Truth-Telling Confronts the Colonial Gaze

In this online exhibition, Indigenous artists reclaim realities long denied them by US and Canadian federal governments — including moments of collective reverie.

“All the world now faces the same challenges that our people foretold regarding climate damage being caused by people who take more than they need, dismissing the teachings of our fathers, and the knowledge of countless generations living upon the earth in harmony,” Leonard Peltier wrote, invoking generations of tribes and First Nations preserving history on their own terms, otherwise known as “truth-telling.”

For each artist in Truth-Telling, Indigenous knowledge is anathema to capitalist logic. This is perhaps best captured in Nicholas Galanin Yéil Ya-Tseen’s mixed-media work “Architecture of Returned Escape.” The Tlingit/Unangax artist rendered a blueprint of a museum on an animal hide. Is this subversive schematic a guide to freedom or a plot to win the land back? The ambiguity cleverly provokes more than it resolves, and emphasizes the necessity of a coherent path forward.

Truth-Telling: Voices of First People can be viewed online. No end date is indicated on the website. The exhibition was curated by Jonette O’Kelley Miller.

Nicholas Galanin Yéil Ya-Tseen, "Architecture of Returned Escape" (2020) (all images courtesy Studio Theater in Exile)

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, “Our Red Nations Were Always Green” (2021)