hastobeclever: clairebearstare: ...

Saturday, November 12, 2011

clairebearstare:

velocicrafter:

quelola:

nuestrahermana:

garconniere:

The Shirt by Shelley Niro, 2003.

Niro’s work consists of a connecting series of photographs that should be read together as a whole narrative. The images are set in a pastoral landscape, and each subsequent photograph offers an increasingly incisive statement on the colonization of the land that once belonged to aboriginal peoples.

Shelly Niro was born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1954. She is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Iroquois Confederacy, Turtle Clan, Six Nations Reserve. She is currently based in Brantford, Ontario, and works in a variety of media, including beadwork, painting, photography, and film. (via virtual museum)

[Image Description: Photoset of 7 photos. The first 5 depict the same Native woman wearing a white t-shirt blue jeans, aviator glasses and an American flag bandana holding her hair back. The white t-shirt has different words in each picture. The woman stands in a green field and there are mountains and buildings in the distance.

Font on each shirt:

Photo 1: This Shirt

Photo 2: My ancestors were annihilated, exterminated, murdered and massacred

Photo 3: They were lied to cheated tricked and and deceived

Photo 4: Attempts were made to assimilate colonize enslave and misplace them

Photo 5: And all’s I get was this shirt

The next photo shows the same woman without her shirt, bandana or glasses.

The last photo shows a white woman with red hair and red jeans wearing the glasses on her head, the bandana around her neck and the shirt that reads “And all’s I get is this shirt” standing were the Native woman was standing before.]

Damn! My first reaction to this was to laugh because of the last two photos. Sometimes, it’s easier to laugh and it’s necessary to laugh and then get angry. That woman in the last photo is so fucking coy and obnoxious and her stance and pose just legit had me cackling because it’s the epitome of the carefree white girl.

^^^
Commentary

Saw this film in the National Art Gallery when I was 19 and living very alone in Ottawa. It was probably my first-ever introduction to anti-racist anything, and it blew my fucking mind.

THIS is exactly why appropriative clothing styles and fads are about. That white person at the end who gets to wear that shirt. It’s also about land rights, occupation, belonging and mining profits. It’s about everywhere. This is an amazing and poignant commentary.