“WE ARE STILL HERE”: VISIONARY, LIVING, IMPORTANT: INDIGENOUS AMERICAN ART

It is not just for the expression of an aesthetic and experience of lifeways, history and ceremony thousands of years old, nor because it connects us to, reminds us of the values of living in balance with each other and earth, but because it is a form of revolutionary resistance against the oppression of white supremacy, colonialism and fascism that Indigenous art is so important.

As any native person from Wampanoag to Kwakiutl will tell you, “We are still here.” And they have been fighting the misapprehension that they are extinct, fighting to have their real history included in curricula, fighting to let it be known what genocides were done to them, culturally, linguistically and physically, by war, religion, forced education, economies, disease — and to let the rest of non-native America know that they have, in spite of all, persisted, and in some cases thrived, despite injustice, theft and subjugation which usurps, destroys and steals to this day to the shame of this nation. Art can create understanding and that can lead to action for justice.

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