Pull/Push

Abstract

These works are a part of my project around the convergence of Native American and skateboarding culture. I am mixing photo mediums like silver gelatin and Polaroids with traditional painting or wood working, into the language of today’s skate scene. Tradition and culture are not stagnant, they low continuously like a river, adapting and growing with the land around it. This mix of traditional and alternative culture shows the immense love and community that has sprouted in the face of colonialism, on and off the Rez. Almost every board I have made I have given away for free to other Natives, to enable them to keep enriching local communities and to take up the space they deserve. Themes such as reciprocity and kincentricity are central to my way of life and artmaking, and these are throughlines in both Native and skating communities. When we combine both, we become living embodiments of resilience. This body of work and writing is describing how skateboarding and Indigenous cultures are incredibly intertwined in healing from a post-colonial country. Making good medicine with and for each other through cultural practice and common activities such as skateboarding, along with holding sovereignty rights absolutely in these practices.