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Home » News » Art History Graduate Students Prepare Online Exhibition Indigenize Climate Justice

Art History Graduate Students Prepare Online Exhibition Indigenize Climate Justice

Published January 23, 2020

Indigenize Climate Justice is a decolonial intervention project by Art History MA students Chase Van Tilburg, Olivia Morris, and Savannah Elliott. The goal of the project is to introduce two specific activists to the Florida State University campus through a widely-advertised digital exhibition. The exhibition presents profiles of Allen Salway and Tokata Iron Eyes, Indigenous activists of social justice and climate change whose efforts were largely ignored for many years. The curators have also developed a sticker campaign to publicize the message, targeting both those who are interested in climate justice and those who will most benefit from being educated on the topic.

From the exhibition site:

Indigenous activists have been fighting for environmental justice since the 1970s. In the current age of mass media, it’s easy to reduce social justice movements to singular figureheads, like the lauded Greta Thunberg. However, in reality, these waves of political activism are the result of mass effort. In the mainstream coverage of the environmental justice movement, Indigenous peoples are often forgotten or excluded. This is especially insidious, as Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. Their traditional lifeways are being altered, sometimes destroyed permanently at an alarming rate. Despite this, there are hundreds of young Indigenous activists fighting for environmental justice. These activists fight to collapse the structures of inequality harming our planet, through methods that are creative and subversive. Ideally, this intervention will amplify these passionate Indigenous voices.

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