Two Indigenous artists will perform a live, immersive music composition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa on Tuesday.
The soundscape composition, “Dispatch,” was created by Navajo Nation composer Raven Chacon and Candice Hopkins, a curator, writer and citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation. Chacon was the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music.
“Dispatch” is a mix of elements, stemming from the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
"One of the reasons we made the score was to address the issue of miscommunications. And so one of the things that intrigued me around the events of Standing Rock was this was something unprecedented, where we were in the age of social media, and being able to hear reports from anybody who was there, and even not there," Chacon said.
"And that became the problem is, is some of the, you know, maybe exaggeration or miscommunication, whether intentional or nonintentional, created an environment of noise and confusion, which, you know, definitely didn't maybe help the cause of Standing Rock, but added a volume and critical mass of attention that I think was interesting to be able to bring attention to that," he said.
Chacon and Hopkins will perform the composition and engage with those who protested against the TMT on Maunakea and the Navy’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility here in Hawaiʻi.
"I'd say for Native people, art's never been separate from everyday life. So that means art also isn't separate from protest, I don't believe. It's not separate from, you know, defending our land and our water," Hopkins told The Conversation.
The free event is at 3 p.m. on the UH Mānoa campus on Tuesday, April 11.
This interview aired on The Conversation on April 10, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
