The Decolonial Imagination
       
     
Water is Life
       
     
Standing Rock
       
     
Black Snake
       
     
We Came to Fight the Black Snake
       
     
How the Protectors Defeated the Black Snake
       
     
Black Snake Protest Puppet
       
     
Mile Marker Post from Standing Rock
       
     
Mirror Shields
       
     
A pile of about 40,000 buffalo hides
       
     
North American Landscape
       
     
The Decolonial Imagination
       
     
The Decolonial Imagination

This gallery features creative responses to the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1200-mile conduit of crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois built by the Texas conglomerate Energy Transfer Partners in 2016-17. The pipeline became an international flashpoint of pan-Indigenous and allied resistance to colonial extractivism when thousands of Water Protectors gathered in various camps around the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to contest its construction on nearby unceded land, expressing concern about potential oil spills threatening the Missouri River, which provides fresh water to millions of inhabitants in the region. Although the pipeline was eventually completed and began operation in 2017, the art displayed here provides a glimpse of the remarkable outpouring of creative imagination by people drawing inspiration from Indigenous traditions, the diverse community of allied activists, the water itself, and a collective decolonial sense of environmental justice.

Water is Life
       
     
Water is Life

Isaac Murdoch, Anishinaabe (Ojibway)

2016

Read more

Standing Rock
       
     
Standing Rock

Jim Denomie, Ojibwe, Lac Courte Oreilles band

2016

Read more

Black Snake
       
     
Black Snake

Starr Hardridge, Muscogee

2016

Read more

We Came to Fight the Black Snake
       
     
We Came to Fight the Black Snake

Nicolas Lampert, American

2016

Read more

How the Protectors Defeated the Black Snake
       
     
How the Protectors Defeated the Black Snake

Tyler Read, American

2016

Read more

Black Snake Protest Puppet
       
     
Black Snake Protest Puppet

Artist unknown, Indigenous

2021

Read more

Mile Marker Post from Standing Rock
       
     
Mile Marker Post from Standing Rock

Hickory Edwards, Onondaga Nation

2016

Read more

Mirror Shields
       
     
Mirror Shields

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota

2016

Read more

A pile of about 40,000 buffalo hides
       
     
A pile of about 40,000 buffalo hides

Unknown photographer, American

1874

Read more

North American Landscape
       
     
North American Landscape

Tom Jones, Ho-Chunk

2013

Read more