Playlist: Demian DinéYazhi, WE LEFT THEM NOTHING mixtape edition

Demian DinéYazhi´ is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). The contributor to Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment is about to release their third self-published book of poetry. WE LEFT THEM NOTHING.

In the artist's words, the book "is the aftermath of witnessing - is the afterbirth of disruption - is the kindling seeking new worlds not out of sheer boredom but borne out of sheer necessity. If Indigenous spirituality is rooted in survival—and time is but a record of the many apocalypses we’ve survived—then WE LEFT THEM NOTHING is an endangered document resulting from the failures of settler colonialism and hetero cis gender supremacy. Short of celebration and still in the throes of unraveling and unsettling and undressing collective manipulation still unable to articulate our own Decolonial awakening but desperate as fuck to channel some sacred cosmological magic to restore the balance before sabotaged extinction."

This past weekend, DinéYazhi' worked with Columbus artist Reg Zehner and VergeFM to stream a program of the music that inspired WE LEFT THEM NOTHING and share excerpts from the book. We're happy to share a link to the archived program here.

Stream WE LEFT THEM NOTHING from VergeFM.