As a closing event for our current exhibition, “Ben Altman: I Own This Stolen Land” we welcome poets Kahsenniyo Kick and Kenzie Allen to perform at ArtRage. Footage from their 2023 performance in Danby, NY (on the site of the “Stolen Land” project) has been on view as part of this exhibition.  Sarah Buffet, former Project Manager of the Gayogohó:nǫˀ Learning Project will lead a discussion after the poetry reading.

Kahsenniyo Kick is a multi disciplinary artist from the Mohawk Nation, Wolf clan from Six Nations territory. Her personal story is one of great struggle and triumph. She draws on her personal experience of teenage motherhood, intergenerational trauma, indigenous resistance and mothering through colonialism to create her art. Kahsenniyo is also a survivor of Forced Sterilization and an advocate against this ongoing practice in Canada. Kahsenniyo is also a survivor of Indian Day Schools. She has spent almost two decades on the front lines of numerous Indigenous resistance actions and has been a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights, climate change, youth, women and LGBTQ communities. Through the magic of art and poetry she has been working tirelessly to break cycles for herself, her children and community. Overall her art aims to educate non-indigenous people about the struggles, challenges and realities facing Indigenous people. As well her work attempts to create moments of understanding, connection and healing for Indigenous People. She is a beautiful storyteller that transforms her deep love for her community and people into her passionate performances and art work. 

Kahsenniyo began preforming her poetry professionally in 2008 and has remained committed to utilizing her poetry as a transformative tool for social change since then. She has delivered countless performances to audiences throughout Canada.

Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist, and the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, an inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award in poetry, broadside prizes from Sundress Publications and Littoral Press, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Writers’ Foundation, and In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poets). A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, Boston Review, Narrative magazine, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Best New Poets, Poets.org, and other venues. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.

Kenzie’s most recent project is a multimodal book of poetry and creative ethnography that incorporates intergenerational histories and diasporic movements, Haudenosaunee traditions, and archival materials of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School. She received her PhD in English & Creative Writing from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, her MFA in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and her BA in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at York University, where her research centers on documentary and visual poetics, literary cartography, and the enactment of Indigenous sovereignties through creative works. Her newest collection of poetry, Cloud Missives, from Tin House will be released on August 20, 2024.