Alica J Mteuzi

Hadaya is a short film set in the future about a group of revolutionaries using encrypted broadcasts to recruit new soldiers in preparation for armed conflict against a corrupt government. Hadaya, a young Samoan law student, exercises caution and restraint while Wauneka, a Diné veteran, takes a more reactive approach to liberation. The dynamic between Hadaya and Wauneka highlights the dilemma that Black and Indigenous people are faced with when responding to violence perpetrated against them.

Hadaya, the protagonist, is inspired by agronomist and guerilla tactician, Amílcar Cabral, who led an armed struggle that ended Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in 1973. Thematically, HADAYA examines Black and Indigenous positionality and its ontological relationship to wyt supremacy conveyed through theatrical performance and digital film. Psychically, this brand of storytelling is a means to counteract historical absence, deracination, and Stockholmic oppressive denial. Our stories are a crucial and necessary step toward radicalizing our listening and knowing strategies for our permanent liberation.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up and exist in a country predicated on the obliteration of my people. As an Afro-Indigenous artist, my work rejects all forms of wyt-normative compositional, physical, political, and psychic violence perpetrated against my people. Inspired by revolutionaries such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown, my work is a product of Black and Indigenous female positionality combined with the trauma of Americanism.

Alica Mteuzi (b. San Jose, CA, US) is a filmmaker, visual artist, and writer who draws inspiration from her experiences growing up during the crack / urban Indian / suburban garage hacker eras of Silicon Valley. She is an enrolled member of Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and a direct descendant of the stolen children of Alkebu-lan (Afrika). Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mteuzi combines Black and Indigenous pasts and futures to create an amalgamation of being, joy, and struggle.

Mteuzi is the director of Rezd Out, a short film that won the 2nd place Audience Choice Award at the 10th Annual IAIA Filmmaker 2022 Showcase. Rezd Out was also an official selection at the 2022 High Desert Screening Film Festival in Albuquerque, NM. Presently, Mteuzi studies digital arts and creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM.