For To Hold the Land, Witt Siasoco assembled an incredible group of artists to examine aspects of land ownership, stewardship, and sovereignty, from Rory Wakemup and Cannupa Hanska Luger to Alexa Horochowski, Shanai Matteson, and Jonathan Herrera Soto. Held at the University of Wisconsin - Stout’s Furlong Gallery, the exhibition is accompanied by a broadsheet catalogue, which Witt invited me to write. At the core of the keystone essay is Witt’s experiences opposing Enbridge’s Line 3. He begins:
I drove from Minneapolis to the Welcome Water Protectors Camp last November to be part of the movement resisting Line 3, a pipeline designed to convey a million barrels of tar sands crude oil each day from Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin. Upon arriving in Palisade, Minnesota, for that first visit, I found myself at a kitchen table with activists, some who’d been engaged in this fight for years. Among them was Winona LaDuke, renowned sustainability activist and cofounder of Honor the Earth. She turned and faced me: “What kind of indigenous person are you?” I could’ve answered in terms of the geography of my race, ethnicity, or personal history—the Philippines, Iowa, Minneapolis—but I knew her question was more fundamental. Am I from a place or of a place? Where is my history, and where is my future? And what is my relationship, my responsibility, to the land that now sustains me and those I love?
The experience was my first with Witt as a curator (I know him best as an educator and an artist), and it was a reunion, of sorts: Witt and I became friends at the Walker, where we worked with the broadsheet’s designer, Alex Dearmond, who also made the exhibition graphics. Here are some snaps of the show, which closes December 18, 2021. Proud to be part of it, even in this small way.
