random placement of things around him when he creates his photographs. For example, on his first day there, he observed a ladder leaning against the building where he would reside for two weeks. He immediately saw this as an opportunity to create an interesting piece that perhaps looks like his “invading” of Ucross, as shown in the work, The Present Day . Jeremy’s work places a humorous yet truthful visual on issues that have real impacts on Indigenous People — treaty rights, identity, or interpretations of history. The random opportunities that Dennis finds to, as he says, “sneak our way into the present” create a discourse about non-Natives’ fear of acknowledging treaties signed between the U.S. Government and sovereign tribal nations. When she arrived at Ucross, poet Danielle Shandiin Emerson was immediately struck by the qualities of the rocks. Not only does she have a love of rocks and petrified wood, but these sacred items reminded her of her home. Her words evoke deep emotion, and how she displays them makes one feel the juxtaposition of the sharpness/smoothness of the rocks and the hardness/cushion of the ground. It is with the hardness and softness of our parents’ parental skills or their trauma that we naturally inherit from them and our grandparents. In Sunburnt , she conveys the challenges of her father while she carries the weight of what he had to endure, knowing that eventually, maybe her own children will bear her weight.
During his stay at Ucross, Steven J. Yazzie not only spent time creating but immersed himself in the landscape to “remember where I’m at and remember where I’m from” to acknowledge those Indigenous Peoples’ whose land he is within while empowering his own Diné identity. American Indian people have this deep reverence for the land, whether they are 1,000 miles away from their own People’s ancestral territory or whether they are standing within it. Overall, Steven’s work in this show demonstrates his composition’s sacred abstractness while inserting his interpretation of the natural world to visually manipulate and challenge the viewer’s “perceptions of space.” His photographs of his nation’s landscape hold the lens from which he views his people’s stories and values. Interestingly, he contrasted that with an unknown contemporary voice, who had scrawled an image and English words, demonstrated in the work entitled, No Shit . I suppose each generation must record his or her mark for the next. Photographer Jeremy Dennis recalls his time at Ucross as a freeing and positive reinforcement experience. In his inspired mode, he says he tends to go with the flow of the environment and embraces the
The Language of the Land is how Indigenous Peoples have experienced this land from which we were created, the Americas. We may call it: ‘ki, dinétah or byíít ʔʔ ɔ́ wuh. Since the beginning of time, all of our senses have known earth, its grasses, its dirt, its living beings, its rocks, its rivers, its air, its spirit, and its teachings. The land holds our identity, our stories, and our truth about ourselves. Much later in time, our land would witness misconceptions held by others, which have tried to redefine Indigenous People. As I sit here writing about these amazing artists, photographers, and poets of life, I feel the weight of their own feelings, philosophies, traumas, and their strength to express themselves within their respective works. Months ago, when I was immersing myself in the potential work for this exhibition, there was a common link that connected them — the land. The 2024 recipients of the Ucross Fellowship for Native American Visual Artists and Writers, Steven J. Yazzie (Diné/ Pueblo of Laguna, European Ancestry), Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock), and Danielle Shandiin Emerson (Diné), are outstanding communicators of a language that informs audiences to enter each of their respective experiences in contemporary society.
She stated, “people need to heal,” and she wanted to help her brother.
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