Kaleidoscopic No. 28: Sadie Red Wing
Using design to express Indigenous cultural sovereignty and perspectives
Leonardo Bravo :
This is Leonardo with Kaleidoscopic Projects and today's interview is with Sadie Red Wing. Sadie, I am thrilled and honored to be in conversation with you as I am interested by how you uplift a sense of contemporary Indigeneity in your work as a designer and educator. I thought we would start off by you introducing yourself and then some basic framing about your practice.
Sadie Red Wing :
Yeah. Again, thank you for the invite. Super excited for our conversation today. So my name is Sadie Red Wing and I'm currently sitting in downtown Toronto. I just came from a classroom I teach as I'm a professor at Ontario College of Art & Design University here in Toronto, Canada. I am unique in my position because I came to OCADU through a cluster hire. At the time of my employment, Dr. Dori Tunstall was the dean of design at OCAD U where they had an indigenous professor cluster hire. So I joined with five other indigenous colleagues and unlike my other colleagues, I teach in two departments. I teach graphic design to my freshmen and senior students and then I also teach in the Indigenous Visual Culture Program. So it's been a really interesting journey and I'm coming to this conversation as a professor, design educator, indigenous graphic designer, and then just as an advocate for students and other indigenous professionals that share the same interests as me.
Leonardo Bravo :
I love the sense of advocacy that you bring to your work and much of it grounded around the sense of inclusive design practice and decolonizing the practice as well. Can you talk a little bit about that framing?
Sadie Red Wing :
Absolutely. So to give a little bit of a context of where I'm at in my journey and how I got into conversations around decolonization or inclusivity, I would say that in 2016 I graduated with my master's of graphic design from North Carolina State and leaving NC State, I didn't know where to go. I didn't know which communities that I was gonna take some of my design research into. And I would say that in 2016 conversations were just starting about diversity. How can we be more respectful in thinking about as a graphic designer and I might target underrepresented demographics? And these conversations were hot just around stereotypes and appropriation. And that's where I needed to be.
Sadie Red Wing :
And in thinking about how it's progressed, so I really came into conversation on DEI, diversity, and inclusion, equity, I'm a fitting example to that model, I'm coming in with a diverse ideology, diverse knowledge of a practice. So when I'm included it means that some of my areas of expertise can come into a project or can come into a space and be thought about as a resource. So I would say right now, I still don't have all the resources that I need. But just in thinking about how it has transformed into me having a focus and consciousness of decolonization, as an indigenous person, indigenous United States, and thinking about what I'm learning amongst my experience in the design community from non-indigenous designers is that not everybody's on the same page when it comes to the word decolonization.
Sadie Red Wing :
How I define it, let's say in the classroom; there's a focus on place and about government overtaking resources, or just forcing governance over a place. So the United States government does that to all the indigenous tribes in the United States. Affected by it. So from that perspective I feel like the conversation of decolonization gets confused with colonialism. When I think of colonialism, I'm thinking policies, rules, procedures, that might influence what everyday life is like. But in thinking about decolonization the focus of place comes into sharp relief. How was a practice done in a particular type of place before colonization? Indigenous people, we're inventors! Like in thinking about all our inventions, all our graphic design, our visual symbol systems, anything, you name it.
Sadie Red Wing :
And it makes you wonder about all these inventors and we don't learn about them. So thinking about progressing into decolonizing design, we're looking at the invention of design systems in an area or profession where we bring indigenous knowledge into these spaces which connects to structure. How is a community structured? How are tools invented? How do we develop forms of communication? And that's where I fit Indigenous knowledge specifically to the United States and then just trying to translate and build competency of what colonization means in a place like the United States.
Leonardo Bravo :
You’re basically talking about ancestral knowledges. This sense of connecting to a body of knowledge that's so much deeper and has a further reach than the rational Western European model of logic. One of my first interviews with Kaleidoscopic was with the designer with Ramon Tejada and we were talking about of how the Bauhaus defined a kind of western European empirical approach to modernist design, but instead how to flip that and think about modernist design from a multiplicity of perspectives, instead of this one singular thing.
Sadie Red Wing :
Yes, being in a place like North America in 2024, I feel like there's so much international diversity and everybody who's bringing in those identities, their timelines of colonization are different. So sometimes I feel like just generally, we're not all on the same page on historical timelines. So in trying to understand various timelines or time points in history, just reminding folks that we're in the continent of North America and we've only experienced colonization, like two and a half times in comparison to other identities globally. So yeah that awareness of thinking about if someone is bringing in multi historical timelines.
Sadie Red Wing :
Of multiple times being colonized. And it may not necessarily connect with the indigenous people, indigenous United States. 'cause we're still recovering from that initial colonization, and we're getting into another one with tech. I can understand when we get into conversations of diverse identities having conversations around decolonization, it probably depends on just the historical timeline or the ancestry that everybody is bringing in. Just everyone's timeline is just different. So I think we're still trying to gather and grasp of the first colonization, we're still feeling it, but now we're going into colonizing round two.
Leonardo Bravo :
So let's talk a little bit about some specific projects. And I was really taken by ounchage and I thought that it was so beautifully described on the website. If you can share with us your thinking and the outlining of this project.
Sadie Red Wing :
Yeah, absolutely. So, the ounchage it's an app. So it's a prototype, it's on the website and it's my thesis from North Carolina State. As a designer, at a place like NC State where we learn how to design for future trends, I really had to think specifically about leaving with something that could launch me into area where we might need designers specifically for indigenous communities. One thing that I experience is that the general public of the United States, Canada, and even Mexico, people don't have the competency to really see indigenous nations as governments. So for example, like if I feel like folks don't recognize me as a Dakota or Lakota citizen and I question like, why? I still have to refer to myself as Native American, First Nations indigenous, because folks don't know the nation of the Dakota or the Lakota.
Leonardo Bravo :
And I think it relates to what you were saying about governance of place but also the erasure of place and histories.
Sadie Red Wing :
Yeah. So in thinking about visuals, if I feel invisible, the answer to creating a visual language is gonna come through the visual designer, the visual communicator. So I was going in the realm of how can I visually communicate myself as a citizen of my Dakota nation? And that led me into thinking about designing for a nation, designing for nationality, specifically, not necessarily for culture. But particularly looking at nationality. So if I'm going to distinguish myself as a nation from the other indigenous nations, I gotta have my visual language. Meaning, how do you know that I'm different than Navajos? Or how do you know that I'm different than Seminoles or Cherokee? And it's just building that visual literacy in thinking in context about this place North America. If you can't recognize my language, if you can't recognize how we express ourselves as a nation then we're just gonna have to build that visual literacy for non indigenous folks.
Sadie Red Wing :
The starting point would be, how can I have a novice graphic designer get the visual language into their hands? They don't necessarily need to be designing for government they just need to know that our forms of symbolism are forms of writing. They look different, they're distinct and different than any other regions. I'm from the Dakotas, I'm from the Grasslands, and I'm from the Great Plains. This is how we look different than those on the coast, different than those on the Rocky Mountains, different than those in the Gulf of Mexico. The exciting and beautiful thing that I was hoping to build with that shape application, that prototype, just translates to shapes working with it. It's just getting just symbols into somebody's hands. They don't need to know every single definition. A really interesting project at NC State was just getting the symbols into my Lakota Graphic designer hands.
Leonardo Bravo :
How has it evolved? And have you used those tools, either in your teaching or in other ways?
Sadie Red Wing :
I will say that it's still in prototype form and you can't buy the app just yet. But again, I want to provide the opportunity and what I utilize that thesis mostly is for students particularly more POC students of color. They're bringing in maybe visual languages that professors may not recognize or be able to translate. So I use it to position questions, such what does, what does graphic design research look like? With the idea of getting students thinking into a prototype form but then also kind of setting the framework for that research.
Sadie Red Wing :
If I'm working with a visual language or a form of writing that's older than the printing press then I might have to use a different framework. So then that transitions into how we might connect on the framework of traditional ecological knowledge. If I'm bringing symbolism that reflects the land that visually communicates me, the way that is done might be actually older than the practice of the printing press. And that comes from an identity that has much longer timelines and longer histories. So I feel that in areas like modernist design and the Bauhaus, those frameworks just don't fit and there's a little bit of a disconnect there. So again, the app is useful as an example of what research looks like when you're working with cultures and identities that folks are just not familiar with.
Leonardo Bravo :
You are sourcing such deep symbol systems. I mean you're talking about time and space and a non linear sense of time that's so much deeper than most European visual languages that have been codified. And there's also the relationship to embody something so profound as ecology through visual symbols.
Sadie Red Wing :
Or even, I feel like it's more useful now, meaning that it's taken a good 10 years to get some representation of indigenous people into movies, films, fashion, just to get us up to par with everybody. But now we have issues like climate change initiatives and businesses, and institutions, and universities turning away from DEI and moving into sustainability. So then, how do we stop wasting resources, how do we live more equally? Yeah. So that's all indigenous, man, <laugh>
Leonardo Bravo :
Sadie as you said, more recently there has been a shift in terms of positionality for Indigeneity within the media and films and representation. How does that play with you and how much further do you feel like it needs to go?
Sadie Red Wing :
So there's a lot of excitement and there's a lot of motivation in a sense of thinking about where indigenous knowledge, indigenous designers are gonna be super useful. Like you said, everything comes from the ancestral knowledge and we are the caretakers of the land. Much of it has to do with how we can be mindful that we're not being harmful or exploiting resources and have that indigenous expertise for these elements.
Bring in that sense of expertise for design thinking when it comes to be sustainable. It might seem a little bit outdated, but again, we are valid. And when it comes into research and taking into account our history and experience and what it's like to not have our resources and our struggles. In a way we're here to remind folks to make some better decisions. And also for indigenous youth, how can we propel them to go to design school where they're wanting to code, they're wanting to be into positions of confidence and achievement. Where they can see themselves on the screen but also see professors like them. Now that creates motivation! You know, reviving culture. So I'm optimistic and I have a beautiful feeling that the work that I'm doing is gonna influence others that are coming up behind me. I feel like my job is just to build those competency levels, because when more indigenous designers come into this place, more people will be responsive, and more people will have an understanding of what they can achieve.
Leonardo Bravo :
So speaking of youth, what were some of your own inspirations coming up? Through your upbringing, your family, or later on with education and or specific mentors or moments that inspired you and pulled you forward.
Sadie Red Wing :
So just growing up I was interested in the same thing other kids were interested in the nineties. I wanted to be on MTV, coding MySpace skins, I wanted clothing lines, I wanted to put stickers on everything that I own. But my leaning to indigenous artists that were making snowboarding or surfing or just anything that looked cool just wasn't there. And I think even at that early age, I kind of knew that I needed to make it myself.
Sadie Red Wing :
I wanted to be in that creative field but familiar pop culture, mainstream elements. And once I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts and then I was part of a campus culture immersed by indigenous creatives that was my first time seeing the mesh between traditional culture and contemporary art. So graffiti, but graffiti with indigenous languages. Also traditional pottery pieces or basket work or bead works that reflects more of a pop art sensiblity. That was my first time seeing like these two things working together.
Sadie Red Wing :
It was my culture plus adding themes or layers that weren't necessarily culturally specific. And bringing all those drives together as an undergrad student I felt I was more of an artist with the opportunity to experiment and explore. When I left tribal college and went to the masters program at NC State, it felt that I was leaving family, I was leaving community. I was leaving a safe space. So that was the drive to start thinking more about research.
How can I utilize my feelings from tribal college into more of research based practice and space and thinking at a much larger level. So thinking about what indigenous sovereignty means in terms of design. And thinking about areas of need and supply and demand. There's a huge demand for indigenous graphic designers. We got all these tribal governments. We are almost 600 indigenous nations!
Sadie Red Wing :
The opportunity is there for 600 designers. But can we name 600 indigenous designers? So we need the supply. So I think that's why I went into the teaching field to build up cohorts of students educated to go work in these larger design professions. And that's my goal. That's kind of my lifetime goal to launch a curriculum based education where someone can leave with a degree and go design for indigenous governments.
Leonardo Bravo :
You're leveling the field that way! Building to scale. One more project that I really wanted to touch on. Fuck the Stereotype, Revitalizing Indigenous Perspective in Design. Can you drop some knowledege on that?
Sadie Red Wing :
Again when I came out of NC State, I'm a little angsty, I'm fired up. I'm tackling all these challenges of trying to navigate my knowledge into this tech and design space. So I would say, F the Stereotype, it's a public presentation and I've been super fortunate, super blessed to share that presentation across the world. I never would've thought of that. But some of that frustration just came out of what it feels like to be under represented or not being heard. So just tactics, like I'm gonna put the word into that presentation because someone's gonna listen to it.
Sadie Red Wing :
And by using that title it gets you to come and pay attention to what I'm sharing. Also in 2016 people were still talking circles around sports mascots that denigrated indigenous folks and cultures. Like the Washington R word. Now they're the Commanders but they haven't dropped their mascot yet. And the Cleveland Indians haven't dropped their mascot yet. So as a designer and educator I continue to question, what are people not grasping? Like, what are people not understanding? And maybe they just really have zero clue of what an indigenous person is.
Sadie Red Wing :
My goal for that public presentation is just really just breaking it down, talking about graphic design and talking about visual communication. If you're still relying on this imagery and having to explain side slide by slide, like why? My effort is to try to explain to you why this particular image hurts. It doesn't work, it's harmful. And basically trying to point out how to move away from these visual stereotypes that have nothing to do with indigeneity for things like celebrating Indigenous People's Day or Native American heritage month. To have these holidays and meaningful recognitions you need authentic and true visual communication that is culturally specific to indigenous nations.
Leonardo Bravo :
Sadie, what is inspiring you right now and also completely outside of it, what is giving you pause? Recognizing that we are living in such urgent and fragmented times.
Sadie Red Wing :
I’m gonna do my best to flesh out some of these really deep thoughts. In regards to the motivation. We just need to archive. I think the challenge right now is people are on board with DEI or inclusivity and they're open to looking for indigenous designers or artists, but we just don't have a good system of searching and archiving this information. Right now, I still feel like it's word of mouth. But I think in terms of inspirations we have the technology to do it, we just don't have the capacity of professional workers to build out some of the software. And I know they're out there. We're just not brought together in a hub just yet. Like, we don't have a council right now of indigenous designers.
Sadie Red Wing :
But we need those areas of archives and search engines. And right now thinking of graphic design, a people's archive, a beautiful archive. And I would like something like that to search indigenous designers specifically. Also knowing that everyone's probably bringing in ecological knowledge into some form of design or art. And I feel like that needs its own archive of its own. Part of the reasoning of needing an archive or just needing any form of data sovereignty, is seeing where we're moving in the future, from this point forward. And thinking about, lastly, my grandmother as a main inspiration and that generation of our grandmothers.
A lot of inspiration I get is from my grandmother and carrying on her story, carrying on her wisdom, and then now I'm in spaces that she would never have been able to enter because of racism and marginalization. So now that I can be in a place where I'm carrying on her legacy that's super motivating also and beautiful to think about.
Sadie Red Wing :
But some fears that I have is that the indigenous population is so low. And this is especially worrying in relation to voting. You look at any data visualization and the specifics of population and we barely get to 3%. So if our population is so low, we have lost so much through genocide and cultural erasure. We don't have a lot of data. We don't have a lot of resources that authentically speak to the sovereignty of these nations.But that's my fear, is that vulnerable folks that don't have the competency level to gain equal footing and representation of indigeneity.
Sadie Red Wing :
Also folks are fearing AI as another colonizer of indigeneity. They're gonna see something outputted from AI and that they can't decipher. So those are the questions that I'm like, oh man, I'm not ready for them, but I know that I'm gonna get confronted or that I'm gonna have to give some type of response when these questions as they continue to come up.
Leonardo Bravo :
What are some words of advice you would give to your younger self with the knowledge you have now?
Sadie Red Wing :
So for my younger self, I knew at a very young age that I was unique. Unique in a sense of I just had different interests than maybe some of my peers.
And what I mean by more unique interests that maybe at a young age like 13, like I probably shouldn't have been listening to the music that I was listening to or trying to dress older. And also that I was really athletic, so I was really into sports and I was pretty open and I was pretty confident about expressing like, I'm different.
I was pretty confident and charismatic as a child. So talking to that young adult, I would tell them to continue to build on that confidence and because I always remember in times when I get nervous going into a classroom or about to get on stage for a public presentation, is to smile <laugh>.
Sadie Red Wing :
And be yourself. Admit when you don't know something. So I feel like I had to remind myself that often you don't know everything. Be open to ask questions, admit when you don't know something, and just smile and be yourself. And just thinking about little Sadie, young Sadie, stay confident, stay curious, stay respectful, and stay humble.
Just keep your confidence up and just keep your humbleness up and it'll take you a long way. Learn something new every day. Even now in the world of design, I'm still learning different perspectives and I'm still taking things in.
Leonardo Bravo :
Well, Sadie, this has been such a treat. I so appreciate the opportunity to have a chat. Next time you're in New York stop by at MoMA and we can meet up in person. This would be wonderful.
Sadie Red Wing :
Absolutely. Again, I never been to MoMA yet. I still got a lot to explore in New York. I've only been to New York City once, so for sure. But again, absolute pleasure. Appreciate the invite. I got a chance to see some of the previous interviews so great to be a part of the Kaleidoscopic community. So thank you.
For more information: www.sadieredwing.com
IG: @sadieredwing