I feel quite honoured to be part of the Bury My Art At Wounded Knee exibit. This exhibit is a forthcoming Native north american art exhibition that highlights resistance strategies on and off the imaginary boundaries of modern day Indian Reservations. Really, I submitted to this because I am committed to the actions and intentions that I see are the blood and guts of Bury My Art, that is, reoccupying privileged spaces to exert our authority and sovereignty over every aspect of our very being (the land, our own persons/body, our own means of producing and representing, etc.)
I have witnessed first hand how colonialism makes the "native" visible in new, twisted and disturbing ways both to the colonizer and to the colonized. We can think of the many ways that colonial governments and their agents have and continue to exhibit the materiality of Indigenous Peoples in order to make them "present" (e.g. naming, registering to "Band" lists, dressing, educating, etc.); however, every Indigenous Nation has its own history of countering colonialism on the visual/material battlefield. We have always had our own ways of making ourselves visible and as we think, produce, and circulate/share we are continuing to strengthen our base for asserting power over colonial rule.
I have witnessed first hand how colonialism makes the "native" visible in new, twisted and disturbing ways both to the colonizer and to the colonized. We can think of the many ways that colonial governments and their agents have and continue to exhibit the materiality of Indigenous Peoples in order to make them "present" (e.g. naming, registering to "Band" lists, dressing, educating, etc.); however, every Indigenous Nation has its own history of countering colonialism on the visual/material battlefield. We have always had our own ways of making ourselves visible and as we think, produce, and circulate/share we are continuing to strengthen our base for asserting power over colonial rule.
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