Introductions | Dyani White Hawk

Six Native women stand side-by-side in the photo-sculpture I Am Your Relative (2022), made in collaboration with photographer Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk). Suspended and centred in a space, the installation features double-sided life-size images of women dressed in colourful, traditional skirts and black slogan t-shirts. The words on their shirts together form a sentence – a profound message which addresses the history and ongoing epidemic of violence perpetuated against Native women, girls, and two-spirit relatives: ‘I am, more than your desire, more than your fantasy, more than your mascot, ancestral love prayer sacrifice, your relative’. Developed from a 2017 performance at a fundraising event for Global Rights for Women, I Am Your Relative humanises and honours Indigenous women, and recognises the vital contributions each provide to their communities and society. Standing as a collective front, their individuality, strength and diversity is foregrounded.

LISTEN (begun in 2020), is an ongoing multi-channel video project, created in collaboration with filmmaker Razelle Benally (Oglala Lakota/Diné). Eight of eleven films made to date, constitute the first chapter of the project. They feature Native women on their ancestral lands, sharing experiences in their Indigenous languages, through stories, songs, prayers and poems. Without subtitles or translation, White Hawk creates a layer of poetic obfuscation between the audience and subject, asking us to tune-in to the immersive auditory experience and cadence of the languages. The first chapter includes Seneca, Dakota, Ojibwe, Diné, Tiwa, Hocąk, Cocopah and Kwatsáan language speakers, a small sampling of the many Indigenous languages of North America. The work impresses upon viewers the profound impacts of genocide, assimilation, and systematic erasure, while expressing gratitude for the role that Indigenous women have played in cultural continuity predating, and enduring, the long history of colonisation.