squaws were not qualified as women
Native women are going to raise the roof and decry the dirty house that patriarchy and racism has built on our backs.
But first, we must see ourselves as women.
powerful, sensuous beings in need of compassion and tenderness.
-Lee maracle
art, or the graphic translation of a culture, is shaped by the
way space is perceived
everything is dominated by the eye of the beholder.
our conception of space was in terms of a perspective
projection upon a plane surface consisting of formal units of
spatial measurement
the primitive artist twists and tilts the various possible
visual aspects until they fully explain what
he wishes to represent…
electric circuitry is recreating in us the multi-dimensional
space orientation of the primitive.
the whole concept of enclosure as a means of constraint
and as a means of classifying
doesn’t work as well in our electronic world.
the new feeling that people have about guilt is not something
that can be privately assigned to some individual,
but is rather
something shared by everybody,
ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness.
time has ceased, space has vanished.
we now live in a global village… a simultaneous happening.
we are back in acoustic space.
we have begun again to structure the primordial feeling the
tribal emotions from which a few centuries of literacy
divorced us.
-Marshall McLuhan (57-63)
squaw: the dirtiest and most common term to represent indigenous women. (dont google native women, just dont do it)
Indigenous women have been creating art through different mediums that counter negative and derogatory racial slurs. The word squaw is connotative of the less than human treatment that has been forcefully dubbed upon Indigenous Women; heavily enforced by media.
the video below combines three separate performances by indigenous women: rebecca belmore’s creation or death, leanne simpson’s she sang them home, tanya tagaq polaris music prize gala performance. while both tagaq and belmore demonstrate struggle they at the same time reflect a fighting spirit of resiliency. in these performances alone, the observer is forced to experience feelings that may be fairly unsettling. the artist claims the space: strong fierce woman.
simpsons spoken word juxtaposes the performance art in her simple and heartbreaking story of the detrimental impact industry has had on the our salmon. but they return.
“there is a storm of passion locked up I every person’s being, a storm that is intense but not disquieting. A tornado without a vortex. A wind that is erratic, directionless and incessant. At the same time, there is no wind at all. just a flood of passion without beginning nor end. A passion quietened only by sensuous satisfaction. Passion that is satiated by physical expression and is only free to rise again, invigorated by its own realization” -lee maracle
trickster media 