Indigenous Art and the Gendered Violence of Extractivism

In the customs of many Indigenous communities across the Americas, women—a category marked by an expansiveness extending beyond a binary system—are associated with and draw power from a deeply rooted connection with the Earth. Because of this sacred relationship, colonial invaders’ violence against Indigenous lands via conquest, settlement, and development was—and is—inextricably tied to their brutal treatment of Native women. Today, legacies of this violence and brutality continue in the form of ongoing extractivist activities and their devastating environmental consequences as well as the disturbingly high rates of violence against Native women that studies have shown to be particularly concentrated in areas of extractive industries.

Emphasizing Indigenous connections to ancestral lands and protecting the Earth from harm are central components of most Indigenous worldviews, and Native feminisms further underscore the key roles played by women in these aspects of Indigenous epistemologies. As English, Ktunaxa, and Cree-Scottish Métis scholar Joyce Green asserts, “Indigenous feminism draws on core elements of Indigenous culture—in particular, the nearly universal connection to land, to territory, through relationships framed as a sacred responsibility” (Green, 2017, p. 4).

This session seeks studio art and art history projects that investigate relational intersections of Indigeneity, feminisms, and land in ways that counter the gendered violence of extractivism, historically and today.