<p>Lesley Art + Design’s Community Design Studio invites you to a conversation with Heidi Brandow, Zoë Toledo, and Jaz Bonnin, Co-founders of the Harvard Indigenous Design Collective, about the larger implications of the Massachusetts state flag, seal, and motto. The Harvard Indigenous Design Collective (HIDC) is a group at the Graduate School of Design that “promotes design by and for Indigenous communities as foundational to the history, theory, and practice of design fields.” Heidi Brando is Navajo and Native Hawaiian. She earned her M.Des in the Art, Design, and Public Domain program with a focus that includes industrial design and Turkish language. Zoë Toledo is Diné / Navajo, earning a M.Arch with a focus on “nontraditional ways of building.” Jaz Bonnin is Yankton Sioux and Blackfoot, graduating from the M.Des program with a focus on conservation and preservation.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Recorded on April 1, 2021.</p>

Beyond the Flag brings you conversations with design students and Indigenous leaders who are part of the Community Design Studio, College of Art and Design's year-long effort to support a legislative initiative to reconsider the seal, motto, and flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Our work to inform the legislative commission, engage public spaces throughout Massachusetts, encourages outcomes that reconcile the symbols of a hurtful colonial past with the cultural, political, environmental, and social priorities of Native and non-Native communities today.