LIFE IN THE WEST, 2023

Americana is a new series that explores untold histories of indigenous peoples in the US that while absent from academia and media are passed down through storytelling traditions. This image “Life in the West” features Kaa Folwell. She represents a story of a Native woman and the forthcoming impacts of western expansion and the Transcontinental Railroad on the Indigenous people. Native Americans—whose land the road of steel and wood charged across—are nowhere to be seen in railroad photography. This photo reminds us of a story—one of tragedy, transformation, and the paradigm-shifting effects of the railroad. Westward expansion changed our traditional worlds, arts, and landscapes forever. Invoking iconic imagery of the 1910s and 20s silent movie and the famous damsel in distress, tied to the railroad tracks—the psychological suspense hinges on--what will be her fate?

Americana explores the telling of Native American oral histories known in Native communities but erased from American history in academia and media. The series explores the retelling of history from a Native point of view by utilizing different genres of film that have created an absence of Native representation or casting Natives as villainous or unintelligent and then countering those depictions. The series examines the startling effect of film noir and other stylized techniques to garner an understanding of the audience for the way these depictions are internalized when the "tables are turned," and the Native subjects become the protagonists and the antagonists in the visual narratives become the colonizers. While some are potentially dark or disturbing (they are meant to be), some are celebratory of lived experiences that were erased throughout American history. The artist reflects on how easily Native Americans were portrayed as inferior throughout Americana and the effects those portrayals still have on Native people and lets the audience feel those inequities.