The Tyee republished the Megaphone article about my work.
Yeah... shit's about to go sideways. I'll take you to Amerind. You'll like it, looks like home., 2016
Yeah... shit's about to go sideways. I'll take you to Amerind. You'll like it, looks like home., 2016 Digital intervention on an Emily Carr Painting (Cape Mudge: An Indian Family with Totem Pole, 1912)
This is an intervention that draws upon my appreciation of Star Trek and the love of understanding my culture and family history. Emily Carr’s Cape Mudge: An Indian Family with Totem Pole is a painting of my home village, and that of my grandfather and his grandfather, Chief Billy Assu. As with What a Great Spot for a Walmart! (2014), the personal connection I have to the source material for this work has made this intervention particularly satisfying.
There have been a few episodes in the Star Trek canon that have appropriated “Native American” life, culture and, most notably, stereotypes of Indigenous cultures. A number of these storylines include an extraterrestrial visit to Earth, where the aliens have intervened with or removed the Indigenous people from the land.
In the early 20th century, Chief Billy Assu, in the name of progress, urged his people to maintain traditional values yet adopt colonial ways to provide a better future for our people. Perhaps he felt adoption was better than assimilation? To that end, he destroyed the longhouses in the village of Cape Mudge, dragging them out to sea using a steam-donkey attached to a barge. Where longhouses once stood, you’ll now find single-family homes.
In the episode “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968), from Star Trek: The Original Series, the USS Enterprise crew lands on a planet that is seemingly inhabited by Native Americans. Spock is able to decipher the writing on an obelisk that protects the planet, and he discovers that a group of well-meaning aliens—known as the Preservers—removed these Native Americans from Earth, transporting them, along with everything they were familiar with, to a planet halfway across the galaxy. There, these people were able to flourish, never having known the effects of colonization.
The away team only has thirty minutes to explore the surface before a giant astroid levels the planet. As they are leaving, they spot an indigenous village. So now they have to save the planet. According to Spock, the villages seem to be similar to Native American tribes from earth. According to him, a "a mixture of Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware" characteristics. Kirk likens it to discovering a mythical lost society, like Atlantis or Shangri-La. McCoy probably grumbles something about medicine men.
from my Intervention on the Imaginary series. A riff on Star Trek’s “Scotty, Beam Me Up!”
From Interventions on the Imaginary. “They're Coming! Quick! I have a better hiding place for you. Dorvan V, you'll love it” was inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Journey’s End” episode.
From Interventions on the Imaginary. “Tell Chakotay that we’ll brb” was inspired by Star Trek: Voyager’s “Tattoo” episode.
Anthwara, a descendant of the Native Americans who left earth (in Star Trek’s fictional past) as they were tired of the colonial bullshit. He says that when he arrived on Dorvan V, “the mountains and the rivers welcomed him.”
Played by Tom Jackson, Lakanta was a Native American medicine man, living on Dorvan V. He guided Wesley Crusher through an ancient ceremony and eventual relieved himself to be the “Traveller”, a space and time-travelling being.
A group of “aliens” named the “Wise Ones” forcibly removed a group of Native Americans and moved them to a planet across the galaxy.
All Along The Watchtower, 2015 For the YVR Art Foundation’s upcoming auction
Sonny Assu’s exploration of abstraction and relationships to pop culture is a driving force behind this drum. Composed by Bob Dylan, made famous by Jimi Hendrix, the song "All Along The Watchtower" strikes a particular cord with fans of the popular television series Battlestar Galactica (BSG). The drum's minimal design and colour palette highlights its skin's unique texture, and the central 3D element is meant to invoke motion - in this case, "Faster Than Light" (FTL) travel, which is part of the BSG canon. The pop-culture narrative behind "All Along The Watchtower" is in reference to the series finale of BSG. The character Starbuck needs to engage the ship’s FTL drive to "jump” to seemingly unknown coordinates, which are based on the notes from the song itself. Her leap of faith unknowingly steers the haggard crew to a “pre-historic” Earth, ultimately saving the fate of humanity.
This is the third drum painting in a new series that explores the use of 3D formline elements. First used in Interventions On The Imaginary, the 3D forms used by Assu are meant to invoke the notion of an extraterrestrial visit. This theory was inspired by petroglyphs found near his home village of Cape Mudge. “To me," he says of the petroglyphs, “they look like aliens.”. Assu speculates, through this new painting series, and Interventions On The Imaginary, that the First Peoples were visited by aliens at some point in the past.
"Which, if you’ve seen the final episode of BSG," he says, “will blow your mind a little."