"Indiginerds" showcase Native influences on pop culture at Ani-Noquisi (Star Nation) Exhibit
- Lo Frisby
- Jun 20, 2023
- 5 min read
On June 3, Prescott's Museum of Indigenous People hosted its opening reception for Ani-Noquisi/ Star Nation, a one-of-a-kind exhibit that showcases Native American influences, perspectives and artwork in relation to popular culture.
From the museum:
A little Myth-Busting:
Opening Reception
The event's opening reception featured a talk by special guests Duane Koyawena and Joe Mastroianni, the creative team behind "Hopi R2", a full-sized replica of the famed Star Wars droid, R2-D2, decorated with Hopi designs.
Hopi R2 made its first appearance at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff for the Force is With our People exhibit in 2019.
Mastroianni, who is an electrical engineer by trade, was compelled to build the droid when his wife, MNA's Director of Public Engagement Kristan Hutchison described the exhibit to him during the planning stages.
Regarding the unit's unique design, Mastroianni joked "if (R2) were painted (the traditional colors), he would've eventually ended up back by the water heater in my garage."
After a year's work of painstakingly building the fully-functioning droid from scratch, Mastroianni passed the reins to Koyawena, who took on the responsibility of painting.
Koyawena described how his vision for the unit's design, which is based on Hopi pottery, first came about one evening at Mastroianni's house:
"(Mastroianni) brought out the dome (headpiece); it was just bare aluminum. He was carrying it like a bowl. In Hopi we have a dish called Nöqkwivi, it's usually presented during ceremonies; it's white corn with meat, very good stuff. So I asked Joe if he could make the head spin around without any wires getting tangled...so if you look around at Hopi pottery you have these (decorative) bands...so that was my idea to have these bands consistently spin with Hopi designs."
Since The Force is With Our People, Hopi R2 has been making the rounds to schools and museums across Arizona and the Southwest and traveling as far as California.
"(R2) was with the Force is With Our People about 6 months, but in my head I kept thinking that it's going to do more than just that exhibit...I kept telling Joe, we're going to take you places and we're going to be able to talk to kids about engineering, and the robotics and the talks of failure and struggle to really pursue it to something really neat and happy and fun. And then the artwork, talking about the history a little more and just those kinds of things. And that's kind of what it's been since," Koyawena said.
Koyawena explained he has habit of turning his ambitions into reality, and his ultimate goal with R2 is to eventually join the ranks of fellow droid builders at the Star Wars Celebration droid march.
"One way or another," he said of the idea, of which he is currently musing over possible fundraising avenues.
"When we go to places, people say they've only seen R2 on social media, they haven't seen it in person. Anything you see in person is a lot different than on the screen; the reaction is always positive."
Additional exhibit contributors present
Following the presentation, visitors were encouraged to wander about the museum and interact with some of the exhibit's various artists and contributors, which included the museum's executive director Manuel Lucero (Cherokee), operations support clerk Melanie Bernal (Hia-Ced O’odham) and trustee Joshua Ballze (Hia-Ced O’odham).
A self-described "Indiginerd", Lucero described the freedom he finds practicing a unique form of cosplay which fuses "culture with pop culture", i.e traditional Native regalia with Star Wars attire.
"(At first) I was really afraid to do it because someone's always going to say something about appropriation, or using things out of context," he said.
"Duane was doing the same thing, where he was painting Hopi symbols on R2. We had to go ask people. So once I saw that other Natives were doing that mashup, I was like, 'I've been thinking about doing that-I'm doing that!'"
When it comes to cosplay and other forms of contemporary Native culture, Lucero emphasized that contrary to some of the long-perpetuated stereotypes, "Native people are doing everything everybody else is doing."
Lucero explained that the Cherokee word Ani-Noquisi (Star Nation or Star People) has a double meaning, and can be interpreted in much the same way as the Star Wars movies.
"The beings that we see in the night sky, we refer to them as the Star Nation. We talk about the animals, the Buffalo Nation, the Women's Nation...living beings. But this title has two meanings, not unlike in Star Wars...in Return of the Jedi is it talking about Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi, he's bringing it back? Or is it that Anakin Skywalker is no longer Darth Vader, and has come back to become the Jedi he used to be? It has a double meaning. Our name has a double meaning as well. Ani-Noquisi. But we also have movie stars. And we also have stars that are heroes to us in Indigenous culture. How many of you folks know that we have indigenous people up in the International Space Station right now?"
Exploring the roots of Native influences in modern pop culture
At the Sci-Fi wall, I sat down with movie industry artist Joshua Ballze, whose work has been featured in multiple motion pictures, as well as the SyFy series Fangasm.
Ballze's enthusiasm for art extends well beyond the visual and delves deeply into the historical and philosophical.
Ballze described the backstory behind his two visually-striking posters, which depict the 1980s animation characters Blackstar & BraveStarr, respectively:
"Blackstar was kind of the prototype for He-Man. It was done by the same company, Filmation. Basically (Blackstar) was an Indigenous astronaut that crash landed on a planet and found a sword of power...originally Blackstar was supposed to be African American and at the time during the 80s, they weren't sure if a production company led by an African American character would be successful, so they kind of made him racially ambiguous and he then became Native American, so we highlight this because this is one of the few representations we get of Indigenous people in the Sci Fi genre during the 80s.
"BraveStarr broke a lot of stereotypes because not only was he openly Indigenous, he was a leader of a Western which was unheard of; during the 80s Westerns were dominated by Caucasian protagonists. And if you did have an Indigenous person, they were either the enemy or they were mystical shaman, or they were kind of a sidekick like Tonto in the Lone Ranger... so to have him as a lead in a Western-themed anything was groundbreaking."
Ballze described the 80s as the beginning of the Sci Fi genre's opening of its proverbial doors to Native Americans. On the other hand, he said the genre has "taken and taken from our culture."
Adorning the walls of the exhibit are startling side-by-side comparisons of artworks of major motion pictures, most notably Star Wars, and their Native American counterparts. Though the designs are not exact copies, it's not difficult to see the resemblances.
"Basically, we're showing people where a lot of this inspiration is coming from," Ballze said. "It's cool to have all this representation and Star Wars is something a lot of Indigenous people are geared towards; we're able to take that piece of our culture and integrate it into our own lexicon. It's cool and I really dig it.
"We wanted people to see and learn and educate and just kind of like, 'wow', look at something that's been around for like 40 years, in a whole new perspective and that's a really cool thing... the fact that we can dictate our stories now, tell them on our own, and even be creative with it...that only further perpetuates that movement of like, we're still here.
"We're like, 'they're not going to stop taking stuff from us, so we can actually at least do our own spin on things.' We've had enough people tell our stories for us. We can actually tell our stories now, because now we have a bigger soapbox to do that, which I think is really important."
Story & images copyright Lo Frisby 2023.
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