| dc.description.abstract | Since contact with Indigenous peoples, Western colonizers and settlers have formed and relied upon created differences rooted in misinformation. By labeling Indigenous groups, including Native Americans, as “cannibals,” Western oppressors produced the evidence that they felt was necessary to justify the colonization and settler colonization of Indigenous lands and bodies. Yet, during these processes of oppression, Western settlers and colonizers themselves acted cannibalistically; by appropriating and destroying Indigenous lands and lifeways, Western oppressors have engaged actively in “cultural cannibalism.” Contemporary mixed-media artist Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe, b. 1979) identifies and challenges this “insatiable hunger of settlers” in her Windigo and VORE Series. By consuming and incorporating museum objects, “cannibal boom” films, and themes from Western art history in her compositions, Carlson engages in anthropophagy to flip past Western accusations of Indigenous cannibalism back onto their projectors. In both series, Carlson stresses that settlers in the United States, acting as windigos, or monsters that consume without consequence, have and continue to cannibalize Native America without hesitation or regard for Native lifeways. An examination of how Carlson addresses and consumes past culturally cannibalistic practices in her Windigo and VORE Series leads to a better understanding of how power and cultural exchange can operate in settler colonial situations. | en_US |
