Fearless Indigenous: Shelley Niro's Statue of Liberty

In her series of collaged photographic works, For Fearless and Other Indians, Mohawk (Turtle Clan) photographer Shelley Niro contests the icon of democracy: The Statue of Liberty. Her series of seven photographs shows the Statue of Liberty against a field of blue sky juxtaposed with hand-written text contrasting the “democracy” of America that performatively pivots on symbolic monuments—notably the Statue of Liberty—with traditional Mohawk (Iroquois) systems of engaging in political decisions and communal, ethical life. Niro’s series deconstructs the symbol of American democracy, as her work explores the very premise of iconic emblems of democracy as a kind of false front. Monuments, as edifices of power, work against democratic inclusion, suggests the artist, and so stand oddly for it. Niro subtly takes apart the premise of American exceptionalism as a leader of democracy, positing here the elided history of settler atrocities against Indigenous Americans as the primary fact and act of the United States’ formation. The democratic field of “lady Liberty” Niro encounters and revolutionizes in these images. My paper follows Niro’s lead in excavating the history of American democracy as linked to the process of monumentalization. I consider how her work, completed at the turn of the 21st century, is important now as we approach a crisis of democracy in the United States. I also discuss her work's reference to L’il Abner comic strips, the character of Fearless Fosdick who lives despite a mortal wound, and analyze the comic strip’s demeaning use of Indigenous American characters.