Learning, Educating, Growing: Katsitsionni Fox, Matt Burnett, Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo, and Erika Barthelmess

At the end of the artists’ talk, Teiohontsiakwente Skidders will be leading the official “Closing/Thanksgiving Address." While this will mark the end of the speaker series, the Listening to Water exhibition will remain open through December 9, 2023.

Katsitsionni Fox is an artist, filmmaker and educator. She is Bear Clan from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. Her films stress the empowerment and resilience of Indigenous women. Her most recent film, Without a Whisper—Konnón:kwe (2020), describes how Indigenous women influenced the early suffrage movement in the fight for freedom and equality. 

For more information, visit the web site of the International Documentary Association.

Based in Saranac Lake, Matt Burnett has spent most of his life in the central Adirondacks and grew up in what is now the William C. Whitney Wilderness Area. Burnett is a guide and specializes in family day and overnight trips from the High Peaks Region of Lake Placid to Long Lake and the St. Regis Canoe Area. 

As a native of the Adirondack Mountain region, my career as an artist has been molded by an unusually rural upbringing and access to the natural resources of upstate New York. Throughout my life I have been drawn towards the exploration of primordial environments. Through continual inquiry and engagement with wilderness — as site, as concept, and above all as experience — I have adopted painting as a means through which to engage in the non-sentient, as a device for seeking the objective access of structure and growth beyond human influence. – Matt Burnett

I grew up far away from the Watershed I now call home, where I now live in a settler community, alongside my caring neighbor, the Grasse River / Nikentsà:ke. My name, Tzintzun or Tsintsuni, means Hummingbird in Purépecha, the language and nation of my grandmother. Like this brave bird, I have traveled north and south many times, following my family as we crossed physical and cultural borders.

Through environmental storytelling, I am now attempting to weave together people and geographies, uniting human, and more-than-human communities from around the world who are standing up to protect the land and water they call home.  As part of the collective Talking Wings, I have collaborated with Blake Lavia to organize environmental conferences, produce documentaries, and illustrate Environmental Storytelling Tapestries. In addition, I am also collaborating with Talking Wings to weave together stories of rivers and their defenders in Confluence: A Tapestry of Rivers and their Guardians.
- Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo

I am professor in SLU’s biology department, specializing in vertebrate ecology and conservation biology. I earned my B.A. in biology at Earlham College, where I spent a semester abroad in Kenya. I earned my Ph.D. in systematics and ecology at the University of Kansas, and conducted post-doctoral research at Vanderbilt University before arriving at St. Lawrence. I am currently serving as co-chair of the biology department and am the faculty coordinator for the conservation biology major. I am also the project director for Nature Up North, an initiative which fosters place-based, environmental connections in the North Country through environmental education opportunities and the web.  

I regularly teach general biology, mammalogy, behavioral ecology, vertebrate natural history, and conservation biology. My research interests are broad and include the biology of small, isolated populations, the intersection of behavioral ecology and conservation, road ecology, and the ecology and natural history of porcupines. I am active in the American Society of Mammalogists and the Society for Conservation Biology and am a member of the society’s Africa section. I enjoy working with students and hold regular weekly “lab meetings” with my research team.  Typically, I have two to three students working in my lab on research projects every semester. – Erika Barthelmess