New Red Order postponed a big exhibition originally slated for this summer at Detroit’s MOCAD while the museum investigated allegations of a toxic workplace, including racism.
There’s still an opportunity to see work from the self-described “public secret society” led by three Indigenous artists, including brothers Zack and Adam Khalil, who are Ojibwe and grew up in northern Michigan, and Jackson Polys, who is Tlingit from Alaska.
New Red Order will screen two of its films — Never Settle: Calling In and INAATE/SE/, a trippy documentary of the Anishinaabe-Ojibwe community where the Khalils grew up in Sault Ste. Marie — as part of the University of Michigan’s Penny Stamps Speaker Series.
New Red Order will present the films at 8 p.m. on Friday via a webcast, and the films will be available to watch online for three weeks afterward. More information is available at pennystampsevents.org and dptv.org/pennystamps.
Jova Lynne, MOCAD’s Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator, tells Metro Times that the museum hopes to be able to show the postponed New Red Order exhibition. To that end, she says the museum is still working with New Red Order, as well as local Indigenous organizers. One of the issues is drafting a “land acknowledgement,” or a formal statement recognizing the Indigenous people who originally inhabited the land.
The concept has become increasingly popular in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in recent years, with school days, meetings, and even hockey games beginning with a land acknowledgment statement.
The practice is gaining popularity in the United States.
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This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2020.
