Mique’l Dangeli

Born and raised on the Annette Islands Indian Reserve, Dr. Mique’l Dangeli is of the Ts’msyen Nation of Metlakatla, Alaska. She is a member of the Laxsgyiik (eagle clan) and carries the name Sm Łoodm ‘Nüüsm (most highly respected). Mique’l is a dancer, choreographer, Sm’algya̱x language learner/teacher, and curator. Her work in Indigenous visual and performing arts focuses on protocol, sovereignty, resurgence, decolonization, Indigenous research methodologies, critical curatorial studies, repatriation, and language revitalization. She served her community museum director and curator for over a decade. Mique’l has also been a part of curatorial teams for exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of History, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Newark Museum, Idyllwild Arts, Bill Reid Gallery, American Museum of Natural History, Columbia River Maritime Museum, National Museum of the American Indian, and Museum of Ethnology in Geneva, Switzerland. She is an elected board member of the Native American Art Studies Association. Her current book project focuses on the work of Ts’msyen photographer Benjamin Alfred Haldane (1874-1941), who is considered one of the first professional Indigenous photographers in North America.

For over twenty years, Mique’l has shared the leadership of the Git Hayetsk Dancers in partnership with her husband Mike Dangeli, who is a carver, singer, and composer from the Nisga’a, Ts’msyen, Tlingit and Tsetsaut Nations. Git Hayetsk means “people of the copper shield” in Sm’algya̱x. They are an internationally renowned Northwest Coast First Nations dance group specializing in ancient and newly created songs and mask dances.  Working collaboratively, Mike and Mique’l have taught three generations of dancers and created a large body of new songs, dances, masks, and regalia. Git Hayetsk performs at private ceremonies and public events in urban and rural communities throughout Canada, the US, and abroad. Some of their major performances were hosted by Gibney Dance Center in New York, the National Art Centre in Ottawa, the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and Washington DC, UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, the Vancouver Art Gallery, among other events and venues. Their international engagements have included Austria, Malaysia, Germany, Japan and most recently Australia. In 2023, Mique’l was an dance artist-in-residence with Marrugeku, one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed Indigenous and Intercultural dance companies. During her monthlong residency in Gadigal Country, she shared her choreographic process in practice-focused labs with dance artists from across the pacific. She also delivered several keynotes at nearby Universities and Museums on “dancing sovereignty,” a theoretical framework she founded in her research on the work of Northwest Coast First Nations dance artists that critically engages with the ways in which sovereignty is embodied in their creative processes and performances through complex and strategic negotiations and assertions of protocol affirming hereditary privileges and territorial rights among diverse audiences and collaborators.