With Guests Artist Gregg Deal and "Saging the World" Film Co-Directors Rose Ramirez and Deborah Small

In the first half of the show, Tiokasin welcomes back longtime friend of “First Voices Radio” Gregg Deal, (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe). Gregg is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and "disruptor." His work is informed by his Native identity and includes exhaustive critiques of American society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals, performance work, filmmaking, spoken word, and more, Gregg invites the viewer to confront these issues both in the present and the past tense. In a 2018 TED Talk, Greg described his work as “honoring Indigenous experiences, challenging stereotypes, and pushing for accurate representations of Indigenous people in art.” It is in these "disruptions" of stereotypes and ahistorical representations which Gregg uses the term to describe his work. Gregg has exhibited his work at notable institutions both locally, nationally, and internationally including the Denver Art Museum, RedLine Gallery, and The Smithsonian Institution. The artist currently lives with his wife and five children along the Front Range of Colorado. Gregg’s current exhibit, “End of Silence,” is on view through October 12th at RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver, Colorado. A major review in The Denver Post on September 19, called the exhibit, “loud in every way,” and also said it is “one of the best, and most ambitious, exhibitions this year in the region. It has a lot to say, as much about painting and pop culture as it does the politics of convenience, human mistreatment and oppression — and in that way it lives up to its title.” More information about Gregg is at greggdeal.com

In the second half, we feature a discussion about “Saging the World,” a 20-minute documentary which is the focal point of a campaign to deter the global rush on white sage (Salvia apiana), driven by widespread cultural appropriation of smudging. Tiokasin’s guests are Co-Directors Rose Ramirez and Deborah Small. The film was created by Rose and Deborah in partnership with the California Native Plant Society. More information: https://www.cnps.org/conservation/white-sage.

Rose Ramirez is of Chumash and Yaqui ancestry. She is an artist, photographer, filmmaker, writer and California Indian Basket weaver. Rose has documented and written about native foods, plants, people, basketry and artists, north and south of the U.S. border with Mexico. Her work includes “The Ethnobotany Project: Contemporary Uses of Native Plants by southern California and northern Baja California,” with Deborah Small and the documentary, “Saging the World,” co-directed with Deborah Small and David Bryant and co-produced with Deborah Small and the California Native Plant Society. Rose blogs at: roseramirez.wordpress.com

Deborah Small is a gardener, artist/writer, and professor emerita in the School of Arts at California State University San Marcos. She is co-writer of “The Ethnobotany Project” with Rose Ramirez and “Cooking the Native Way” with the Chia Café Collective. Currently she is collaborating on the “Saging the World” documentary project. Deborah blogs at  deborahsmall.wordpress.com