Bio
Amber Starks (aka Melanin Mvskoke) is an Afro Indigenous (African-American and Native American) advocate, organizer, cultural critic, decolonial theorist, and budding abolitionist. She is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is also of Shawnee, Yuchi, Quapaw, and Cherokee descent. Her passion is the intersection of Black and Native American identity. Her activism seeks to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multidimensional identities of Black and Native peoples through discourse and advocacy around anti-Blackness, abolishing blood quantum, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty. She hopes to encourage Black and Indigenous peoples to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles. She ultimately believes the partnerships between Black and Indigenous peoples (and all POC) will aid in the dismantling of anti-blackness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, globally. She earned a Bachelor’s of Science in General Science (emphasis in Biology and Anthropology) from the University of Oregon. Her pronouns are she/her.
Statement
As an Afro-Indigenous (Black and Native American) advocate, I use whatever mediums at my disposal to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multi-dimensional identities of Black and Native peoples, and to encourage Black and Indigenous relatives (globally) to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles. While not formally trained as an artist, and as someone who is still unsure about the proper label of “artist,” I can acknowledge that art is in me and that through my artwork it has the power to disrupt the status-quo, to refuse subjugation, and to provoke the oppressed into recalling that we are more brilliant than our oppressors. All my work- advocacy, writing, speaking, community-building, and even art- is rooted in the notion that our inheritance is neither dispossession nor destruction, but instead Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty!
Describe the artwork you would create or show for this exhibit and how it fits in our theme:
My piece is titled: "Little One, Black and Red." It's a mixed media piece (line work plus beading on canvas). It's a self-portrait dedicated to my little self who doubted both her Blackness and her Nativeness throughout her life. It is a gift to her to encourage her to keep going because one day, she will know herself and be comfortable in her own skin, and will one day be proud of her story. It also a love note to all Afro-Indigenous/Black Native relatives of the past, present, and future who have or will struggle with their existence. I believe this piece is in line with your question of, "How can we lovingly honor our ancestors, heal generational traumas, and preserve culture in the modern world?", because it is a reminder to Black Native/Afro-Indigenous relatives that we have always belonged. In Black communities and in Native communities. In the past, in the present, and in the future. That there is ultimately no conflict in our blood. That we never have to choose or pick a side. That we get to be both Black and Native. And that both of our peoples have navigated and overcome unimaginable odds, resisted and refused the most brutal forms of subjugation, and have still managed to created beauty from ashes. Thus, there is no reason for us to be ashamed of either our Blackness or Nativeness. It is gives us permission to exist and to show up fully, as our whole selves.