Project-In-Process: “Untitled” (Boundaries)

This project is about the territory of native peoples being ripped up and reassembled to create reservations and how that relates to animals being skinned and that skin being cured so that it is fit for a different purpose. The ways in which I have chosen to access these ideas are through treaty language, an 1885 map of Montana, making the reassembled reservations look like hide, using treaty words to create lashings, etc.

Each of the reservations located in Montana have been created by ripping up a copy of the map and then reassembled those pieces into the borders of a specific reservation. I am specifically considering the violence of tearing up ground, of shrinking a large territory into a very small one, the impact of that action on a population, and the reassembling of the territory into a living space that is much smaller than the original.

Lashing, with treaty words, the re-assembled territory, to a whitewashed wood frame held in place with iron nails.