from Turtle Island would have participated, to think about what could have been if this space had been occupied as planned. At the same time, rather than simply imagine what could have happened there, I followed the walking tour app Blood Memory Experience created for STTLMNT by Stina Hamlin and Jade Begay, which allowed visitors to Central Park in Plymouth to hear the stories and reflections on the concept of blood memory, its traumas and knowledges, for both UK and Indigenous participants, including other STTLMNT artists. With their permission, the episode includes recordings of my experience of Hamlin and Begay’s introduction to the project, as well as narration of Hanska Luger.

Another part of the episode, recorded later in the Summer during a family road trip around the US coast of Lake Superior, from a resort in Grand Marais, Minnesota, returned to a specific unrealized artist project for STTLMNT: Radio Matoaka by Autumn Chacon and her sister Nani Chacon, as described in the film about the former’s work in the STTLMNT project, created by Razelle Benally and Red Brigade Films. In this part of the episode, I read from an email that Autumn sent to me explaining the project, specifically as it would have channeled the spirit of Matoaka (more commonly known as Pocahontas), who was buried in an unmarked grave in Gravesend, UK, along with the missing, murdered, and lost children as victims of Canadian and US residential and boarding schools. By responding to Autumn’s demand for me and my settler audience to register and acknowledge the trauma of the fresh and long-term violence of colonial, assimilationist policies, I also reflect on other forms of erasure in settler historical memorialization and Indigenous family histories within the Ojibwe/Chippewa/Anishinaabe people around the Lake Superior, guided by Staci Lola Drouillard’s book Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

My thanks to all the artists who worked with me to produce this episode and also to Ginger Dunnill, producer of the US side of the STTLMNT project and creator of Broken Boxes Podcast, a platform that centers Indigenous artists, activist focused artists, Queer artists, women identifying artists, artists of color and mixed/lost/stolen heritage artists and where the first 5 episodes of dear fellow settler colonizer, are archived. (All other episodes can be found after they air on https://soundcloud.com/verge-fm)

Image: a portal to a secret garden near Pounds House, Plymouth, UK, with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday August 20th, 2pm EST)

Episode 9 – September 2021

Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am Minus Plato, the pseudonym of Richard Fletcher, a white male settler colonizer of English and Scottish descent (he/him), who holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at the land-grab/grant institution of (The) Ohio State University. This monthly radio show engages the transforming work of contemporary global Indigenous artists from the explicitly problematic perspective of the settler colonizer. By critically examining our individual and institutional complicity in ongoing structures of colonial violence, the show offers tools for settler colonizers and settler colonial institutions (e.g., the university and the museum) to engage with Indigenous artmaking beyond positions of exploitation, appropriation and other harmful moves to innocence.

Following five episodes grounded by an ongoing conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger, concept artist of STTLMNT: Indigenous Digital Occupation, and three transitional episodes, focused on expanded dialogues about art, indigeneity, and resistance, this episode and those to come will address three interrelated contexts and frameworks: (i) the class that I am currently teaching this Fall semester called Global Indigenous Arts: Education for Settlers, (ii) the Potu faitautusi reading roomat Columbus Printed Arts Center, with guest librarian Léuli Eshrāghi), and (iii) preparations for the ten year anniversary of the Minus Plato blog, platform and project in May next year.

My conversation partner for this new series of episodes is local Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous artist and medicine practitioner Indigo Gonzales (she/they). Our ongoing dialogue, that begins with this introductory episode, engages with their perspective as both a former Ohio State undergraduate and prospective graduate student interested in the study of Global Indigenous Arts, as a participating artist in the Potu faitautusi project, and also as a collaborator on an upcoming Minus Plato exhibition, scheduled for the Ohio State’s Hopkins Hall Gallery in May 2022. As with previous episodes of the radio show, our wide-ranging conversation will be joined by other participants and voices as well as music and sound from global Indigenous artists. For this episode, we begin within the work People You Must Look at Me (2020, Unheard Records) by Oglála Lakȟóta artist and composer Kite aka Suzanne Kite.

Image: Trees, metal table, speaker, and hand, with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday September 17th, 2pm EST)

Episode 10 – October 2021

This episode continues the conversation with local Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous artist and medicine practitioner Indigo Gonzales (she/they) ). Sharing space at Columbus Printed Arts Center, we discuss ideas of activation and protocol as part of Indigo’s role as participating artist in the Potu faitautusi reading room project, a kind of constellatory (multiple sites/cites) syllabus, led by a group of international Indigenous artist/writer whose practice delves deeply into sensual, spoken and marked languages (tattoo, built environment, painting, literature, etc). Joining Indigo are, guest librarian, Dr Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoan), Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste (Mapuche), Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini) and Ke´y Rusú Katupyry & Verá Poty Resakã (Guarani-Nhandewá). Come and visit Indigo at Columbus Printed Arts Center most Saturdays between 11am-2pm for their walk in office hours and think together about the following questions grounded in this project focused on global Indigenous art and knowledge: How can we activate different forms of knowledge? How can we expand the various ways of knowing that influence our perceptions of the world? What can come out of asking these questions within the context of an institutional site?

Image: a selection of books from Potu faitautusi/Reading room, with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday Oct. 15th, 2pm EST).

Episode 11 – November 2021

This episode is an audio tour and conversation about the Minus Plato blog and platform with local Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous artist and medicine practitioner Indigo Gonzales. We discuss footnotes, feminism, caryatids, earbuds, fossils, crawfish, turtles, sleeping children, minimal art, among other topics. Our soundtrack is the ‘soundscapes of an unfinished exhibition’, streaming on Parler Clair Radio on the Minus Plato website (with soundscapes recorded at the 14th Sharjah Biennial).

Image: the cover of Gregory Battock’s anthology Minimal Art (which contains the Brian O’Doherty essay ‘Minus Plato’), with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired Friday Nov. 19th at 2pm EST)

Episode 12 – December 2021

This episode continues the audio tour and conversation about the Minus Plato blog and platform with local Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous artist and medicine practitioner Indigo Gonzales (she/they). We reach a pivotal moment on the Ohio State University campus with an encounter with the work and words of Postcommodity, which then leads to the next phase of the episode being recorded at Mound City, Chillicothe, Ohio, and the Hopewell earthworks. There we think about the future and this leads us back to Columbus Printed Arts Center and a conversation with Sebastián Calfuqueo, Indigo’s fellow participating artist (along with Sarah Biscara Dilley, Ke´y Rusú Katupyry & Verá Poty Resakã in the Potu faitautusi/Reading room project (guest librarian: Léuli Eshrāghi). As the last episode of the year, we want to thank everyone who has participated in dear fellow settler colonizer, in its first season and look forward to new episodes in 2022.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of bell hooks (1952-2021).

Image: a view of the Hopewell earthworks at Mound City, Chillicothe, Ohio from the Scioto River, with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday December 17th at 2pm EST)

Episode 13 – January 2022

dear fellow settler colonizer, – episode 13 – Friday January 14th at 2pm EST on Verge.Fm. (@verge.fm).

This episodes begins a new series called ‘whisper into a hole sessions’ that follows the process of sifting through ideas for the exhibition WHISPER INTO A HOLE at the Ohio State University Hopkins Hall Gallery, April 4-8, 2022, created by Minus Plato, Indigo Gonzales, Rebecca Copper, and Anna Freeman. The exhibition will tell the story of the blog, platform and persona Minus Plato, from its origins 2012 as a space for examining the intersections of contemporary art and the study of ancient Mediterranean cultures (aka Classics) to its current focus on decolonial arts education and global Indigenous arts.

Image: a view of a wet, mossy tree stump with a hole in it, with text in the Pueblo typeface by Vier5.

(Originally aired on Friday January 14th, 2022 at 2pm EST)

Episode 14 – February 2022

dear fellow settler colonizer,