Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 106: Rechanneling Desires for Indigeneity — with New Red Order
Speakers: Names in order of speaking
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Alex Abahmed 00:01
Hello listeners, I'm Alex Abahmed with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by core contributors of New Red Order: artists Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys. They tell the story of why and how this public secret society was formed and share some context for their Give it Back exhibit at the Audain Gallery. I hope you enjoy the episode.
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Am Johal 00:33
Hi there. Welcome to Below the Radar. Again, I'm really excited that we have New Red Order with us today. They're a public secret society of rotating membership that works to rechannel settler desires for Indigeneity into support for Indigenous futures. And with me today, I have Adam and Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys. I'm wondering if you guys can maybe just introduce yourselves a little bit and also how New Red Order formed as well.
Adam Khalil 01:03
[Introduces in Ojibwe.] My name's Adam Khalil. I'm originally from what's currently called Sault Ste. Marie Michigan, known as Bawating. I make work with Jackson and my brother, I'll let them introduce themselves.
Zack Kahlil 01:18
[Introduces in Ojibwe.] My name is Zack Khalil, I'm also based from the Bawating region currently based in Brooklyn, New York. I'm a filmmaker and artist working with New Red Order as well as some other spheres with Adam and Jackson.
Jackson Polys 01:37
[Introduces in Tlingit.] Thank you, I'm Jackson Polys. I am originally from what is currently called Alaska. I'm Tlingit on my father's side, from the Dak̲ lʼaweidí Clan of the Chilkat K̲ wáan. I grew up in Ketchikan Alaska, southeast Alaska, currently based in New York, and happy to be working alongside Adam and Zack.
Am Johal 01:57
Yes, so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how New Red Order formed, the context in which you met each other. Of course, Zack and Adam are brothers, but how you guys all formed to do this work together.
Adam Khalil 02:09
I met Zack at a very young age.
Am Johal 02:14
[laughs] Of course,
Zack Kahlil 02:14
I think the origins of the New Red Order are a little amorphous sometimes, kind of hard to pin down. I can speak for myself, thinking about coming from more of a filmmaking background. And thinking specifically about documentary film, from an Indigenous perspective and thinking about the ways that film and the moving image has so often been used as a tool to sort of extract information from Indigenous communities through visual anthropology and ethnography, as far back is Thomas Edison and Buffalo Bill's show and going up to like Nanook of the North. Me and my brother have made our first documentary feature about the Seven Fires Prophecy, as was sort of interpreted by people in our region. And that was a really valuable and interesting experience of like, trying to reimagine what cinematic form could be from an Anishinaabe perspective. I'm thinking about ways of making movies that aren't inherently extracted, as much as that was like the impulse for this film, and we're lucky enough to be able to get it out into the world in a pretty big way, through museums and universities, I think part of that process was also disillusioning. We're just like, we're really trying to co-author our film with our community and make it in this really self-aware way. And, you know, also do tours ourselves with our own community and reservations. But kind of a big place that film was really getting out was these universities and museums and sort of non-Indigenous spheres. And we were kind of inherently still performing the role of like the Indigenous informant, giving up some information about our communities and cultures in a way that sometimes felt kind of extractive in a way that was maybe perhaps kind of unavoidable. And that got us kind of thinking more about the idea of the informant and the role of the informant, and these sort of exchanges as Indigenous artists and operating in settler-colonial spheres. I think it was around then that we met Jackson, who had some ideas he was already cooking up a little bit around the idea of informancy.
Jackson Polys 04:13
Yeah, I grew up in Alaska. My father was a Tlingit artist so I grew up performing my own Indigeneity in front of boatloads of tourists that would come in on cruise ships and perform for the Native corporation that had a tourism arm. So I felt that that was a dynamic that created a certain degree of complicity to accept that performance of Indigeneity need to try to keep one's culture alive. But I continued to feel like that was something that perhaps might be worth attempting to work through those obstructions. Because I felt that that contributed to a denial of contemporaneity, always pushing Native people into the past. So once I came to Columbia University, I started realizing that the desire for Native growth was coming as much from non-Native people wanting kind of this development. But it was also coated with a lot of self-proclaimed ignorance, and that the more one became aware of Indigenous issues, the more those people became apprehensive. So they created this obstruction to Indigenous growth. And I was thinking about how the desire for Indigeneity might be seen as problematic often and, indeed, in my hometown, there was a secret society called The Improved Order the Red Men and maybe Adam can go a little bit into that. But yeah, that was a place where I felt like if this desire for Indigeneity is seen as problematic, are there ways that it can be converted toward Indigenous futures and work past that kind of obstructive nature?
Adam Khalil 05:57
Yeah, so one of the true origins of New Red Order... uh oh I said "true"... is this actual secret society—as opposed to what we're doing which is a public secret society. It's The Improved Order of the Red Men, which is the NRO's progenitors. And The Improved Order of the Red Men and The Degree of Pocahontas are two secret societies that came to prominence with the nation of America, or the United States of America. So it's like the Boston Tea Party is like one of the first acts that colonists do to decolonize from the British, haha. And they dressed up like Mohawks or Iroquois to throw tea over. And just kind of this history that from the inception of North American nations, there's been this desire to perform Indigeneity and to take it on. The Improved Order of the Red Men itself was an actual secret society that had Theodore Roosevelt, FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt], Warren Harding,
Zack Kahlil 06:51
A few presidents, and many other influential individuals. Warren G. Harding
Adam Khalil 06:58
And they would all meet up in wigwams dressed up like Natives and have secret society, business and political dealings and meetings. So the New Red Order kind of comes out of The Improved Order of the Red Men, which is currently headquartered in Waco, Texas and still exists. But we're kind of like the Indigenous wing of The Improved Order of the Red Men and The Degree of Pocahontas.
Zack Kahlil 07:18
And yeah, that's an organization that's still going strong, as Adam was saying, you know, not as strong as it always had been, but still going strong, and had been really influential in American politics for a really long time. Kinda like the Freemasons or other such actual secret societies. And so part of our thinking with the New Red Order was that, you know, if this organization continues to exist, this desire for Indigeneity continues to exist in a way that seems like avoidable, how can we turn that into something less harmful and more useful, which is where the New Red Order comes around.
Am Johal 07:48
I'm sure you have your own secret rituals and things you take part into that keeps you inside this new order,
Adam Khalil 07:55
If you'd like to find out, please sign up at newredorder.org, or call 1-888-NEW-RED-1. Again, that's newredorder.org or 1-888-NEW-RED-1.
Am Johal 08:05
[laughs] That's fantastic.
Zack Kahlil 08:13
And one more distinction, though, it's a public secret society as opposed to a secret society. So its membership is open.
Am Johal 08:18
I used to be involved in a secret society here in Vancouver, and I can only talk about it because it no longer exists. It was a temporary one, we were the East Vancouver Social Aid and Pleasure Club and everyone put in $10 apiece, and whenever somebody was going through a hard time or financial thing, we had a pot of money to just hand to people in an envelope. There was no processor, it was just all built around trust, and it kind of ran itself for a while. And we had, you know, oaths and those types of things. And it was very East Vancouver and amateur or whatever. But it was, it's surprising when you tell people that you're in a secret society, everybody wants to be part of it.
Zack Kahlil 08:58
Which is why ours is a public secret society. So they can be a part of it.
Jackson Polys 09:04
They can be but also we found that welcome can become a warning in various instances.
Am Johal 09:11
I want to talk about some of your previous work as well. But maybe I'll actually begin with the piece that you're going to be having at the Audain Gallery on 149 West Hastings Street. By the time this episode comes out, it'll probably be around February, the show will be up from January 14th to March the 6th. And wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you're thinking through that work right now, even if you don't have it fully decided yet.
Zack Kahlil 09:37
It's getting close. Yeah, just to start we're thinking a lot about this sort of idea of land back and now that's been such a rallying cry these past few years. A lot of what the New Red Order does is take some of these political arguments or rhetoric to their logical conclusion. That's something we've been thinking about with the New Red Order for a long time, in terms of what can non-metaphorical decolonization be? Just like the repatriation of all Indigenous land and life, which kind of coincides well with this daughter movement of land back.
Adam Khalil 10:15
I think we also have always been, you know, cautiously thinking around what the repatriation of all Indigenous land means. I think for a lot of people that can have a sort of vicious ring to it, depending on how that's actually implemented, could be interpreted simply, as everybody goes back to wherever they came from. I think in another way, there's a way that we're trying to think about it a little more expensively. Yes, returning land back to Indigenous people, but then also thinking differently about ideas of property ownership, belonging, and kinship. Sort of ways of forging new forms of relationality, with each other, more reciprocal ways of relationality, that don't end up in just this reverse of what's already happened, which tends to be this really vicious, stick them. And so part of it is thinking through that but also, you know, looking around at the news, and thinking about actual examples of land repatriation that have already happened voluntarily, where it wasn't a tribe that was fighting some treaty negotiation in court or something like that. But there's all these actual examples of individuals or governments voluntarily giving land back to Indigenous communities. And there seems to be sort of an explosion of these examples in the past two or three years, just from the archive and what we've been able to find. And so part of what we're pitching in the Audain Gallery, the window display is the New Red Order realestate office, where we're highlighting examples where settlers have given land back to Indigenous people to kind of show that this call for land back isn't a lofty, unachievable, inherently bloodsoaked demand, but it's actually something that we can all act on together and that settlers already have been acting on in so many ways.
Zack Kahlil 12:02
I think part of the impulse and framing of the show is 'give it back' as opposed to 'take it back.' Which is trying to subvert a lot of antagonistic language around land back, and figuring out ways where there's already established the examples of changing relationships and dynamics that can imagine Indigenous futures and growth, as opposed to hard lining always to the almost militaristic affect of 'take it back,' or these kind of veiled threats to people who own land, because sometimes we worry that then the message doesn't get through, or the message only gets through to people who already agree with it. And usually people who agree with it aren't really in positions of power a lot of the time. So yeah, part of it, I think, is trying to make radical Indigenous politics look cute and cuddly and realistic.
Jackson Polys 12:56
And it is tricky, because we also are appreciators and adherents, to varying degrees, of radical Indigenous politics, like this idea that decolonization is not a metaphor, so it requires the repatriation of all Indigenous land and life. Then the next question is, what is that? How does one do it? And how does one convince people in power to acquiesce or relinquish their own power? And a lot of times that involves us as informants, the extension of anthropological informants, trying to work to varying degrees with institutions, within institutions from inside and outside and inside, again. Trying to find ways to allow people's desire for Indigeneity, which could be called out as problematic, to somehow extend and move into the possibility of giving back what is often termed for them as a gift that it was given to them at some point and that like, that's another discussion, which can be complicated.
Adam Khalil 13:54
Are you talking about Indian giving?
Jackson Polys 13:56
Maybe, yeah.
Am Johal 13:57
And you know, what you speak about, and there's concrete examples of that here in BC where ranchers have given back some of their land, maybe not all of it, but these examples are very concrete here. And certainly being on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh land here where there's active development, like the Squamish Sen̓áḵw development is land that they did get back from the state and they're going to be able to develop it without having to go through the city of Vancouver's planning bylaws. And people are like, you know, the traditional urban planners don't really know how to deal with that. And it's kind of amazing, and MST Development, which is the local three nations are going to be one of the biggest developers in the city in the coming decades because of the land they've been able to get back in this context from the state itself. I'm wondering you clearly have a radical analysis in the work that you do in how you frame your work, but there's also this playfulness to it. That's, I suppose an invitation in or people who might not otherwise come in as well, I'm just wondering who are the sort of theorists or artists that you are inspired by or influenced by in thinking through your own work?
Adam Khalil 15:14
Bugs Bunny is up there. [all laugh]
Am Johal 15:17
Well, I know you're in New York. So I assume you know Audra Simpson.
Jackson Polys 15:21
Yeah.
Am Johal 15:23
She's great. I love Audra Simpson.
Jackson Polys 15:26
Yeah, Audra is definitely one. For future reference, she also wrote this great piece "Why White People Love Franz Boas; or, The Grammar of Indigenous Dispossession" so that's a touchstone for us, among many other of her texts. Christopher Bracken also is an interesting and influential figure for us in different ways. He's a non-native person who wrote this book called Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy. I believe he started that book, or ideas for that book when he was living in Vancouver. So this idea of savage philosophy, this kind of racialization of attributions of belief where Native people are thought to believe in something and other people are thought to have a more developed mindset. But the way that that kind of bleeds back when poets want to create something, they want to assume the savage philosophy themselves and have access to that kind of creativity, which is also in some ways a form of [Playing] Indian, which Philip Deloria gets to in that text, and of course, and Vine Deloria and Indian Humor is always an impetus.
Adam Khalil 16:28
We're like constantly doing this kind of tug of war between Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor" and Christopher Bracken's Magical Criticism, because one is this material political analysis about how dangerous metaphor can be to slip in. And the other one's kind of about the discursive, magical potential of metaphor. But I think we're trying to oscillate between those two, like to have both of those registers, but allow those contradictions between the totality of either thought to kind of commingle and mutate hopefully.
Jackson Polys 17:01
Right, once we acknowledge this idea in Bracken's work that discourse deploys forces, and that that is something that both European descended people and North American Indigenous people might partake in and should be able to potentially without retribution, that symbols can kind of affect change in the world, as we've seen over the past couple of years, in many ways with monuments, etc, as well. So there are many different ways in which I think utilizing that text can impact and augment what I think in some ways is already in "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor," this kind of acknowledgement of the complexity of the situation, even when we want to hold the hard line, and maybe should continue to hold the hard line about what should be given back.
Am Johal 17:51
But it was either in your materials or perhaps it was a quote in an interview, I saw the use of the term critical opacity. I really liked that and I'm wondering if you can explain what you meant by that.
Adam Khalil 18:06
Opacity is the one you can see through. [All laugh] The Giuliani joke, remember? Damn I got the one-liners down today. [All laugh.]
Jackson Polys 18:20
In some ways one could draw links between critical opacity and forms of refusal that are advocated in or that are kind of described in Simpson's work, and also Glen Coulthard, this idea of the difficulty of acquiescing to recognition. I guess critical opacity, in some ways could also be aligned with this idea of the joke, where part of the joke as a form of acknowledgment, so that if we're deploying humor in what seems like satire, we're also acknowledging for us what can be an opaque situation like it can seem overwhelming, it can seem like there's no way historically, in this kind of dynamic, which has been oppressive has been able to be overcome. So if one can offer a speculative joke, then one can simultaneously draw people in where they feel like they are, like understanding that that is it ridiculous or the situation's ridiculous. It's ridiculous for them to try to get involved, but then we try to continue that and ask, like, how can you remain critical in a generative, generous way and ask people to come in with that kind of acknowledgement of the ludicrous so-called nature in this situation, and extend toward working together?
Am Johal 19:36
Yeah, Glen Coulthard and Leanne Simpson are definitely in conversation with Audra Simpson's work very, very closely. You mentioned Vine Deloria Jr. and for our audience who might not know who he is, I know that he wrote the introduction to The Fourth World, George Manuel's book, a long time ago that was just reprinted with University of Minnesota Press but wondering if you can talk a little bit about how his work influences your work.
Jackson Polys 20:01
We definitely refer to him as the godfather of Indigenous philosophy, which is kind of right. There's some amazing interviews with him on YouTube where he's just chainsmoking Pall Malls, just being such a wise, it's pretty amazing. I think one of the things that keeps coming up for me anyway, is that I study on Indian Humor, where he kind of unpacks this sort of, epistemological worldview that's shaped by humor as a way to respond to the tragedy of history. It's something that I think has been there for us to fall back to, and we're like, is this the right thing to do? Are we pushing it too far? And it's like, go back to that environment, not cool.
Zack Kahlil 20:01
Yeah, humor is a way of reasserting agency, too I think, in so many ways. Like what Jackson was getting at too, just like a way of being able to talk and communicate about an otherwise unspeakable, unknowable reality, that humor is an important way of like, cracking open that unknowableness and leaving space for people to actually communicate and contemplate, you know, different futures together.
Adam Khalil 21:09
I think maybe one thing that I find really inspiring about Vine Deloria Jr.'s legacy is he was able to like kind of morph between academia, and politics, and policy, and philosophy, and just kind of like, really seep through all those porous boundaries. And that's something that I think we're aspiring to by calling ourselves a public secret society. So it could be like a religious group, it could be a think tank, it could be a political party, I guess it could also be our collective hope.
Am Johal 21:38
Some of your work, including Informants Get Paid!, Never Settle, Culture Capture, I really enjoyed seeing the pieces I was able to and reading about the work as well. But wondering if you can talk about whether these pieces or other work that you've done together in terms of what you were trying to do with those pieces,
Zack Kahlil 21:57
I guess, maybe going back to Never Settle, which is both a recruitment video and the program—the recruitment video is like a shorter teaser and the program is a longer initiation video—those are really intended to solidify the structure of the public secret society itself and serve as a recruitment tool. The recruitment that can live online, and that, you know, really try to call people in to consider this work and some of these ideas with us. And that's sort of how the recruitment video functions: getting everybody to the same baseline level of understanding about what the New Red Order is, and what we're trying to do. And the program, I think, further complicates that a little bit, and once we have people starting to be engaged, it gives us space and time to like, really dig into some of these ideas, in sometimes really playful or other times really serious ways, of trying to get new recruits or accomplices on the same page, same starting point. And that's sort of the intention of those pieces.
Adam Khalil 22:58
There's this funny role that I keep thinking that a lot of Indigenous art falls into, which is having to be pedagogical. And so that's something I think we've sort of accepted and leaned into. But then, you know, it's like, is the teacher on acid or something? We're just like, figuring out like how to use that position as an informant in a way that actually can promote Indigenous futures as opposed to just participating in extractive knowledge.
Zack Kahlil 23:24
Because then people also engage with Indigenous art and expect it to serve a pedagogical function that sort of already know what they're getting into and already know what to expect a little bit. And I think part of what we want to do is like, keep people guessing, and keep them on their toes and like, keep them thinking in ways that they weren't thinking before. And I think part of taking on that pedagogical function so directly in these sort of recruitment forums, is we also have the Never Settle activity book, which is like, you know, sort of children's educational book for adults, that there's a way of sort of engaging with people and getting them a little bit off balance, a little bit off center, in a way that they can hopefully think through something that hopefully, they're probably already quite familiar with, but it in a different way. And I think the humor and that sort of surrealness of some of this is a way to push that.
Jackson Polys 24:11
And I think formally, you know, the way that film was made out and involving multiple forms of citation that can relate back to Indigenous storytelling or like insertion of bracketed moments, throughout the film, I think also, like Zack and Adam were saying, this idea of education, which is now a current commodity, and us feeling like a lot of times we have to do so much anyway, with regard to explaining whatever was going on, and that is often something to separate from the work so how can we then fold that in? So that the expectation is acknowledged upon the viewing of the work and kind of the ridiculous dynamic of someone telling somebody else what one should do. And I think one of the ways we have been able to find distance and play within that form, is to employ proxy so that we have others speaking for us. So that that was a dynamic that is like, we have to start to hold up intention and kind of think about alongside the viewing of the work. And I think we've tried to find multiple ways of having instances where you have to hold something in suspension while you're viewing and then the activity of that, upon viewing the work, is kind of an exercise that can potentially lead to something reconfiguring down the line.
Adam Khalil 25:26
One other thing, just to riff on that with the proxy stuff, especially in relation to the work that will be up at Audain is just like, a lot of land back stuff focuses on native or Indigenous people asking for land back. And this is very consciously taking the settler perspective on this issue. So like testimonials and quotes from people who have given the land back, and not focusing on the tribes who are receiving it, but really investigating the settlers' desires for Indigeneity and their motivations for giving it back. And trying to kind of resist or refuse, like a de facto Indigenous representation in Indigenous art. It's like also maybe sometimes more effective for like a 50 year old white guy to ask for things than it is for like a group of Native artists to ask for things, or maybe different people will listen to it, or it'll register in a different way. Sometimes I feel like people just tune it out when they hear it from a certain identity subject position, or kind of know what to expect already. But also like one of the powers of working in proxy.
Am Johal 26:28
In the process of inviting people in through your work, how do you think about setting or even if it's possible, the limits around, in the work of settlers, to support Indigenous futurities? It's one thing to invite them in, but there's tendencies of settlers to center themselves. And so how do you think that part of your work through or has it even been an issue?
Jackson Polys 26:52
I think it was like an issue prior to the formation of New Red Order, like the necessity of some kind of critical energy, that can lend to self-reflection, but then the possibility of reflexivity getting in the way, or this excess reflexively getting in the way of trying to center someone else. So I think one of the ways we've tried to do that is to describe ways one could do that, like in the program. I think it's almost always a negotiation in every conversation around what potential goals can be.
Adam Khalil 27:26
And we kind of make space for that reflexivity, in terms of like, there's kind of two tiers. And nothing that's dictated as like an absolute upon joining the New Red Order, it's all negotiable. But one level is like this level of an informant, where we first ask people to inform on their own desire for Indigeneity, that also includes Indigenous people's desire for Indigeneity, for performing that, and that's sort of like that space to allow for that self-reflective moment, or to allow people to center themselves in that. But actually getting that information out of people and hearing what they desire about Indigeneity is actually really helpful in terms of thinking about how to promote Indigenous futures. It's like a focus group or something, and basically, like reverse anthropology. But after that layer, then there's the accomplice layer, which again, along "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor," like, and also "Accomplices Not Allies," which they used to be called Indigenous Action Media Group, it's just Indigenous Action now. That text has also been really important for us in terms of this thinking, kind of like co-opting their language of 'accomplice,' that to do anything inherently decolonial would have to be against the law. And calling for accomplices instead of allies, it's a cool PDF.
Zack Kahlil 28:40
And that accomplices or people are at our side or at our backs during decolonial struggle, they're willing to kind of put it on the line. And yeah, to both Adam's Jackson's points, I think that centering of the self, and one's desire to help is something that does have to be addressed and reflected on in order to be able to move past it or move with it into something more workable for everybody. It makes me think of a line that has come up during some of this informancy to someone who's like, "you know, I know it's not about me, but for me, it is." And I think there's like a real deep truth in that unfortunately. And that to just ignore that is not going to help that person move beyond themselves. It's necessary to be able to like, reflect on that self interest in order to be able to move with that into accompliceship, that it's also sort of named in the Accomplices Not Allies zine is like one of the important things if you really want to be an accomplice is that you have to think about why you want to do that. What's your own self interest, and what's your motivation towards that? And that has to be addressed and hopefully addressed collectively in order to be able to move forward together.
Adam Khalil 29:44
We're also just trying to create a safe space for unsafe ideas.
Am Johal 29:47
[Laughs] I'm wondering what artists are you either influenced by or interested in right now that also kind of help inform your work in any way or just people that you think are doing interesting work right now that helps you think through your own practice.
Zack Kahlil 30:06
Guillermo Gómez-Peña comes to mind as one of the influences.
Adam Khalil 30:12
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco are kind of like contemporary,
Jackson Polys 30:15
I'll put my foot in my mouth for a second. Adam and Zack never like it when I mention old Jeff Koons' Remove the Guilt and Shame. But yeah, stop thinking about Jeff a little while ago, but um, it's back!
Am Johal 30:33
I'll have one last question, which is, how are you guys dealing with the pandemic? And what do you guys gonna be doing after the Audain show?
Adam Khalil 30:40
I've been wearing a mask and washing my hands. [All laugh]
Am Johal 30:44
You guys are sitting pretty close together there.
Adam Khalil 30:46
Yeah. It's been intense. I was just thinking too, the pandemic and we're working on our first big sellout show together at MoCAD, where we're kind of revising our Never Settle piece. And it was an interesting moment, where the piece talks a lot about the apocalypse and the reformation of society and all these things that are so necessary, and that we all felt were happening. To like, see it actually start to happen, it's been really intense, but also really inspiring in some ways. We've been fortunate enough to be holding it down, and okay, and our families are okay. But trying to think about the crisis is an opportunity of sorts for the sort of rhetoric that we're espousing. But yeah, easier said than done, I suppose. But I think there's definitely been more hunger for Indigenous epistemologies, even more so than there were before. And that's something that we want to think through: how to make that something actually useful for Indigenous people, as opposed to having to just move on and forget about it real quick.
Jackson Polys 31:55
And I think also through the events of the last year, we've seen examples of what appears to be increased institutional will to change. And sometimes that comes out in solidarity signaling, which can easily be called out but I think also points to realities that a lot of people, individual people working in institutions want to find some ways to make those more equitable and in ways that you know, might in some ways be at odds with radical Indigenous critiques but also can potentially be shifted by those critiques so that there's an opportunity now to kind of leverage that for positive potential change.
Am Johal 32:36
Just want to say thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. I totally love your work and look forward to seeing it at the Audain Gallery early in the new year. It'll all be up by the time this episode comes up. And thank you for taking the time to chat on Below the Radar.
Adam Khalil 32:51
Thanks so much for having us. And again, if anyone's interested, 1-888-NEW-RED-1 or www.newredorder.org
Jackson Polys 33:00
Thanks so much.
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Alex Abahmed 33:04
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with some of the minds behind New Red Order: Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys. The Give it Back exhibit is still in the Hastings Street window of the Audain Gallery at SFU Vancouver so be sure to walk by and check it out before it closes on March 6, 2021. And go to newredorder.org if you're ready to become an informant. Thanks as always for tuning in. We'll see you next time on Below the Radar.
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