I Will Always Be an Indian

This series of photographs, installation, and performance were created in response to the outrage some people exhibited towards a law passed in 2010 that banned race-based mascots in Wisconsin high schools.

The reaction from the mostly white students and families was heated and contentious. Students held tightly to their “Indian” identity and were outraged that someone would try to steal it from them.

As a way to explore the social and physical landscape of such contention, I took a road trip to northern Wisconsin (where I was born and raised) traveling between impacted schools and nearby Native American reservations, including Lac du Flambeau, Menominee, and Lac Courte Oreilles. I took photographs, not as a journalist, but as a white person from here, trying to reconcile the dissonance between beautiful landscapes and hateful (at worst) or willfully ignorant (at best) people.

The resulting installation includes floor to ceiling text pulled from Facebook messages posted by white students and community members upset at the possible removal of their “Indian” mascots overlayed with photographs of landscapes, homes, and small towns in between reservations and schools.

I activated the space dressed as Whitey, a character created to call attention to the construction of and maintenance of whiteness. For this performance Whitey was dressed as an absurd hybrid of Victorian lady, white collar worker, ghost, and Indian mascot. As audio of sports crowds cheering fades in and out as the Facebook quotes are read aloud, Whitey moves from text on photo tracing with a large white pencil, not what is there, but her own image.