Amelia Winger-Bearskin looks to the horizon. Photo: Nocs Provisions
Editor’s Note: This article is presented by our partners at Nocs Provisions.
A good pair of binoculars can do a lot for the everyday surfer. They also can be a powerful aid in exploration. “Ultimately, binoculars are this tool that allows you to be present,” says Chris McKleroy, founder and CEO of Nocs. “It’s like a visual meditation: They allow you to be present in that very moment. You can’t really be distracted, you’re very focused. It allows you to connect with nature on a deeper level.” But beyond just exploring your present-day surroundings, Chris sees binoculars as having the power to look through time, and zoom in on what things might have looked like in the past, in order to inform the future.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin looks to the horizon. Photo: Nocs Provisions
That sort of looking both forward and backwards is something that Amelia Winger-Bearskin, a Deer-Clan member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma has a unique perspective on. As an artist and professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts at the University of Florida, she’s working to use her indigenous background and the learnings of her ancestors to inform the work that’s being done in some of the most forward-looking spaces we know – artificial intelligence. Her work currently is focused on the global water crisis and bringing more attention to it through “playful and enlightening conversations.” You can learn more at talktomeaboutwater.com.
“It’s often said, ‘the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed,'” says Winger-Bearskin. “And I think it’s the same with the global water crisis – those who are experiencing the most dire effects are the global indigenous. And if we ignore their experience, it’s like we’re ignoring messages from the future because their reality will be ours soon, even if it isn’t now.”
Amelia Winger-Bearskin looks to the horizon. Photo: Nocs Provisions
So what does a native tribeswoman working on solving the water crisis have to do with a binocular brand? Actually, it all comes back to the ideas of land acknowledgement, and Winger-Bearskin’s work with Honor Native Land, an initiative by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture that is pushing to honor and acknowledge the original inhabitants of the land we exist on today.
Land acknowledgement has become a buzzword in today’s world. What started as a movement to adopt the worldwide norms of honoring the land and those who lived there before us quickly became a bit of a fad, and as Winger-Bearskin describes it, a misguided one at that. “Land acknowledgement can be an awesome way in to talk with people about indigenous sovereignty or climate justice, but it’s not the be-all, end-all… The problem is, it’s become a checkbox for people to say that they did it, rather than coming from a place of true learning.”
To counteract that trend, Winger-Bearskin began working with Honor Native Land, an organization working to use land acknowledgements as a door to learning and better relations. That’s when she met McKleroy, and a conversation about the commercial appropriation of native designs set McKleroy to wondering how Nocs might be able to set an example. An example of how to credit, compensate, and share the depth of indigenous patterns, combating the long history of appropriation of native art. McKleroy soon commissioned Winger-Bearskin to create a binocular strap based on Seneca-Cayuga designs to raise awareness for the Honor Native Land initiative.
The strap design is inspired by Wampum “a beautiful clamshell from the rivers of our ancestral territories,” says Amelia. Photo: Nocs Provisions
The strap design is inspired by Wampum “a beautiful clamshell from the rivers of our ancestral territories. We would use beads made from the blue, purple and white shells as a sort of binary code in these beautiful woven belts that were our most sacred treaties,” Winger-Bearskin told me. “You might think of it like a Pre-Columbian blockchain in the sense that there were decentralized contracts to build bonds for peace, for trading, cultural value, hunting rights, or even to tell a story.”
Exclusively available at REI, the collaboration includes the strap designed by Winger-Bearskin, a set of 8×25 Nocs binoculars in a limited-edition color way, and the Nocs photo rig adapter which enables stabilized zoom photography with your smartphone.
The Photo Adapter comes with the Nocs Honor Native Land bundle, a useful tool for zoom photography of far away and up close objects. Photo: Nocs Provisions
“For so long, the indigenous artwork and designs of my people and other Nations have been copied, repurposed and profited from by organizations that have no intention of honoring the original artists,” says Winger-Bearskin. “This collaboration with Nocs is an example of how Native heritage can be recognized and preserved.”
To support the collaboration, check it out on REI, and to hear more from Amelia Winger-Bearskin, visit her at her digital studio.
