Artistic

This is a Zuni map created in ____ that represents a traditional view of the landscape and challenges Western notions of cartography.

The Zuni counter mapping effort shows artistic cultural maintenance and refusal to give up past ways of knowing and living. It is an artistic way of refuting settler superiority and connecting Zuni to the land they have fought to keep.

Western ways of mapping and knowing do not intersect with the Zuni view. Instead of acquiescing to Western ideas they are using art to refuse them. This art is educational and connects Zuni youth to their ancestors and land.

Native Americans do not need to operate within the framework of the United States. Their cultures are valid without recognition from settler colonialists.

Audra Simpson describes the concept of refusal in her article, "The Ruse of Consent and the Anatomy of ‘Refusal’: Cases from Indigenous North America and
Australia." 

"The ethnography and governance of Indigenous life are pushed
back upon in order to document, reread, theorize and enact ways
out of the notion of a fixed past and settled present" (Simpson 2013, 1).

Prayer Over Earth by Alison Woody (Dine) 2016. The painting emphasizes the strength of Native American culture and that their culture draws from the land.  

This painting occupies both political and artistic realms of resistance.

"Prayer Over Earth" was created by a Navajo woman in response to the protests at Standing Rock and the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This shows the intertribal support among Native Americans and the way shared identity motivates art.