Abstract
In the notes of God is Red, the prominent Standing Rock Sioux Native Studies scholar, lawyer, and activist, Vine Deloria Jr. states, “Most Americans, raised in a society in which history is all- encompassing, have very little idea of how radically their values would shift if they took the idea of places…seriously.” Given Time: Sensory Aesthetics of Reclamation is an exhibition I curated this year that seeks to challenge the dominance of historical narrative by centering Indigenous relationships to land and place through sensory time-based media. Featuring works by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians), Angelo Baca (Hopi/Diné) and New Red Order—a public secret society founded by Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Zack Khalil (Ojibway) and Adam Khalil (Ojibway)—the exhibition attempts to reflect on how film, a medium defined by its capacity to recompose temporal experience, can be instead used to create a multisensorial engagement with place. Interweaving documentary narrative and abstract imagery, these works engage in visual storytelling that challenge colonial claims to land and history. The artists subvert chronological time to focus on representations of land, traversing personal and shared relations to reclaim Indigenous emplacement. My paper reflects on the juxtaposition inherent in an exhibition of film that takes an Indigenous ontological conception of place seriously, yet seeks to demonstrate how Indigenous artists and curators use the medium to center Native worldviews.
Presenters
Megan Alvarado SaggeseAssistant Professor, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Fort Lewis College, Colorado, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Social Participation, Indigenous, Native, Film, Curation
