This years Keynote Address will be given by Murielle Borst-Tarrant from the Kuna-Rappahannock Nations. She is an author, playwright, director, producer, cultural artist, educator, and human rights activist. She has a BFA in Fine Arts from Long Island University. She comes from a long line of cultural activism with her family's theater company the world famous Spiderwoman Theater.
Her non-fictional work is published by Miami University in Oxford Ohio on the Spiderwoman Theater methodology. She works on the deconstructing of methods of the arts in Native communities in urban areas across the country, Canada, and in the New York City education system. She also consults many urban and non-urban universities on the development on Native theater programming.
Nominated for the Rockefeller grant in 2001, won a Native Heart Award and was the only Native American Women to have her work to be selected by the Olympic Games in Sydney Australia at the Sydney Opera House for her one woman show "More than Feathers and Beads".
For four years she served as the Special Assistant and liaison to Tonya Gonnella Frichner the North American Regional representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples.
Murielle as a director has directed Muriel Miguel in her one woman show "Red Mother" at LaMaMa and across Canada. She is also Founder and editor in chief of Eastcoastnative.com an electronic magazine that addresses the artistic, political, social and economic Indigenous issues in urban areas on the east coast, including Canada.
Murielle’s new novel "The Star Medicine" is the first installment in the Star Song Carrier Series. The novel can be purchased in electronic format through the following:
Apple’s iBookstore
Amazon
Barnes & Nobles
Sony eReader
Please visit Murielle’s official website for more information:
