Untitled from Standing Strong: Awakening Series

Label

After driving 1,400 miles from Los Angeles with his partner and seven-month-old son, photographer Josué Rivas spent several months documenting the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL) at Standing Rock. Focusing on storytelling and narrative, Rivas’s photographs show a more complete picture of the protest events on the reservation, conveying the community building and knowledge sharing—not just the frontline actions—that took place within the camps. Rivas observed:

"Before we are journalists, we are human beings. And I think that Indigenous journalists understand the importance of approaching the story with intimacy and not just getting the story that is on the surface. We understand how to report from an ethical place, not an extractive place. One way to counteract those ways of reporting, one very useful way of doing that, is creating a body of work—something that you invest yourself in. The more time I spend here on the ground, the more I understand how my work will preserve the story of Standing Rock for future generations. I’m building a project with layers so that I can tell a full story instead of just a few good photos."

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2020

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2020

WGSS 10.01, Sex, Gender and Society, Douglas Moody, Winter 2021

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2021

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2021

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2021

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2021

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Luise and Morton Kaish Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5-April 19, 2022.

Provenance

Rivas Creative Services, Portland, Oregon; sold to present collection, 2020.

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