Camille E. Acey

A new season and lots to be grateful for. It was sorta hard to whittle down my list!

Indigenous Genius: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Broken Boxes Podcast, and Mato Wayuhi

A few years ago, a savvy little algorithm introduced me to the genre busting work of indigenous sculptor/media maker/artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) (and I gave thanks for him in this December 2022 post). Having long been an acolyte of afrofuturism, it was cool to see someone doing native futurism. From that initial touch, I somehow found out that he’d done a podcast with Reservoir Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Mvskoke), and it turned out to be a multi-year series called The Long Con, produced by Cannupa’s amazing partner Ginger Dunnill for her Broken Boxes podcast/ audio project.

Soooo, now I’ve become a loyal fan of Broken Boxes (seriously, listen to this amazing episode from Standing Rock water protectors action), and from there I learned about Mato Wayuhi (Oglala Lakota), an actor, rapper, musician who was the composer for Reservoir Dogs. Mato just released his 3rd album Stankface Standing Soldier and I CAN’T STOP LISTENING TO IT. I give the whole album a full listen at least twice a day. I listen in the shower, in bed, on bike rides. Endlessly! It is fully my summer soundtrack. It touches on class, race, grief, queerness, addiction, heartbreak, oh so many things. And if you listen to Mato’s Broken Boxes episode first, it will give you insight into all the elements that he pulled together to create that masterpiece.

So shouts out to that algo and all the different directions it took me!

Two Twos Podcast

On the heels of Ghana’s parliament passing a law criminalizing homosexuality, I went searching all over the place for people who were raising awareness and fighting against this and I stumbled upon the FANTASTIC Two Twos Podcast which are two Ghanaian-British masc lesbians talking about work, life, sex, and everything in between with NO HOLDS BARRED. I am smitten by these two smart and brash women and so excited they plan to do a live show in NYC soon. YAY!

Hospicing Modernity

Since I started facilitating the Stewarding Loss Composting and Hospicing community, a lot of great people have reached out to connect with me. One such person hipped me to the excellent book by Vanessa Andreotti called Hospicing Modernity. It is a complex and very mindbending book about the times we are living in and the work some of us might be able to do to hold space for ongoing and impending collapse.

It is NOT a quick or easy read (full disclosure: I am still worming my way through it), and she spends a good chunk of the book discouraging people from even reading it because she knows it will piss most people off. But for the few she doesn’t scare away, I think there is bold, courageous, frightening, and thrilling work ahead!