Rayna Klugherz, History of Art Major '23, presented Decolonial Online Strategies
This paper demonstrates how a digital online resource transcends the geographical and temporal limits of an art museum, thereby reaching a larger audience and ensuring accessibility and visibility. Recognizing that the “digital divide” continues an erasure of Indigenous peoples with a widening gap between Western colonial powers and Indigenous populations, an analysis of search terms, web platforms, and access to digital infrastructure will be considered. Expanding upon Marisa Elena Duarte’s Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country notion that digital space is a tool of self-determination and a fundamental component of employing Indigenous sovereignty and Tuscarora scholar and artist, Jolene Rickard’s assertion that, art is a means of exercising “visual sovereignty,” the development of a decolonizing web-presence will be discussed. This website will bring together artists from each of the Six Haudenosaunee Nations with attention to rethinking colonizing frameworks.
From Shelley Niro’s (Mohawk) ironic hand-tinted photograph series Red Heels Hard from 1992 that captures the lively spirit of Indigenous women to Frank Buffalo Hyde’s (Onondaga) paintings that subvert stereotypical symbols of Indigenous peoples in contrast with pop culture icons such as Meta Painting – Black Feather from 2017, the website visualizes the diversity of contemporary Haudenosaunee experiences.
