Traveling art show connects energy policy, art and Native American
communities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 17, 2005
Minneapolis, MN – Honor the Earth, a national Native American foundation
and political advocacy organization, is launching its Impacted Nations
traveling art show in New York City this month. Premiering at the Nathan
Cummings Foundation at 475 10th Avenue (between 36th and 37th Streets) now
through January 2006, the artwork profiles the intersection of Indigenous
artists and environmental concerns.
With over fifty pieces of artwork spanning the continent, Impacted Nations
is an artistic collaboration that portrays the conflict between Native
peoples’ cultural and spiritual relationship to Native land and the
economic forces that undermine that relationship and Indigenous ways of
life. The show also features artwork depicting renewable energy such as
solar and wind power.
“The fact is that out of two trillion barrels of oil on the planet, we
have used one trillion (most of it in the past fifty years). At the rate
of current consumption, we will use the remaining reserves within the next
40 years,” Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth’s Executive Director explains.
“The concerns of Indigenous peoples are concerns of the American economy.
The U.S. is the largest energy market in the world and a lion’s share of
that is in transportation. The next steps on the road ahead will be
different and will be challenging.”
Janeen Antoine, Impacted Nations curator adds, “This nation’s appetite for
energy devastates Native lands with dirty energy developments that destroy
the entire web of life. The artists’ collective works articulate a broad
view -- of the dark realities of dirty energy and of the hopeful vision
for tribal wind and solar power.”
By bringing Native art and resistance into the spectrum of mainstream fine
arts and culture, Impacted Nations includes the voices of the most vocal
and passionate communicators: the fine contemporary and traditional art of
Native peoples who live in remote villages, reservation towns, border
communities, and urban centers. Antoine explains, “Impacted Nations
encourages Native nations to be leaders in developing the alternative
energy resources so abundantly provided. It urges us all to be true
caretakers of mother earth. Hear us, we are sending a voice.”
New York City is a huge energy market. In the 1980s and 1990s, Cree
communities pleaded with the New York Power Authority as a part of the
James Bay II struggle to stop a huge dam project in northern Quebec. After
a heated battle, that dam project was “put on ice” by Hydro Quebec, and
the tenacious activists were able to rest for a short while. New dam
projects, however, continue to emerge. As New York City’s consumption
has not diminished, Impacted Nations will focus on the impact of energy in
the Northeast and the potential for renewable energy and conservation.
After New York City, Impacted Nations will travel across the United States
to proposed cities such as Minneapolis, MN and Santa Fe, NM. In addition,
we intend to exhibit in reservation communities that have been affected
firsthand by the deadly legacy of energy development on their communities
by energy development. These same communities are also the places where a
vision of an alternative energy future is growing and becoming a reality.
Native reservations in the Great Plains possess the wind energy potential
for over one-half of United States electrical capacity, which is estimated
to be 600-gigawatts. These tribal communities also represent, in the
words of Robert Gough from the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, the
“head winds” for the regional “windshed.” In other words, the prevailing
winds from the region largely move to the east into the area of greatest
United States energy usage – the East Coast.
Honor the Earth’s work is founded on the premise that the key resources
lacking in the Native environmental movement are money and political
allies. Ten years ago, Honor the Earth, with musicians like Bonnie Raitt,
the Indigo Girls, and Exene Cervenka, set out to create and direct these
resources to Native communities with a strategy to build an informed
constituency able to take action in support of grassroots environmental
justice and cultural survival issues. The organization has raised over one
millions dollars for front-line grassroots organizing, and worked with
tribes to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol and create renewable energy
programs.
To view the exhibit at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, please call Karen
Garrett at 212-787-7300, ext. 206. The only times available for viewing
are Monday through Friday, 9am - 5pm.
For more information: Honor the Earth
Contact: Karen Garrett 212-787-7300
Natalie Marker 612.879.7529
Honor the Earth
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Last updated on November 05, 2005