Continued Presence: The Art and Activism of Christi Belcourt and Chelsea Kaiah

Berkes, Emily Lauren

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Continued Presence: The Art and Activism of Christi Belcourt and Chelsea Kaiah Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/1v53jz652

Abstract

Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues for the need for decolonized research in her groundbreaking book Decolonizing Methodologies (2021). As Smith details, decolonized research is the decentering of colonial thinking and the recentering of Indigenous voices and perspective. In this thesis, I consider decolonization, as defined by Smith, in relation to contemporary Indigenous art and to a legacy of colonial practices in the U.S. and Canada. These colonial practices include the residential school system, the governmental injustices concerning Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit Peoples (MMIWG2S), and the violation of treaties between Indigenous nation leaders and settler leaders to exploit the resources of the land.

Drawing from Smith’s third edition of Decolonizing Methodologies, I explore how two contemporary Indigenous women artists, Christi Belcourt (Métis) and Chelsea Kaiah (Ute and Apache/Irish settler), like many contemporary artists, work with ancestral art forms, ancestral knowledge, and activism today to heal themselves, their communities, and future generations from colonial trauma. I position this as an assertion of continued Indigenous presence. I connect each artist to an Indigenous project, as articulated by Smith in Decolonizing Methodologies, to explain the different forms of activism and assertion of Indigenous presence. I do this to ground this thesis in Smith’s text, applying her suggested research approaches, to demonstrate different forms of Indigenous activism and action.

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