NEW YORK–The legacy of eight generations of Tuscarora Indian Nation music will resound at the October 21st Center-Shift Conference of AF3IRM, an organization of transnational women, with the participation of Pura Fe, renowned singer, composer and lap key guitarist.
Ms. Pura Fe’s music was once conferred by the Academie Charlos Gros of France with the “Best Global Album” award and she was named best female artist by the Native American Music Award. Her most recent composition was the song for the Idle No More Movement, the First Nations movement which has gone global in its scope and influence.
Ms. Fe combines artistry with advocacy for rights of native Americans and indigenous peoples. In 2014, she was part of the Honor The Earth; Love Water Not Oil tour with Winona LaDuke to stop the Enbridge Expansion and tar sands and fracking pipelines.
She will present an annotated performance at the AF3IRM’s Center-Shift II: Roots and Routes, contributing both her artistry and her wisdom toward a new direction for the women’s movement. Though raised in New York City, where she was involved with the American Indian Community Center, Ms. Fe will join the Conference from Saskatchewan, Canada, where she has been residing recently.
Ms. Fe’s lifework dovetails into AF3IRM’s current concerns regarding the foundational ideas of US feminism. “The entire purpose of my life is the regeneration of traditional music, clothing, instruments and other ‘art forms’ in a contemporary tribal world. The traditional then becomes the contemporary and the cycle merely continues,” she explained in an interview.
The Roots and Routes gathering will be the second of AF3IRM’s “harvest of ideas, strategies and tactics” toward a shifting of the concerns of the women’s movement and the centering of the needs and visions of women of color. Held only every two years, the October 21st Conference will be a whole day affair, starting at 9 am and lasting to late afternoon. Plenary sessions are held in the morning while six workshops will fill the afternoon.
The Conference will be held at the Center for Social Innovation, 601 West 26th Street Suite #325, New York NY 10001 (cross-street 11th Avenue).
A sliding registration fee is asked of those who wish to participate. Registration is online at http://bit.ly/af3rr17. The registration fee includes a digital copy of papers and minutes of the workshop discussion, as well as resolutions. Lunch will also be available for those on full registration fees. For further information, please contact [email protected]. — ###