Evoking Ancestral Memory

Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson) is of Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, and Euro-American ancestry and is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Hinson, whose Chickasaw name Lokosh translates as “gourd,” is of the Imatapo (Their Lean-to People) house group and Kowishto’ (Panther) clan. Lokosh leads a virtual conversation on his recent culture- and language-inspired multimedia work, which negotiates the impact of COVID-19 on his positionality and creative perspective as a Nannikbi’ (Maker). A fluent speaker of the Chickasaw language and an award-winning artist, he holds a B.F.A. in Painting, an M.A. in Native American Art History, and a Ph.D. in Native Language Revitalization. He makes art on the Chickasaw Nation Reservation, Ada, Oklahoma. Royce K. Young Wolf (Eastern Shoshone, Hidatsa, and Mandan), the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Associate in Native American Art and Curation and Yale University Presidential Visiting Fellow, introduces the program and moderates the discussion. Generously sponsored by the Yale Department of the History of Art, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Yale Group for the Study of Native America, the Yale Native American Cultural Center, and the Yale University Art Gallery’s Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund.