#climateincrisis

For millennia, Indigenous communities throughout the Americas have maintained profound and expansive relationships with the natural world. These same communities are now some of the most vulnerable to climate crises, from wildfires and droughts to the overextraction of natural resources—threats against which generations of activists are combatting and organizing. This #EarthDay, we are highlighting artworks that speak to Indigenous understandings of the natural world and that address the threat environmental change poses to Indigenous livelihoods. 

You can see these works and more on view in Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas.

Now open, Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas draws upon the strength of our Arts of the Americas collection to highlight the complex worldviews of Indigenous peoples and explore how their beliefs, practices, and ways of living have been impacted by the ongoing threat of environmental destruction. With regional groupings spanning North, Central, and South America, this exhibition highlights different Indigenous understandings of the natural world and activism toward environmental justice. ⁠

This tetrapod (four-legged) vessel reflects how the ancient Maya visualized the world across three interconnected levels: the celestial overworld, the earthly middleworld, and the watery underworld of the dead. This expansive idea of the world and the place of humans within it has been displaced since European colonization in the 1500s, when land came to be divided into a series of geopolitical borders. The Maya vessel, now on view in the exhibition Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas, serves as a reminder of the ways that colonial worldviews contradict Indigenous understanding of the environment, and the effects of these tensions on national and international climate policies today. 

Tag along on a virtual tour of Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas led by Joseph Shaikewitz and Shea Spiller, Curatorial Assistants, Arts of the Americas and Europe!

Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas explores the severe impact that climate change is having on Indigenous communities across the hemisphere, and how this situation has an even longer history rooted in the legacies of the European colonialism. The exhibition highlights the complex worldviews of Indigenous peoples and considers how their beliefs, practices, and ways of living have been impacted by the ongoing threat of environmental destruction.

In the introductory gallery, a photograph by Tailyr Irvine from the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests at Standing Rock connects to a model tipi by Teri Greeves. According to Greeves, “In staking down a tipi, a way of life is staked down and thus sacred space is created and held.”

This vessel encapsulates the Maya understanding of the world and its existence across three interrelated levels: the celestial overworld, the earthly middleworld, and the watery underworld. In the exhibition, the work serves as a reminder of how geopolitical borders and discussions of climate policy on a national level contradict Indigenous worldviews and the spread of myriad cultures across the hemisphere for millennia.

This intricate basket by Gail E. Tremblay combines traditional weaving methods with 16mm film taken from a 1967 ethnographic documentary on Inuit life. As Tremblay explains: 

“With the threat of global warming, I want people to think about the importance of the Arctic, how it supports life, and how the Native people who live there keep that life going. The exploitation of oil and fossil fuels is causing people to destroy the Earth, and the lack of balance is endangering life on the planet.”

This grouping of work from the Canadian and U.S. Northwest Coast includes Preston Singletary’s Guardian of the Sea, which speaks to the scarcity of natural resources once abundant in the region. Singletary comments: 

“Corporations and even our current government are rolling back environmental regulations, defunding scientific research, building oil pipelines which endanger our clean water, and a whole host of other issues that endanger our health as a nation. In my opinion, this is due to the lack of a true spiritual connection in relation to nature. . . . It is driven by a blind and misguided capitalist perspective that is not balanced by a respect for our environment.”

In her Broken Treaty Quilt series, the artist Gina Adams reproduces passages from United States government treaties with Native tribes on vintage quilts to draw attention to the deception and violence committed against Indigenous peoples during the formation of the U.S. The passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, which Adams quotes here, broke reservations up into individually owned plots that could be bought and sold, going against core Native understandings of communal ownership. As a result, more than ninety million acres of tribal land were sold to non-Native people.

The exhibition also highlights the perspectives of Indigenous climate activists, like Xiya Bastida, who notes:

“People say the climate movement started decades ago, but I see it as Indigenous people protecting Earth thousands of years ago. We need to bring [this philosophy] back and weave it into today’s society. . . . It shouldn’t be ‘we the people.’ It should be ‘we the planet.’”

This case shows artwork from present-day Peru that relates to the concept of “pacha,” a Quechua word that encompasses interrelated ideas of space, place, time, and the universe. This expansive worldview continues to inform much Indigenous activism and advocacy for environmental stewardship. 

Several million Indigenous people inhabited the Amazon rainforest prior to European colonization in the 1500s, and their artistic traditions—such as the brightly colored featherwork and earrings made of beetle-wing covers—and connection to the natural world continue to this day. Climate in Crisis emphasizes the survivance of Indigenous communities in the Americas and beyond as well as the central place of Indigenous worldviews in the creation of environmental justice.

Thanks for joining us! Tune in next Sunday for another virtual tour of our galleries!