Xéetl’ee Katelyn Stiles is an artist and scholar working in the mediums of movement, film, drawing, and community-based research creation. Katelyn is Lingít, of the Kiks.ádi Clan (Raven/Frog) and Kaxátjaa Hít [Shattering Herring House] of Sheet’ká [Sitka, Alaska], and a citizen of Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Her ancestors are also Norwegian, English, and French settlers. Women of her clan are known as Kax̲átjaashaa [Herring Ladies] and this responsibility is central to her work.
Her creative community-based research centers the rematriation of Herring Lady embodied protocols with Yaaw [Pacific Herring] to co-create ecosystems. Her work crosses into critical Indigenous Studies, Improvisation and Performance Studies, and Feminist Science and Technology Studies, focusing on embodiment and relationality to land, water, the more-than-human, and technology. Movement is central to her work and she has danced professionally in different contexts. She also lived in Berlin, Germany for several years, where her film work was screened internationally in film festivals. Her recent projects include the film Yee eedé tooshí áa [We sing to you] and the creation of the Herring Lady and Shame Robe Dance, both collaborations with Ḵ’asheechtlaa Louise Brady and Herring Ladies.
Katelyn holds a PhD and MA in Native American Studies with a designated emphasis in Performance and Practice from the University of California, Davis. She also received a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley. She currently works as an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Arts at Evergreen State College, and previously taught Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast in Sheet’ká.
