The Sioux Project / Tatanka Oyate

2017

The Sioux Project / Tatanka Oyate (2017) is the first art exhibition to explore contemporary Sioux aesthetics in Saskatchewan. In this new work, Hunkpapa Lakota artist Dana Claxton claims the term Sioux for Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples as she dedicates herself to a careful analysis of contemporary Sioux relationships to cultural belongings and traditional teachings. She does this by projecting interconnected stories onto four circular canvas screens. Viewers are invited into the circle to consider the many dialogues presented from hours of digital video footage and still photographs collected from a series of workshops she and Cowboy Smithx held with Sioux youth from Standing Buffalo and White Cap First Nations, interviews, and video vérité.

Stitched together from interviews with artists, cultural practitioners, and elders, Claxton disestablishes popular culture’s tropes and romantic notions of indigenous people in the  landscape with the assemblage of diverse images and experiences. The resulting installation delivers visual stories and images that thoughtfully consider beauty in relation to intergenerational knowledge and the dispersal of Sioux peoples throughout Saskatchewan.

Edited from the Mackenzie Art Gallery