Racquel Banaszak (Bad River Band of Ojibwe) is a visual artist and educator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her people are from the northern waters and woodlands. She has grown up around Native and urban communities. She is continually inspired by her mother’s stories, urban relocation, and Indigenous pop culture. Her works often combine photographs, illustrations, beadwork and textiles as a way to build futures full of joy and hope. She is a doctoral student in the department of history at the University of Minnesota.
Time for Healing (left)
Following the protests against the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, jingle dress dancers shared the jingle dress dance with community members as a way to help heal from the immense hurt people were feeling. This is an important healing dance to Ojibwe and other Indigenous communities. Some say its origins were during the 1918 influenza pandemic when a young girl had a dream of dance that had healing powers. The butterflies that surround the dancers remind us of the growth that comes with change.
Time for Joy (right)
All the water that sustains us today is the same water that sustained all of our ancestors generations ago. It holds memories of past and present and will carry us into the future. “Time for Joy” was inspired by a summer camp for urban Native youth where we canoed along the waterways in Minneapolis. Even living among the concrete jungles, water connects us to all our relatives from the birds and dragonflies to the cattails and cosmos. With every sunrise, we are grateful for this gift of life.