Virginia Dares
The Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Awards and Nearly Carbon Neutral Conference for Decolonizing/Re-Indigenizing Media. NOVEMBER 13,14 2020
Watch Zoom Conference Sessions by clicking on the tabs
*We regret not being able to offer a recording of this session of the conference. It was attended by 11 people and featured a very lively discussion. We appreciate that Kyle Napier has allowed us to share this pre-recorded version of his presentation
Land Acknowledgement
We’d like to acknowledge the Tutelo/Monacan people, who were the indigenous custodians of the land which Virginia Tech now occupies, the land where we now work and live. We recognize their past, continuing and emerging connection to the land, water, and air. Please join us in paying respect to the Tutelo/Monacan Nations.
Conference organizers at Virginia Tech proudly present The Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Awards and Conference for Decolonizing/Re-Indigenizing Media.
- This community-building event occured as Zoom sessions on Friday, November 13, 2020, and as media projects viewable online, starting on Saturday, November 14, 2020, and viewable for the entire month of November.
- Please follow this link to view the conference schedule.
- All conference sessions and access to the films are free and open to the public.
- Please follow this link to view the 27 jury-selected films that are the finalists for this year's Virginia Dares Cinematic Art Awards All conference sessions and access to the films are free and open to the public.
Event Goals:
- Develop a network of stakeholders committed to anti-colonial inquiry, equitable making, critical Indigenous imaginary, and the development of media and pedagogy.
- Uplift research, discourse, practices, and perspectives that champion media equity.
- Showcase outstanding media works through the inaugural Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Award for Decolonizing/Re-Indigenizing Media.
- Position Virginia Tech and its Center for Humanities as a megaphone for anti-colonial work.
- Ultimately, we hope this conference facilitates in its audiences and participants a sense of connection, community, and responsibility to the past, present, and future of all our relations.
About the Keynote Speaker
Gregory has worked extensively in the Canadian broadcast community over the last thirty-five years as an award-winning filmmaker, and as an educator and writer. He has worked as a producer/director with the National Film Board and his series and one-offs have aired on many of the major networks in Canada including APTN, CTV, and CBC. Gregory has also consulted and written for the Smithsonian at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. In 1998, he produced the first Indigenous new magazine series in Canada for the CBC, All Our Relations. And in 2000, he collaborated with the Grand Shaman, Norval Morrisseau on the multi-award winning, four-part animated series, Stories from the Seventh Fire, the first animated series to be broadcast in both English and Cree.
Recent projects include LIVE from the HUNDRED YEARS CAFE, an 8 x 1 hour-long series featuring contemporary Indigenous music for APTN, and the CBC. His work has been recognized with awards from around the world including the Japanese Wildlife Film Festival, The Yorkton Short Film Festival, imagineNative, the Telenatura Awards in Pamplona, Spain. and the Native American Film Festival in San Francisco. Gregory is the founder of the SLOW MEDIA Community, an online video library that is actively promoting an Indigenous, non-commercial model of cinema that is disrupting our sense of our relationship with our media. Greg is a guitar player and songwriter, and he is based in unceded Squamish territory in North Vancouver, Canada.
About the Event Name
About the Event Name
- This project grew out of an idea for a short film seeking to re-envision the legend of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in “the New World” (c. 1588). After workshopping the idea, we saw there are many better stories that can be told about the meeting of American Indian, African and European cultures—multiple Virginia Dares.
- This conference dares to interrogate the problematic colonial-era narratives of Virginia’s first European settlements. It dares to upend embedded systems of marginalization and colonization within our disciplines. Through it, we seek to advance decolonial, anti-colonial and re-indigenizing dialogue in our community, and beyond it.
The Virginia Dares Cinematic Arts Awards and Conference for Decolonizing/Re-Indigenizing Media is a collaboration between faculty and students in Virginia Tech’s Center for Humanities, School of Performing Arts, American Indian Studies Program, American Indian and Indigenous Cultural Center, School of Education and School of Visual Arts.
Thank you for joining us!
