Empowering Indigenous Voices: The Photographic Practice of Joseph J. Allen (5 Plain Questions)

This episode was produced in partnership with5 Plain Questions and Eleven Warrior Arts. Hosted by Joe Williams, 5 Plain Questions is a podcast that proposes 5 general questions to Native American and Indigenous artists, creators, musicians, writers, movers and shakers, and culture bearers.

Joseph J. Allen, a Minnesota-based photographer, Art of the Rural Fellow, and returning guest to 5 Plain Questions, shares insights from his artistic journey and community work in this engaging conversation. He discusses his evolution from photojournalism to a more artistic photographic approach, emphasizing the importance of subjective storytelling in photography. 

As Director of the Gizhiigin Arts Incubator in Mahnomen, MN, Joseph highlights the significance of collaboration within Indigenous communities and the impact of community-driven initiatives like the Manoomin Arts Initiative. Throughout the episode, he reflects on the challenges artists face, including funding and audience engagement, while also celebrating the role of organizations like Art of the Rural in supporting artists

Joseph's commitment to giving back to his community and fostering connections among artists is evident as he outlines his future endeavors, including launching a capital campaign for Manoomin Arts Initiative.

Resources:

• Episode Transcript
• Episode Webpage
• Joseph J. Allen on Instagram
• Joseph J. Allen’s Hakikta exhibition (2024)
• In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now exhibition (2023)
• High Visibility exhibition (2020-2021)
• 5 Plain Questions website

Subscribe to 5 Plain Questions wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Art of the Rural is honored to support 5 Plain Questions. We are grateful to individual donors across the country, the Ford Foundation, and Good Chaos for making these conversations possible. Learn more about our work and show your support at artoftherural.org

Chapters

• 1:15 Introduction to Indigenous Arts and Community Engagement
• 3:42 Reconnecting with Joseph J. Allen
• 11:18 The Transition from Photojournalism to Art
• 25:13 Community and Arts Initiatives
• 33:52 Community Healing and Revitalization
• 37:30 The Importance of Community and Reciprocity in Art
• 41:27 Exploring Community Dynamics and Personal Growth
• 46:56 Transitioning from Nonprofit to Community Business

Transcript

Episode Introduction

Matthew Fluharty: Art of the Rural is honored to support 5 Plain Questions. We are a collaborative organization that works to resource artists and culture bearers across the country. Together we build relationships, change narratives, and bridge divides. Across the last 15 years, we've collaborated with individuals and communities from a range of cultural and geographic backgrounds.

To contribute towards a more equitable and healthy future for rural and Indian country. We invite folks to check out some of our work. Our Rural-Urban Exchange strengthens intercultural networks through a locally focused creative leadership program. Our Spillway initiative supports artists and culture bearers to cultivate relationships along the Upper Mississippi River region.

And our High Visibility initiative creates podcasts, exhibitions, and publications that share nuanced and complex perspectives on contemporary life in rural and Indian country. If folks would like to learn more about our work, please visit artoftherural.org.

Joe Williams: Hello and welcome again to another episode of 5 Plain Questions, a podcast that proposes five questions to indigenous artists, creators, musicians, writers, movers and shakers, and culture bearers, people in community doing great things for their communities. I'm Joe Williams, your host for this conversation.

My goal is to showcase these amazing people in our indigenous communities from around the region and the country. We return with our multi-part series in conjunction with Art of the Rural, an arts nonprofit based out of Rochester [sic; Winona], Minnesota. We're so excited to be promoting their work as they engage with the community with art and intention.

I'm excited to bring you the conversation I'm having with artists and creatives. They've been working with some of whom are former guests of this program. Our next episode in the miniseries is a returning guest from season one, Joseph J. Allen, as we introduced him to the podcast back in 2021. He's a Minnesota-based photographer, born in South Dakota, with his career spanning throughout the region, with Twin Cities, Minnesota, and in the White Earth Nation in northern Minnesota.

Joseph J. Allen lives on the White Earth Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota. Born in 1964 at Eagle Butte, South Dakota, he's an enrolled member of the Rosebud Tribe. Allen has been creating and exhibiting his art for over 25 years and has received the 1993 McKnight Photography Fellowship.

His photographs are in collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Community Archives. Allen is the director of the Gizhiigin Arts Program in Mahnomen, Minnesota. We sat down in November of 2024, just after the national elections. So our conversation starts with that acknowledgement.

Interview

Williams: So with that said, let's jump into this conversation with my friend, photographer Joseph J. Allen.

Joe Allen, welcome back to Five Plain Questions. How are you doing?

Joe Allen: Hey, I'm doing all right on this. Yeah, I don't know if I wanna mention the post-election day here, but yeah, I'm doing okay. Power through. Yep.

Williams: Right on. For the listener, we're recording this on the day after the national elections.

And so I think, given whatever your political standing is, I think all in all it's a momentous day for everyone. We're managing through. Joe, you were one of the first guests on this podcast in season one, and I think it was August of 2020. And this is November of 2024.

So it's been about four years since you were on. And one of the things that we started doing this season was revisiting old friends and guests of the podcast. I wanted to connect with you and to get caught up on where you are today, what's happening, 'cause you have a lot going on.

And yeah, I just wanted to reconnect. For the newer listeners, would you be able to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your background?

Allen: Okay. Yeah. So my name's Joe Allen, Joseph, John Allen. I was born in 1964 in Eagle Beach, South Dakota. I'm enrolled with the Sicangu Lakota and a descendant of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabe Ojibwe.

And I currently live here in the White Earth Nation and Sugarbush Township. I live on 10 acres of land rurally and work I work for the wider tribe as an artist, so I'm, I've been a photographer for over 30 years. And right now trying to maintain my practice, but also work with a day job, and so I work for the wider tribes’ economic development division, and I direct the Gizhiigin Arts Incubator here in Mahnomen, Minnesota.  Gizhiigin has been around for about seven years, and I think I just started the last time. We're, we were on, I think I've been here for six years now, five years. And then that through the incubator, I worked with artists.

A lot of artists have been on your program. Kent Estey, Penny Kagigebi. I think I can name a few, but I always call them my incubates. They went through the incubator system here. So that's, trying to use my skill as an artist, as a photographer, to help other artists.

And so my background, I came from I lived in South Dakota. I lived in the Ute Reservation in Nevada. I lived in the Navajo Nation and in the Sioux City and Indian community. This is all before I turned 21. And I ended up in Minneapolis, and that's where I learned.

I had been dabbling in photography before that. My uncle was in the Navy and he had a camera that he gave or after he passed away, I got it. And he used to make you sit through slideshows, and he was on the USS Enterprise. Nuclear. And so he worked, lived in Las Vegas. So that's where I got introduced to photography was through him.

I'd sit through slideshows of the aircraft carrier. I thought he'd take these pictures, but he was buying them from the PX, I guess you know, the slides. But, so I got his camera, I learned how to use it, but then it wasn't until I got to Minneapolis and started going to college, community college that I got into photography as a career.

And so I dropped outta college and started working at the Circle Newspaper as a photojournalist. And so that's where my career started as a photographer. And so I moved up here to the White Earth about 2009. So been up here, raised my two daughters up here.

Williams: I became pretty familiar with your work after I started at the Plains Art Museum, and you were a part of an exhibition through Art of the Rural.

Allen: High Visibility, yes. I was one of the artists asked. It had been put together before that, and I was one of the local artists in the region asked to contribute. And yeah, my work in that show is land-based stuff. I do a lot of I started out in photojournalism, but I moved away from that into more exhibition-type, gallery, working on a series, and that one I call After Contact. It's kinda a play on words or the contact sheet. When you used to do black and white photography, you'd shoot a roll of film and go in the dark room and you'd put in the sleeves and you'd do a contact sheet to see what your thumbnails look like, and see what you would want print later.

But I did this series and it's still ongoing where I go and visit places that my ancestors, like Lakota, Dakota, Anishinaabe places, and I re recontextualize it using film and cameras and it's after contact, what happened after first contact, so that's the work that was in that show.

Williams: How have your experiences and perspectives in storytelling, how has evolved over the course of your career?

Allen: I think photography is, it's usually, when I first started out, I was doing that kind of documentary photojournalism.

I did a lot of powwow photography too. That's where I started. My mom was a powwow vendor as an artist, and I would drive her around and take photos, but. It became that, where it's seen as objective, and to me, photography's always subjective. It's always my eye, my framing, what I choose to.

I get pigeon-holed as a Native photographer in the 90s. It's like that I had the authentic eye, that I was more insider, and so that was more authentic. I'm just one viewpoint, yeah. Maybe I'm Native and I'm shooting the Native community, but I wanted to try to break that frame or break that, pigeonhole, and the After Contact sheet series broke that visual. It's not. It jars the viewer, it doesn't make this, "Oh, I know where that is." The images are multiple-exposure and overlapping, and so it's disorienting to the viewer.

And that's what I wanted people to feel. Not that this is the actual place, but it's like, how does this feel from a Dakota perspective or from Lakota perspective. This place called Coldwater Springs, or, you know these places that are part of Dakota sites, and yeah. Trying to break that framework of the move away from documentary and photo journalism into the art realm, and that kind of freed me up to do whatever I want, not have to get that shot and get it in the publication.

 I used to do wedding photography too. I just did my sister's wedding, but that pressure of getting the shot, and like that kind of work, so photography that you have to play that, and I've tried to move away from that, and so I got roped back in with my sister's wedding.

Williams: Family's family, right?

Allen: Yeah.

Williams: Is there a specific milestone that has influenced certain moments of growth in your career? Is there anything, any, like an event or something that stands out to you?

Allen: I think, early on, the first grant I ever applied for I got was a McKnight Photography Fellowship. So that kind of moved it beyond just, I'm just doing this as a hobby, or like just tried it out.

And so the first grant I ever applied for. I remember typing it on one of the really old, earliest Apples. Had one monochrome screen, and then that dot matrix printer, that floppy drive, and driving it down at the last minute possible, and dropping it off, and with the slides, and so that was in 1992. And so I think that was a pivotal year for me. And then.

Then, when I started, when I left, I worked at the Circle Newspaper for a long time in Minneapolis. I was published outta the Minneapolis American Indian Center. I was editor for about eight years there, took over, started as a freelance photographer, and then took over.

And then when I left there, that's when I moved into the art realm and became more of an artist. And then moved up north here. So that timeframe, from early 2000 to about 2009, is when I became an artist.

Williams: When you were a journalist, when you were photographing stories and whatnot, did you feel over time that your technique, the way you were framing photos, was evolving in a storytelling technique, so to speak?

Allen: Yeah. Early on, I began as a powwow photographer, and I was using long lenses and capturing moments with that compression, I don't know, it's a technical term, but it makes the background blurry. The bokeh, I don't, I never say these words right.

But when I moved into journalism, I had to learn more about wide angle, getting close to things, getting more perspective, in the movie industry or the videos, the establishing shots kind of thing, so that really changed, and that's when I started getting into the more documentary style.

And so I did a series for the History Center, Minnesota, 2000. I did a documentary series on the Twin Cities American Indian community. And so that was more wide-angle stuff, just hanging out with people that I knew in their daily life, and capturing moments from that. So be the fly on the wall kind of journalist and photojournalist, and documentary.

Williams: It's interesting how the experiences really shaped the way we change our approaches to different experiences. How has the reaction or the feedback been with the audience that has viewed your work?

And, I ask as a two-part question because we have the Native audience from our own communities who might have a deeper insight, maybe, or be able to relate to the images we create as opposed to the non-Native audience. And can you share some thoughts on their reactions and your interactions with them?

Allen: Yeah, I think it's hard. I also did art fairs too, in the early 2000s. And that was okay, they put pretty powwow pictures and the nice landscapes and all that. But some of this other work, it's hard for people to comprehend, and it doesn't really, it's not gonna sell, it's more, it's more of a document, a historical document from my perspective. So that has changed, so I still do some of the art fair things. And there's one image that was included in the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Photography show, I can't remember the exact name, In Our Hands. That was last November. My image that was included was one that I sold on the street in Minneapolis at an art fair. And so one of the women who worked there was helping. And I, because I wasn't, in all, didn't get selected by the curation team.

She brought that print in and said, You gotta have Joe in this show, and so that's how I got into this major exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. But that image was a teepee on the front lawn. And so that one has sold, I, so I say, I always call it my one hit wonder, 'cause it resonates with not only Indian, Native people. It has a teepee with the Minneapolis skyline in the background. And I did that in 1992, and I'd sell that at art fairs. And I know that's like my mom used to as a powwow vendor, it's like she had her bread and butter, the gas money home, sales, and that. So I know I can always sell a teepee print, so that kind of interaction.

But the newer stuff, I think, made it. I think it opens the eyes for a lot of non-Native people in terms of the history of the land and not just this whitewashed version of history, and so I think that has helped a lot of non-Native people, too, try to figure out what this means. What does it mean for, what is that place down in the concentration camp, where I have a picture of that, and if you don't know that history, and I don't tell on that history.

I just, here's an image, and so I think that's, trying to, I think that's what most Native artists struggle with is who's your audience? And there are more non-Natives than there are Natives. And especially if you're trying to make money as an artist, your work is gonna be, it has to be palatable.

I say you wanna say to the non-Native, if you're gonna make money, and there's a lot of, I go down to the south, I used to live in the southwest. There's a lot more knowledge of Native art down there, I think, than up here in the Midwest. You know where I am in Northern Minnesota. And I'm not a traditional. Know what I, I always use my air quotes here, but a Native artist, photography is this weird art I think, I always think, it's it's, I always, it married my scientific technical side with the artistic side. Before I was a photographer, I was in electronics, I worked for subcontractors down in, Phoenix area for Intel and all the chip makers down there. But I moved up and started in Minneapolis when I moved up here. Got into the art side.

Williams: This kind of walks into the next question I was gonna ask is if there was a sort of a particular challenging moment in your artistic journey, and how were you able to overcome it?

A lot of times, of course, like you're talking about, it's the audience and the demands of what patrons are asking for or seeking, as opposed to what your artistic version is.

Allen: I think I started early. I think the main problem in like most artists, is money.

I was working a gig with Allies Media Arts, and we were owned by Mona Smith. I don't know if you've interviewed her, but she's a Dakota artist down in the cities, multimedia. And anyway, I was working with her and we, one of our contrasts with Shakopee Tribe, and that's where I learned about Dakota sites, 'cause we would go out and I would just photo document those sites, where they are today, how they look today. And I wanted to do something like this kind of big landscapes, but I couldn't afford it. I don't know if Chris Faust, but there are other photographers, they have these panoramic cameras and they cost $3,000 to $4,000, and so I couldn't afford that, a single dad. I was not a single dad. I was a stay-at-home dad at the time, I was raising two daughters, and it was easier for me to work. Stay at home and raise the girls and, and be, become an artist, so I couldn't afford a $3,000 camera, so I bought a $20 Holga with a medium format film, and that's where I were, did, started doing these panoramics, using that camera, and I was able to create, I. It really affected my work because I learned how to stitch these images together without having to rely on this $4,000 gear.

It's like here's a $20 toy camera that gives me medium format film and so I can make larger prints. And so I was still using film. Moving from film to digital was hard for me, because. I couldn't afford the digital gear when I first started out. Like in the 1990s, digital came about. Like in 2000, when I was gonna be like a, it was like $10,000 for the gear for a full journalist’s gear. I was spending $300 on a camera. Photography and technology are hard to have that high-end stuff. So that's always been a challenge.

Williams: So the work that you've been doing in the community. This is how I really became familiar with you in person. You were a board member at the Plains Art Museum for a number of years, and when I came on board, you were a board member then. How has your community work shaped your interaction with artists and community members over the last several years?

Allen: So that's kinda where it started. And also, I'm the son of a preacher. My father was an Episcopal priest. I don't like to mention that in mixed company a lot, since there's this backlash against Christianity in the Native community. He was he went to Yale Divinity School from Pine Ridge.

And, but that's him and my mom. My mom was an artist; she did bead work, she did ceramics, but that community work, like you are always working for the community. You work for yourself, too. You do your own work. But, so that was kinda instilled in me when I was growing up, seeing the dedication they had to the community.

And so, what I got into this position at Gizhiigin, and I'm working for the community, and so how do we create an economic system here that helps artists? And so working with them and creating community, how to build a community. And so I think that's, as an artist, trying to do that.

I'm lucky, partly because I'm in a tribal system where we all know tribal politics, and I don't know how many administrations I've been through. And my supervisor is the director of economic development, and that's been a revolving door.

And so I always say I'm unsupervised, so I can do whatever I want. But I've been figuring out a lot of stuff, so I have the time to experiment and innovate and then build from that. And so the community work right now, I've helped to launch a new arts organization here in Mahnomen and the wider nation called Manoomin Arts Initiative.

And so that's from my work working with the city of Mahnomen, the county, the tribe, and local artists. And so we just formed a nonprofit. We're looking to buy a building here in the town of Mahnomen. White Earth is an open res. I think Sisseton's probably similar. We're close by, where you look at the map, and it has this big square, the White Earth nation, the tribe only owns about 10% of the land.

And one of the good things about our election here is locally, our city council. The mayor is Native, the whole school board is now Native, and the city council. And these are independent municipal counties, so it's not tribally run. We have native people on the county commissioners now, too. So it's so that's good on the local level here. So that's the community that I work in. And so it's like mixed. We're 50/50, 50 Native, 50 white. The school system, though, is at 90%. And so the community work here is just trying to build using art and creativity and create a placemaking basically to try to help revitalize this town of Mahnomen, which is the largest on the reservation here.

 If I had tried to build my own organization, my own little silo, I don't think I would've been as effective as I have because I don't have any staff. I don't have much. The tribes are there, but I've been partnering with the city and the county and and we've been getting a lot of things done, and now we have this organization and we're gonna buy a building. So we’ve got money raised for that already.

Williams: Collaboration is definitely key.

Allen: Especially in rural communities. We don't have the bodies; we’ve got some good people, but they're all doing the same thing. Like they're on the they're volunteer firefighters, they're on the city council, the school board, you know what, it's like you see the same people on everything. And we have to work with everybody. We work with both sides. It's not just one little enclave. We're in rural Minnesota here, we're all USA. 70% of the people voted for Trump, and I know them. I work with them all the time, and it's so it's different from the city perspective of rural.

I think that's the big thing. And I grew up both. I was born rural, lived in rural, but lived in cities too. But the community work really takes a lot. And I think that's something we're conditioned to be individualistic, as an artist, we have to do everything ourselves, and you're not used to working for the community. It's, you're supposed to community where, oh, I did a class, or I did, or donated a piece of artwork to you. It's hard to make a living this way. I just feel lucky to be able to do this.

So thank you, McKnight Foundation. They're one of my big funders, so if it wasn't for their steady funding, I wouldn't be able to figure this out. And a great organization.

Williams: Oh, absolutely. I think so many of the guests that have been on this podcast, but just in the community in general, they've really stepped up and provided a lot of funding opportunities for so many artists.

Allen: Yeah. And right now we're trying, I'm trying to connect on a more national scale too. And so we're part of Art of the Rural. That came about during COVID. They were moving the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, and they created a model. I was on the Steering Committee to create this leadership program that was connecting urban and rural people. And then we hosted a community up here event up here in Mahnomen and the White Earth Nation and the Itasca Biological, so the whole cohort came up here. And so that's where I met Matthew Fluharty at Art of the Rural, and we worked together.

And I helped to connect local artists to this, and so that, and now we're part of the Manoomin Arts Initiative, the new nonprofit that we formed, we're the organizing partner in the Midway Coalition, which is a group of artist-led spaces throughout the Midwest. It's spearheaded by the Public Media Institute in Chicago. And we're going down in November to a summit in Kansas City. Week-long. And so we organizing that. And so connecting with others, there are some Native organizations like Racing Magpie out of Peter Strong out of Rapid City, but most of 'em are just rural. A lot of rural, but a lot of urban Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, but they're all artist-run spaces, like what I'm doing here in Mahnomen. Just connecting to that larger national network of artists led spaces to help bring that stuff, bring that knowledge back to the community and share.

I think that's another thing. We're taught to knowledge hoard. We're, like, you don't give away your secrets. You don't, it's like copyright. And I've always come from a community, from my family, that was always sharing.

Williams: I appreciate that. Growing up here on the res, yeah, that knowledge wording, there are some folks who know things that, to them, I suppose they feel like that's their currency, which is a really terrible way to treat information. And it's always a shame when young people like myself would go out and try to seek information.

Allen: Yeah, it leads to that kind of cult of personality stuff that is hard for so many. All of us lost through colonization. Our ancestors, that connection to the past, there are some people who are connected. Most of us, there's been a break there, and our worldview has changed from that original thought. The pre-contact, I hate to do this kind of puritanical kind of line, but there's a difference in thought back then than there is today. And so I think if that's the thing, that's a thing that I was cautioned about, is like you can reject all this other stuff, but it's been instilled in us.

It's like we were, in the boarding schools, these values of Christianity and even if we don't go to church or whatever, it's still imprinted on us, and if we don't have anything else to go by, we're gonna go by those values. My daughter just shared this meme about hard pill to swallow, you just can't go to the ceremonies. You gotta do real work of healing, and if all you want to do is learn all this stuff, but you don't really do for anything for your community, if you're just taking and learning, that's extractive. It's not regenerative, and reciprocity.

Williams: I just had a conversation with Xavier Tavera about this fear of going into a space and documenting the lives of people. And, because so often this was the case for the previous generations who would create artwork, and non-Natives would come in and they would take their artwork back to museums or back to institutions and not give credit.

And so that's why so many objects, quote unquote, or artifacts, again, in quotes, don't have names associated with the people that created those things. And oftentimes those objects that were created for the person who purchased it, they knew who they were. But when they passed away and those items were handed over to museums or whatnot, that information didn't feel important enough to document who created that.

Allen: Yeah. Yeah. They might have a try, but most of the time, this is Indian.

Williams: But reciprocity, not returning.

Allen: I was gonna go back to my experience as a photographer shooting powwows. I just remember the grand entry. All of a sudden this herd of white photographers would come and they'd all have these, the big long lenses, the $10,000 lenses. Here I am with my mail order camera, and they would just come for grand entry and then they were gone.

And no one ever saw them again. It was like, and for me it was hard, this is before social media, so it's I was always trying to get prints back to people, but, it's hard, it's like you, I know. I can't afford to make all these prints travel back to all the powwows, or get their addresses. I kinda sat on it for a long time. I'm trying to go through that stuff now, and I've bought this little scanner and just scanning things in and then posting 'em on Facebook. And people are like, "Hey, is that you?" There's one woman that, I took this photo in 1992 and "hey, Becky, is that you?" "Oh yeah, that's me." Yeah. So try to give that back to the community because, I have this archive, and it's hard to, get it out there, and I just don't want to give it away to a museum right now. But, it's like, I shot film and black and white slide film a lot.

Williams: What a gift to them though, to have something from 30 years ago all of a sudden.

Allen: People are gone, yeah.

Williams: Recently on Facebook, someone posted it was a video of a powwow from 91, 92 here at the assistant of veterans powwow. And it was such a gift to be able to see all the elders, are friends who have since passed, in these videos, at an event that I and others had, that we all attended. And just to be able, not realizing it was recorded, and to see that there are memories of that, tangible memories, objects that exist from that time..

So as an artist, as someone who's just working their way through life and their career. What is a good solid habit that you've developed for yourself to really keep you moving forward in your practice? And is there a bad habit that you had to break or step away from?

Allen: I don't know if it's a good or bad because probably both. It is like never being satisfied, so that's good and bad I think. And it's not that you want perfection all the time, but you can do better.

 I think that's part of what I always say about art. It's about a skill, so you have to develop it, and so you just keep going and going. And I see a lot of young artists, don't push themselves as much. They really know all the social media and all that kind of stuff, but skill wise, especially in photography, like I see a lot of photographers, and I work with a lot of 'em that have never printed, made a print before, and because they're not doing exhibits, they're just posting things on Facebook, and that's a limit to what you can do there, but yeah, I think that's something that, that skillset.

But also that catch 22 of never satisfied then, but also realizing that, have other people look at your work, 'cause you're always your own worst critic. Some of your work might actually be good that you don't really see, but someone, other people will. And things that you don't like, some other people like, so it's like you never know.

I think, and obviously photographers, you gotta learn how to print because that's the only way it's gonna last a little bit beyond you. It's like your Facebook account will be there, but what happens after that? So that's what I'm trying to figure out is, got these images, like, what do we do with them? It's not like a painting where it goes and it's out there, and asked to survive, but a digital negative. What? How's that survive? A digital file, it's like it's gonna be obsolete or get lost somewhere in the cloud. Prints are things that these people can put in a safe, so they'll be around for a couple hundred years.

Williams: You had mentioned earlier about Art of the Rural and the Exchange that you were a part of. Would you be able to expand a little bit on, on what that experience was like for you working with Matthew? And has that experience that shaped your understanding of community dynamics maybe a little differently than before?

Allen: Yeah, I think it was one of the first time that I've come across the term distributed leadership and coming together and working with other people doing similar stuff, but coming together and putting something together that isn't just your organization. And I think that's something that out of the world helped me to understand in working with them with the Minnesota RUX, the Rural-Urban Exchange.

Learning how, being in a Steering Committee, leading a certain things, and just learning that structure. How to work together when you're not all staff people, when it's not your staff, there's one person in charge, and everything, all the underlings do the work. I think that was really one of the best things about working with Art of the Rural through the MN RUX was learning how to navigate that and what my skillset is in terms of what I can do in that realm and not. Feel bad 'cause I can't do this or can't do that, but I can do that.

I learned how to, and that's where I'm at with the Midway Coalition now. So now I know how this is gonna go, and what I can offer and what I can do. And so it's a different way of working. I guess I haven't really liked working in organizations. I look at my career, the Circle I took over, and then I launched it as an independent nonprofit. So I was in charge of that one, too. But I've never really worked for a major organization, and so I've always been independent or else working for a small nonprofit, or a sole proprietor.

So this year they offered me a fellowship, Spillway fellowship. And that's where I did an exhibit down in the Winona County Historical Society in Winona. And that was this past June. And it was more of a retrospective of my work. During this fellowship, I've been going back into the archives and looking at things and figuring out what I’m gonna do with this stuff.

Williams: With that said, what's on the horizon for you? What do you have coming up? What's. What's going on?

Allen: Another thing that I've started is a print club. I taught myself how to do well, actually, I went to a workshop with John Hitchcock at Plains Art Museum, created the Center for Creativity, and I learned how to do screen printing…So I learned how to burn a screen, and so I came back and I've started doing silk screening.

So I've been doing silk screening now for about four or five years. I do t-shirts. I just gotta run an order from the Indigenous Nations Poets, but also through Gizhiigin, we purchased a large-format printer. So I can offer artists canvas prints or large format prints, and then help, and then we do pop-up markets throughout.

We just did the Fargo Morehead Studio Crawl. We popped up at the Indigenous Association. So that's where I want to go. I want to get out of it, it's still kind of community work. But the issue I have with Gizhiigin is like, I'm part of a tribe and a government, and it's kinda limiting in terms of it's viewed as a social service kind of thing. And so I have to keep getting grant money. And so where I'm trying to move towards this, where, you know, I can still take pictures of your work, but I'm gonna charge you for it, and then I can help you make prints or help you, and so just trying to get to that where I'm slowly trying to fade out of the nonprofit industrial complex and move into just regular business. And, but still doing that kind of socially minded, community minded, if I were gonna open a business, I would choose Mahnomen. This is where I am, and this is, and I think there's a way that I can at least pay the rent and help people out and pay my bills. As much as I love the foundations that have helped me, it's like I get tired of writing grants every year.

Williams: If you were to give the elevator pitch to our listeners who might be able to reach out to you and maybe collaborate with you or assist you with that, what would you say to them?

Allen: We would probably be launching a capital campaign once we find a building. So we have some involvement. Look for the Manoomin Arts Initiative. So manoomin is the Ojibwe word for wild rice. And so we are in Mahnomen County, the city of Mahnomen, which is the colonized way of saying manoomin.

And yeah, you can look for us at manoominartsinitiative.org. And we'll be launching a capital campaign to help pay off whatever building, because we’ve got some money now. Every building you get is gonna have some improvements and need something. That's the way to get involved.

We're more community, local organization, so that's one of the things that we wanted is like. Everything we do is based here in White Earth, the White Earth Nation. And not that we don't, we help people get out there, but we're trying to build up our community here.

So that's, I dunno if that's a 30-minute elevator pitch, but I'm working on it, because we gotta get that capital campaign going, and so that, and that's the thing about this community work is like, we don't have to do it all. I don't have to do it all myself or my organization. It's like we have to, we can work collaboratively. And I think that's, that's a thing that I've learned in the last four or five years is working collaboratively.

Williams: I'll put links in the show notes so the listener can reach out to you if they feel inclined and keep me updated. I'd like to be able to push this out for our audience.

Thanks. Joe, this was great. Thank you for coming back to the podcast and spending a little time with me and the listener.

Allen: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for listening. Yeah, it's good to catch up with you, too. Good to see you.

Episode Conclusion

Williams: And those are for this episode of 5 Plain Questions. I want to thank Joe again for his time in sharing his story with us and for returning to the podcast and giving us an update. It was definitely a treat to be able to sit down with him again and to, yeah, just to see where he is and to hear about his experience with Art of the Rural.

I think it's really important that organizations like Art of the Rural are teaming up with artists and leaders like Joe to be able to share their knowledge with the community and to be able to help those. It's great to hear his story and what's going on with him. Joe, thank you so much for coming back and having a conversation with us.

5 Plain Questions is made possible with the support of Art of the Rural. Art of the Rural is a collaborative organization working to resource artists and culture bearers across the country, building relationships and changing narratives. To learn more about the work, visit artoftherural.org.

I also want to thank the Indigenous Association for letting us use their studios in downtown Fargo. It's a wonderful facility. They're gracious enough to open up the space to meet. As I work on these and future episodes for season six, if you need a recording space, please contact the Indigenous Association in Fargo, North Dakota.

And of course, for you listening, thank you for being with us the I'm Joe Williams. You can find me across social media, on Instagram, on X at the 5 Plain Questions pages on those sites that may change depending on the environment moving forward. I wanna see what the integrity is on some of these social media websites, and we may be rethinking how we engage with them.

You will always be able to find us on the official 5 Plain Questions website, which is elevenwarriorarts.com. There you can find this episode, past episodes of the podcast. Also, if you have a suggestion for someone for me to interview or you want to support the podcast, please check out that website and message me.

I would really like to hear from you. Thank you for joining us for this season, and I look forward to us connecting again in March of this year. We will be back, so you take care and we will see you next season.

This has been an Eleven Warrior Arts production.