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Gentle People, Kind People

Sky Hopinka


Adrian C. Louis—Love the Distant Roar (2011)


I made one of my first videos incorporating Adrian’s poems, and after he saw it he asked me to make a book trailer for him. I made two more over the years, before his death in 2018. This track was recorded on my phone during a reading he gave at Portland State University in 2011.



When you’re lost in the rain—Variations, 10 minutes (2019)


This version of When you’re lost in the rain comes from a 7-inch vinyl of the same name that I made as part of a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art. There are a few different sonic elements from the video version, a language lesson between myself and my Ho-Chunk teacher Jeannette Smoke, a poem from Adrian C. Louis read by Trevino Brings Plenty, and the inclusion of the B-side of the vinyl, with a round of songs from a peyote meeting my dad put on for me before I moved to Wisconsin. The photographs featured as images over the first part of the variation are the same ones used in Lore, before I cut them up.



Read the calligram “You are the Dreamer, and the Dream” as it appears in Around the Edge of Encircling Lake (Green Gallery Press, 2018).


Next: manaqi hayu, manaqi łush, from Disfluencies: A Dossier by Sky Hopinka





Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.