Marianne Nicolson’s Land-Based Knowledgescape Cliff Painting
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Amina Grunewald
Abstract
Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies are connected to tribal lands, resilience, and claims for sovereignty. These ways of knowing offer an indispensable resource for Indigenous communities in surviving and resisting assimilationist policies. Modes of Indigenous knowledge are not only discussed in academia and practiced in local spaces but are also integrated into artworks that promote public access to First Nations political agendas within settler nation states. Knowledgescapes can be created as conversive artscapes. They can be placed translocally but also re-integrated into First Nations lands. A reworking of the land as a tribally marked space can be traced in artworks that attack bio- and geopolitical manners of settler societies. The land-marker, place-maker, and artscape Cliff Painting (1998) by Marianne Nicolson shall serve as an exemplification of a specific knowledgescape – created for Indigenous audiences to support their claims, and for non-Indigenous audiences to open up a dialogue on colonial issues within a step-by-step decolonizing discourse.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to the following people and institutions: Birgit Däwes and Kerstin Knopf, for a myriad of inspirations. The MOA, the RBCM, and the Bill Reid Gallery for curatorial knowledge sharing and critical thinking: Jennifer Kramer, Pamela Brown (Heiltsuk), Karen Duffek, and Martha Black. I am indebted to Tahltan artist/curator Peter Morin, and Haida artist/curator Kwiaawah Jones for sharing knowledge on Indigenous issues. I would like to thank Elder Lorraine Spence from NVIT’s Elders Council, Byron Robbie, and John Chenoweth for offering their time. Thanks must go to James Clifford, Peter Bolz, and Angela Weber for spotlighting critical museology issues. I am absolutely grateful to CEREV, Concordia University Montréal, with Erika Lehrer and Heather Igloliorte (Inuit, Nunatsiavut Territory of Labrador) as excellent professors. For the funding I would especially like to thank Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Gesellschaft für Kanadastudien, and Humboldt University Berlin (English and American Studies).
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©2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Indigenous Knowledges in North America: An Introduction
- Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge
- Marianne Nicolson’s Land-Based Knowledgescape Cliff Painting
- Invocations of Indigeneity in the Colonial Red/White/Black Triad
- First Nations Healing: From Traditional Medicine to Experimental Ethnopharmacology
- Profit and Loss: ‘Indian’ Art at Sherman Institute, a Native American Off-Reservation Boarding School
- The ‘Fast Runner’ Trilogy, Inuit Cultural Memory, and Knowledge (Re-)Production
- Unusual Alliances of Knowledge Production: A Reading of Disney’s Frozen 2
- Book Reviews
- Herman Melville
- Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author
- The Kitchen and the Factory: Spaces of Women’s Work and the Negotiation of Social Difference in Antebellum American Literature
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Indigenous Knowledges in North America: An Introduction
- Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge
- Marianne Nicolson’s Land-Based Knowledgescape Cliff Painting
- Invocations of Indigeneity in the Colonial Red/White/Black Triad
- First Nations Healing: From Traditional Medicine to Experimental Ethnopharmacology
- Profit and Loss: ‘Indian’ Art at Sherman Institute, a Native American Off-Reservation Boarding School
- The ‘Fast Runner’ Trilogy, Inuit Cultural Memory, and Knowledge (Re-)Production
- Unusual Alliances of Knowledge Production: A Reading of Disney’s Frozen 2
- Book Reviews
- Herman Melville
- Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author
- The Kitchen and the Factory: Spaces of Women’s Work and the Negotiation of Social Difference in Antebellum American Literature
- Books Received
