CyberPowWow facts for kids
CyberPowWow was an online art gallery created by Indigenous people. It showed digital artworks and had a collection of texts. The idea for it started in 1996, and it was active online from 1997 to 2004. There were four main versions of CyberPowWow. It was both a website and a chat room. All the art shown on the website was made especially for CyberPowWow. The website was hosted on a program called The Palace, which was a very popular chat room in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
What Was the First CyberPowWow?
For the very first CyberPowWow event, six Indigenous artists and writers were asked to create new artworks just for the site. The exhibition started with a chat event that happened at the same time in many different places. Artists, writers, and the public could log into The Palace to talk with each other about the art.
Skawennati, one of the people who helped create CyberPowWow, and Jason Edward Lewis said that the event was good because it brought Indigenous art and topics to a wider audience. However, they also noted that sometimes people from other chat rooms would join and interrupt the discussions.
CyberPowWow 2: A New Chat Space
CyberPowWow 2 marked the start of a special Palace chat room made just for CyberPowWow. Eight Indigenous artists and writers made the chat space unique. They added their own images, special computer scripts, and different "Indian" avatars (digital characters). The artists shared their work and answered questions from an excited audience. Many people in the audience were from the Canadian contemporary art community.
Some of the artists who took part included Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew and Sheryl Kootenhayoo, who added a Quicktime virtual reality piece. Lori Blondeau also created and led a virtual round dance in the chat room.
CPW 2K: Going Global
The third version of CyberPowWow, called CPW 2K, grew even bigger. It included not only Canadian and American artists, but also, for the first time, Australian artists. Non-Indigenous artists also joined in.
Among the non-Indigenous participants were Mare Burgess, a researcher who studies "Indian" warrior women, and Sheila Urbanoski, an artist who grew up near an Indigenous reserve. Skawennati wrote that after they had "marked their territory" and "built a Palace," it was time to invite their "neighbors." She meant digital artists from the non-Native world. She felt these friends and collaborators could talk about how Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures meet.
