In Service of Indigenous Relations

This program is part of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Global Connections series.

About the Presenter

Léuli Eshrāghi belongs to the Sāmoan clans Seumanutafa and Tautua, and lives and works in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Their practice prioritizes Indigenous, Black and Asian art, design, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices. Eshrāghi has presented major artworks at Tate Modern, Cinéma Moderne, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Galerie de l’Université de Montréal, and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, among others. Eshrāghi curated the 2024 digital screen commission by Glenn Gear, ulitsuak | marée montante | rising tide at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, TarraWarra Biennial 2023: ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili, as well as Oceanic Thinking: Season Two (2022), Mare Amoris | Sea of Love (2023-24), and How we remember tomorrow (2024) in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Queensland Art Museum.

Eshrāghi serves as Curator of Indigenous Practices at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, mentor for the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project, and member of the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Indigenous Arts committee.

Instagram: @leulieshraghi

About the Moderators

Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa and Tonga) is a curator, artist, and an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. Cocker’s artistic and intellectual kinship is rooted in her Toyebo and Dohausan family legacies of Kiowa beadwork. Her curatorial practice centers on Indigenous research methodologies prioritizing reciprocity, sustained collaboration, and tribal sovereignty. She holds a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice from Victoria University of Wellington and a Bachelor of Design from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. She currently serves as the Curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Before her appointment, Cocker served as the 2020 -2022 Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar of Indigenous Art at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is the 2021–25 Terra Foundation guest co-curator of Indigenous Art at the Block Museum of Art. She is an artist mentor for the Institute of American Indian Art’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts program.

Yvonne Tiger (Cherokee, Seminole, Mvskoke) is a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and is also of the Seminole and Mvskoke Nations. She is a PhD candidate in the Cultural, Social and Political Thought program at the University of Lethbridge. A first-generation college graduate, Tiger holds an AB degree from Smith College, and two MAs from the University of Oklahoma, in 20th c. U.S. History, and in Native American Studies—Native American Art History and Curating, studies conducted within OU’s department of Art History. Her current research connects Cherokee pottery to the land in kinship as a place-based art and to her mound building ancestors from whom pottery making came. She also works in Indigenous refusal and has structured an ethical Indigenous methodological approach to her citational practice.

She is an Indigenous art historian and teaches Indigenous studies and art history courses at the University of Lethbridge and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She has held fellowships at the Peabody Essex Museum, with the Momus Emerging Indigenous Critics Residency, and Otsego Institute for Native American Art History. She was a Scholar-in-Residence at Smith College and is a Cobell Scholar.