Closing Night for “Beyond the Metaverse with OurWorlds: Indigenous Stories are All Around You”

Free parking will be available for event attendees at the Hopkins Parking Structure at the corner of Hopkins and Voigt Dr (see map).

Live stream available at https://youtube.com/live/NE81hjJfKfE?feature=share for remote viewers.

Summary

Join us for the closing night of “Beyond the Metaverse with OurWorlds: Indigenous Stories are All Around You” with presentations and a panel discussion featuring Gallery QI exhibit creators Kilma S. Lattin, Catherine Eng, Stanley Rodriguez and Ana Gloria Rodriguez, with tribal leaders.

What can Kumeyaay art and design – past, present, and future – teach us about the value of Indigenous knowledge and practice in a culture where humanity, the natural world, and media are irreversibly converged? This exhibition foregrounds work from OurWorlds about Kumeyaay weaving and boat-building featured in the flagship project of OurWorlds, an extended reality platform led by Kilma Lattin and Catherine Eng. The Kumeyaay people once lived on the land on which UC San Diego is sited, yet their history is nowhere visible. OurWorlds enters this breach by reinstating Kumeyaay culture and history onto the land on which we stand, bringing to life the history embedded in our landscape as a sign of the future. Narrative moving-image scenes overlay the landscape on which we stand with Native histories and futures, and featuring woven baskets and boats. On view is the making and use of tule boats, or ha kwaiyo–canoes made of tule reeds, which grow along the region’s rivers and lakes. The boats, produced collectively in a multi-year initiative led by elder Dr. Stanley Rodriguez (Santa Ysabel Kumeyaay), have been used in launches throughout the region that bring together Native communities and the broader region’s peoples in celebrations of the waterways that the Kumeyaay have navigated and harvested for 12,000 years. Also on display is the basketry work of Ana Gloria “Martha” Rodriguez (Jose de la Zorra Kumeyaay) and other regional artists shown in her Kosay Kumeyaay Market in Old Town, San Diego.

Biographies

Kilma Lattin is a San Diego based tribal government leader, media and industry executive, and aviation pilot who is founder and CEO of OurWorlds, an extended reality platform with a flagship project which reminds us that “Indigenous stories are all around you.” A member of the Pala Indian tribe, he grew up in La Jolla, California, and graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with degrees in history and communication before attending Harvard University’s JFK School of Government and earning an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. In 2012, Lattin developed “Defending the Homeland: Native American Veterans in the U.S. Armed Forces,” a feature-length documentary honoring the legacy of military service in the Pala Tribe that was awarded an Emmy in 2013. He has been active in promoting tribal veteran affairs, and served three terms on the Pala Indian Tribe Executive Committee. Mr. Lattin was elected to sit on the Pala Utility Board and is the Tribe’s alternate delegate to the National Indian Gaming Association. He oversaw the digital archiving of all official tribal records dating back to 1992. Other projects include the formation of a tribal judicial court system in 2006; the development of a DNA testing procedure to safeguard tribal enrollment eligibility; and construction oversight of a 22,000 square-foot skateboard park, which is featured prominently in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and was on national museum tour in 2015; and establishing the Tribe’s local radio station KOPA 91.3, which was in 2010 the first new full-power FM radio station in Southern California in 20 years. Kilma Lattin’s awards include the top prize in the the SXSW 2022 EDU Launch Competition for OurWorld’s “Worldwide in XR360o.” Lattin is a former United States Army military aviation officer who has flown both the AH-64 Apache helicopter and the OH-58 Kiowa. While serving, Mr. Lattin received the prestigious Soldier’s Medal for Valor. An avid pilot, Lattin continues to fly helicopters, and completed an Ironman Triathlon in 2008. Lattin is a member of the 2024 Getty Pacific Standard Time Navigating the Pacific project at UC San Diego.

Catherine Eng is a San Diego based immersive digital media artist, designer, developer, and filmmaker, with projects spanning mobile, extended reality, film, scientific applications, and data visualization. With a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, Eng is co-founder and CTO / COO of OurWorlds, a Native-led technology company pioneering extended reality technology for education, reminding us that “Indigenous stories are all around you.” OurWorlds was selected as the winner of SXSW Edu Launch 2022, an annual prize awarded to the top startup company in the edTech space. Eng’s other awards include the Ricoh Theta Prize for a virtual reality project for first responders. Her apps have been featured in Apple’s Top 10 with over 3M cumulative downloads. She has designed and developed apps for the music video, entertainment, fashion, health and medicine, business, telecom, and education industries. She also has extensive teaching experience, including coaching winning middle school and high school Science Olympiad teams, and teaching fine art and digital media to elementary school-aged children. In 2015 she founded Design Code Build, a coding academy for K-12 to teach digital media from a project-based perspective, drawing from her experience in design and development. Most recently Design Code Build has worked with Girl Scouts San Diego on a successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign to provide a game development education to over 220 Girl Scouts at summer camps and workshops at UC San Diego to create games on mobile and web platforms. The project has been featured in news online and in print and has support from the developer community around the world. Eng has worked on educational projects with the Salk Institute, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, the Moores Cancer Center, the San Diego French American School, and the San Diego Unified and San Ysidro school districts. Eng is a member of the 2024 Getty Pacific Standard Time Navigating the Pacific project at UC San Diego.

Dr. Stanley Rodriguez (Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel) is an esteemed educator, linguist, artist and craftsman, musician, and highly respected elder and community leader. With an MA in human behavior and a PhD in educational leadership from UC San Diego for his work on language loss and revitalization, Dr. Rodriguez holds numerous teaching and public speaking roles in the San Diego and Native Kumeyaay communities, including appointments at Kumeyaay Community College and other institutions in Southern California. He is a renowned and widely sought after speaker locally and globally whose career is dedicated to cultural conservation and broad sharing of Kumeyaay knowledge about culture, botany, history, arts, and language. Among Dr. Rodriguez’s many areas and culture initiatives is the ha kwaiyo project a multi-year initiative he leads involving the production and use ha kwaiyo (Kumeyaay tule boats), seagoing canoes made from reeds harvested from the riverbanks of Southern California. This project is one of several featured in OurWorld’s flagship project on Indigenous stories. Rodriguez is a member of the 2024 Getty Pacific Standard Time Navigating the Pacific project at UC San Diego.

Ana Gloria “Martha” Rodriguez, (Kumeyaay, San Jose de la Zorra) is continuing a family tradition of passing on the knowledge and expertise of the Kumeyaay people to the next generation. Following the wishes of the Elders to keep our language and culture alive and vibrant, she has “Kumeyaay Cultural Nights” classes once a month. As part of her commitment to education, Rodriguez is the Kumeyaay Cultural Coordinator for the Sycuan Cultural Department. She is also an instructor at Kumeyaay Community College presenting classes in basketry, pottery and Kumeyaay foods. She is also assisting with the Kumeyaay Language classes and the Kumeyaay Tools class. Founder and CEO of Tipey Joa Native Warriors grassroots organization and of the Kosay Kumeyaay Market.