Racial Equity

From Mellon Foundation: "Master carvers are working with the Sealaska Heritage Institute to create the Totem Pole Trail—ten sculptures celebrating Indigenous tribes who had been historically excluded from Juneau's monuments. In a sense, it was a controversial statue of William Seward that kickstarted Kootéeya Deiyí, the Totem Pole Trail in Juneau, Alaska."

"Seward was the United States Secretary of State who brokered the purchase of the Alaska territory in 1867, nearly a century before it became a state. His bronze likeness in the capital city gave Rosita Worl, a member of the Tlingit tribe, a big idea."

From The Art Newspaper: "In the wake of a global pandemic and concurrent worldwide reckoning with institutional racism, two illuminating studies on the state of cultural heritage at large have just been released. The Mellon Foundation’s latest “Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey” and the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums’ “2022 Art Museum Trustee Survey” both itemise and quantify the experiences of art museum workers and board members, painting a picture of a sector slowly bouncing back from significant Covid-19 job losses with a renewed focus on diversity."

"A new virtual event will bring together Indigenous designers, artists, illustrators, and other practitioners to discuss the challenges and triumphs involved in designing typefaces for Native language," said Julianne Aguilar for Hyperallergic. "Co-curated by Ksenya Samarskaya and Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation), Ezhishin is the first-ever conference on Native North American typography."

"Today, Native Voices Rising (NVR) announced $3.5 million in grants to 114 Indigenous and Native-led advocacy and organizing groups. This year’s grant awardees work on an array of critical issues, including the promotion of Indigenous worldview, addressing trauma created by the U.S. Indian Boarding School policy, climate and water justice, and preventing incarceration in Native communities, to name a few."

"From Ferguson to Minneapolis, protests against racist policing have been catalyzed by videos of the brutality being spread on social media." On a recent episode of the Slate Race and Identity Podcast, "Jason Johnson sits down with Dr. Ruha Benjamin to talk about her book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and where social sciences and technology intersect."

"To cultivate means to acquire or develop, and to harvest means to collect or obtain for a future use," said Creatives Empowered. "Since the summer of 2020, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) has become ‘top of mind’ throughout the cultural sector, and a priority in funding. Who is cultivating and harvesting EDI, and the money that’s available for it And is the equity-seeking community actually being empowered in the process?"

"You’ve probably heard one. You may have helped craft one. A land acknowledgment is quickly becoming de rigueur among mainstream cultural and arts institutions. An official will stand at a podium and announce: This building is situated on the unceded land of the XYZ people. As if those people are not still here. As if this all happened in the past," said Joseph Pierce for Hyperallergic. "He will breathe deeply and continue: We pay homage to the original stewards of these lands. The audience will nod in agreement. As if homage were the same as returning stolen land."

"A land acknowledgment is not enough."

From BlackPittsburgh: "Justin Laing, the Principal at the anti-racist leadership and strategy firm Hillombo, is not your average Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant. Prior to founding Hillombo in 2017, Laing was a senior program officer at the Pittsburgh-based The Heinz Endowments, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the U.S. focused on community building in southwestern Pennsylvania. Laing spent 11 years there. His professional trajectory in the nonprofit world presents a powerful story of dedication to the Black Pittsburgh community."

From The Giving Done Right Podcast: "Author and activist Heather McGhee joins hosts Phil Buchanan and Grace Nicolette for the fifth episode of season three of the Giving Done Right podcast. Heather provides keen insight into ‘drained pool’ politics, a core metaphor in her book, 'The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,' that reveals how the racial zero sum mindset hurts everyone.

From Nonprofit Quarterly: "I have the privilege of being interviewed by Cyndi for the [piece] 'Pro-Blackness is Aspirational.' I think that a couple of things came up for me when thinking about this one. It was like, how do you talk about the aspiration of pro-Blackness without making people feel like we’re not making any inroads right now? Or feel anxious that it’s interminable, racism is interminable?"