Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
The events at Standing Rock prompted sculptor Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), who was born on the reservation, to consider art in a new light. More than an object to be admired, art is a process, a way of connecting and engaging people. That realization shifted his focus toward designing new forms of collective participation, for the water protectors there at Standing Rock, and for others. He made an instructional video demonstrating how to build mirrored shields that people could use to protect themselves and to confront law enforcement officers with their own reflections. In a project focused on the murder of Indigenous women, girls, and trans and queer people, he asked communities affected by the crisis to create clay beads, which he stained and used to create a massive mosiac-style portrait. Much of his current work falls under a banner he calls “future ancestral technologies,” which combines sci-fi, technology, and Native sensibilities and ideas. “Science fiction creates a tunnel into the future, which is a shadow for us,” he says. He’s currently working on a speculative narrative of the next 30,000 years, in which the elites have ruined and abandoned Earth, the colonialist mentality has collapsed, and those left behind atone and rebuild.
#scifi #clifi #grist50 #climate #environment
The events at Standing Rock prompted sculptor Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), who was born on the reservation, to consider art in a new light. More than an object to be admired, art is a process, a way of connecting and engaging people. That realization shifted his focus toward designing new forms of collective participation, for the water protectors there at Standing Rock, and for others. He made an instructional video demonstrating how to build mirrored shields that people could use to protect themselves and to confront law enforcement officers with their own reflections. In a project focused on the murder of Indigenous women, girls, and trans and queer people, he asked communities affected by the crisis to create clay beads, which he stained and used to create a massive mosiac-style portrait. Much of his current work falls under a banner he calls “future ancestral technologies,” which combines sci-fi, technology, and Native sensibilities and ideas. “Science fiction creates a tunnel into the future, which is a shadow for us,” he says. He’s currently working on a speculative narrative of the next 30,000 years, in which the elites have ruined and abandoned Earth, the colonialist mentality has collapsed, and those left behind atone and rebuild.
#scifi #clifi #grist50 #climate #environment
