ABSTRACT
A scholar of modern and contemporary Native North American art, I am writing from a place of renewed commitment to Earth care and environmental justice. Rose B. Simpson (b. 1983), a multimedia artist, creative writer, and citizen of Santa Clara Pueblo, shared her words and experiences with me to generate this conversational essay. Rose holds a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and a MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design, studied for three years in the Automotive Science Program at Northern New Mexico College, and is currently enrolled in the Low Rez Creative Writing MFA program at IAIA. Behind these institutional markers lies a more fundamental education that has shaped Rose’s creative formulation of a climate-changed futurism: Her upbringing at Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, co-founded by her mother, sculptor and architect Roxanne Swentzell (b. 1962), at Santa Clara Pueblo in 1987. This collaboration begins with an intimate narrative by Rose, then opens into a conversation about ancestral Indigenous lifeways, the decolonial politics of permaculture and “climate grief,” the spiritual and ecological resonances of leather, clay, and metal, and the role of post-apocalyptic theory in her work.
