Selected Art Works 24-25

Academic Decathlon

Dinétah

The traditional homeland of the Navajo people, also known as the Navajo Nation under U.S. law.

Will Wilson

A contemporary Diné (Navajo) artist known for his work documenting the impact of environmental harm on Navajo lands.

Church Rock Spill

The largest radioactive spill in U.S. history, occurring on July 16, 1979, that released over 93 million gallons of radioactive liquid.

Survey (in the context of Wilson's work)

A photographic series by Will Wilson that documents contaminated lands in Dinétah.

Tailings

Radioactive waste products from uranium mining that contain heavy metals and radium.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

A graduate degree awarded to Will Wilson in 2002 from the University of New Mexico.

Evaporation Ponds

Ponds used to evaporate water contaminated with tailings from uranium mining.

Edward S. Curtis

A 20th-century photographer known for his stereotyped portraits of Native Americans.

Wet Plate Collodion

A traditional photographic technique used by Will Wilson that creates high-detail glass-plate negatives.

Uranium Mining

A process that extracted approximately four million tons of uranium ore from Navajo lands from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Judy Pasternak

Author of a book documenting the Church Rock Spill disaster and its immediate effects.

U.S. Government Accountability Office

An agency that acknowledged the ongoing environmental and health effects of mining operations on the Navajo Nation.

Puerco River

The river contaminated by the Church Rock Spill that traveled eighty miles downstream to Navajo County, Arizona.

Photographic Inquiry

Will Wilson's proposal to create a body of work that stimulates critical dialogue around the representation of Native Americans in photography.

Contaminated Lands

Areas in Dinétah that have been polluted due to environmentally harmful extraction activities.

Indigenous installation artist

An artist who creates artworks that are site-specific and connected to Indigenous cultures and issues.

Reclamation Project

An early installation work by Bonnie Devine that involved placing rolls of sod to comment on land claims and the Ipperwash Crisis.

Ipperwash Crisis

A conflict in 1995 involving Ontario Provincial Police and Indigenous protesters at Camp Ipperwash, resulting in the death of protester Dudley George.

Canoe (2003)

A work by Bonnie Devine made from stitched pages of her MFA thesis, displayed as part of a larger installation, reflecting traditional Anishinaabe culture.

Battle for the Woodlands

An installation by Bonnie Devine from 2014-15, featuring freestanding sculptures and a painting that reinterprets a colonial map of the Great Lakes.

Nineteenth-century colonial map

A historical map used by Bonnie Devine as a foundation for her artwork, illustrating political boundaries and Native land.

Environmental impact in Indigenous art

The focus on the relationship between Indigenous cultures and their land in the context of ecological concerns and colonization in artworks.

Cynthia Fowler

An art historian who has commented on the significance of Bonnie Devine's thesis and artistic practices.

Collective memory

Shared memories and cultural narratives that are passed down through generations and influence contemporary Indigenous art.

Migration of animals in art

A representation by Bonnie Devine of animals fleeing due to habitat loss resulting from colonial activities.

Art Gallery of Ontario

The venue that hosted Bonnie Devine's exhibition Battle for the Woodlands.

Red oxide painting

The medium used by Bonnie Devine to depict animals in her installation, symbolizing life-giving water and Indigenous presence.

Mark Cheetham

An art historian who interprets Bonnie Devine's artwork as acknowledging Indigenous displacement.