Sovereign Imagination: The Art of Leonard Peltier
September 11, 2015
Sovereign Imagination: The Art of Leonard Peltier
by Frances Madeson
Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination…
Doing time does this thing to you. But of course you don’t do time.
You do without it. Or rather, time does you.
Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of yours
day by day, night by night.
— Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance
Leonard Peltier could not be present at the exhibition of his artwork at the second Indigenous Fine Arts Market (IFAM) in Santa Fe, NM, held on August 20-22, because he’s been incarcerated in the U.S. federal penitentiary system for the last 40 years. He’s currently in Coleman (Florida), a known “gang prison,” a brutal and violent place subject to frequent lockdowns lasting not uncommonly for as long as a month.
Maybe next year?
While the primary focus of this article is not the case for clemency, the reality is that presidential intervention is his only remaining avenue to freedom. Barring the appearance of some staggering new piece of evidence, all appeals for a new trial have been thoroughly exhausted. The feeling among his inner circle is that a new president, whoever it may be, is unlikely to risk involvement; but a lame duck president just might quack Peltier’s way. The mere fact that this show has almost miraculously manifested whets the appetite for hopefulness.
A few points by way of context: There has been an established Indian art market in Santa Fe for the last 93 years, operated by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, or SWAIA. They claim to bring in $100,000,000 of revenues to Santa Fe, and it is the oldest and largest Indian art market in the nation. The word venerable is often invoked. But two years ago three of their Native American staff resigned and formed a cheaper, more inclusive, more varied, less hierarchical and more participatory, alternative Indigenous arts market — IFAM; they held their first market in 2014, simultaneously with SWAIA’s (much to SWAIA’s consternation). Afterwards, the editorial board of the Santa Fe New Mexican weighed in with a Solomonic “Our View” column accepting the renegade market. How could they not? By all metrics it had been a raging success. All to say, these issues of self-determination — who gets to show, what they are permitted to show, booth affordability — are very much alive in the present moment, and the example of IFAM itself as a successful challenge to stasis, complacency, even rot (venerable rot, naturally) is empowering.
Second, (and also empowering) Melanie K. Yazzie of the Diné Nation, co-founder of The Red Nation and American Studies PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico has written a brilliant, if scathing, takedown of some of the major museums in New Mexico, calling them out, exhibit by exhibit, for their less than honest portrayals of colonial violence against Native peoples. It’s called “A Native Critique of New Mexico History,” and critique is putting it mildly: she makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. She argues that in the interest of pandering to tourism, the history museums are guilty of erasing the truth about the barbaric consequences to Native peoples from colonization.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/11/sovereign-imagination-the-art-of-leonard-peltier/
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