You Are On Native Land - Postcards, Billboard, NFT
Billboard in Macarthur Park in Los Angeles, February 2022
Part of The Billboard Creative in collaboration with Obscura
NFT available now on Foundation
Upcoming exhibition opening in October 2023 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art as part of In Hour Hands: Native Photography, 1890-now
You Are On Native Land for Black Hills Legal Defense Fund
A Collaboration with Cody Edison and Christine Wood
This set of images was created as a collaboration between Eve-Lauryn LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) and Cody Edison to support the Black Hills Legal Defense Fund. LaFountain wove together strips of found film and scratched the words "You Are on Native Land" into the emulsion. The titles are in Ojibwe, her tribal language, which she learns word by word through her art practice. She sent the three original weavings to Edison in the mail, he contact printed them in the darkroom, and will send them out to those who purchase them.
These postcards act not as souvenirs of places from the sender, but rather as a reminder to the receiver that America was founded on the genocide and stolen lands of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, the people who have continued to survive and protect their lands for 528 years and counting. The postcards are physical acknowledgments of the Indigenous peoples who are the ancestral and continual caretakers of this land. As we send these Indigenous land acknowledgments in the mail, we invite you to learn more about the history and current state of continued colonial occupation of Indigneous lands. This series supports the land defenders on the front lines who were arrested on July 3rd protecting the sacred Black Hills against further desecration by white supremecists.
Purchase limited edition postcards at codyedisonmedia.com
One of the postcard images was selected by The Billboard Creative in collaboration with Obscura to become a billboard. It was installed in Macarthur Park in Los Angeles in February of 2022.
All three postcards were featured in the exhibition In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890-now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art October, 2023 - January, 2024. The special piece created for the show featured Indigenous land acknowledgments and histories of Los Angeles, where the postcards were printed, Santa Fe, where the writing was created and cards were mounted, and Minneapolis, where the work was exhibited. The MIA is in the process of aquiring the site specific work for their permanent collection.