AC Response | Nathaniel Ruleaux
[MC]...When we talk about land, it's not dirt. It's not mud. It's living. Our ancestors are in the land. She's living; she is our mother. It's not just a thought, or something we throw out there—"mother earth.” No. She's literally our mother. The moon is literally our grandmother. I wanted to point that out because for me, it's hard to say I have ownership, or I have any type of hierarchy over a relation that I know is going to outlive me. I think about it that way. I feel blessed and thankful and grateful to our other relatives who allow us into their spaces…It's a feeling of gratitude.
On Ponca & Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land I walked down the slippery steps on a cliff face near Valentine, NE with my father. The rush of the waterfall whispered into my ears sweet memories.
Memories of Tongva land waterfall hikes with my partner.
Of my first days living in the South on Akokisa land, posed by the man-made tourist trap called the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall. A bit of controlled life surrounded by high end retail shopping centers.
Reminded of the gentle caressing of my paddle moving me along Anacostans Land on the Anacostia River near the US Capitol.
Of childhood visits to Grandmas and Grandpas in Ȟesápa, back when you could put your feet in the cool showers of Spearfish Canyon. All fond memories of land and water away from Nebraska.
The majority of my life spent at home, in colonized NE, and I never knew we had waterfalls. It took seven years away, a pandemic and parenthood to see my native homelands with the same eyes I did as a child. Eyes that see history, beauty, tragedy and belonging.
Months later, I was grilling a steak. I drove down from Chamberlain SD, to a camping site on the top of an empty hill at Niobrara State Park.
I was sketching the river’s flow under the Standing Bear Bridge, which linked the two most influential states of my childhood South Dakota & Nebraska.
A drawing from my sketchbook I did of the river at Niobrara State Park
In some moments, the vista’s beauty was painful, and the slow sting brought tears to my eyes. That same feeling I get in the dead of night rocking my sleeping čhiŋkšíla, looking at his face and feeling so much love and awe that the fears of loss or separation creep in. Slipping into my arteries like a sliver in the bloodstream. Unconscious nightmares of generational trauma.
It can be painful, looking to the past. Painful to see how something beautiful that you belong to can be killed, taken away, or indoctrinated to the point of unfamiliarity.
That night, the wind on that open hill caused me to splay out on the floor of my tent like a starfish, using my 6’2’’ dad-bod as a human paperweight as the winds lashed my sides with the walls of the tent turned kite. When I would begin to drift off, the sound of howling šuŋgmánitu would snap me back to attention. And I became frustrated, and thought of sleeping in the car. But eventually the music of it all and the difference between that moment and a year spent in quarantine became just as beautiful to me as the sight of the river.
As an artist, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, and a multi-racial multi-heritage urban Native, the big picture and vast web of trying to repair the odyssey of harm brought to this land by white supremacy and colonization is immense.
Luckily, the leadership, knowledge and wisdom of Indigenous women, like the members of last month’s AC panel, is there to guide, assure, and support anyone feeling frustrated in a windy tent.
Panelist 1: Kate Beane, PhD, Executive Director, Minnesota Museum of American Art
Panelist 2: Andrea Carlson, Artist and Co-Founder, The Center for Native Futures
Panelist 3: Marisa Miakonda Cummings, President and CEO, Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center
Moderator: Lydia Cheshewalla, Artist and Organizer
[MC] I was just thinking Kate, as your daughter popped up, those of us from the Missouri River floodplain, which is one of the most fertile floodplains in the world, we planted after the flood. It’s almost like a woman's cycle, moon cycle. So, it would flood, then it would go down, and there was this fertile land with all the fish and turtles and everything in the land. Those were women's plots and we planted in mounds. My youngest girl, when I first started planting with traditional seeds again and had her with me, she planted in the mounds and then watered it and afterwards she said, “Oh, now it's pregnant.” She gets it because that mound carried those seeds just like we carry our children. That's our connection to land. That's our connection to the water systems. That's our connection to that spirit of life and creation which we are directly a part of. I just wanted to point that out. When we talk about land back, it's easy to talk about it in these terms of taxes and money.
Before I get into the gifts given to us by these incredible Indigenous women, I want to start by acknowledging that my response and feelings to their words as a man who benefits from the patriarchy does not in any way begin to equal or expand upon their discussion linked here. Please watch or rewatch it before continuing.
This loose/narrative response is just a peek inside my head and heart. I’m hoping to inspire deeper reflection and feelings in others who learned and listened as well. I want to use my privileges to continue the discussion and circulate the important ideas they shared. Please feel comfortable adding your thoughts and feelings to the comments section below.
[KB]...You see time and time again this colonial structure of let us tell you what's best for you. We know what's best for us. Our communities know what's best for us and we know how to do it. We know how we work. We know how we operate. But we’re not allowed to engage with one another and without worrying about the repercussions across political borders when one tribe receives the benefit of something and the other tribe doesn't. Those are the colonial systems that have been put into place from the beginning and we’re continuing that same path forward unless we change the way things are done.
One of the great opportunities in hearing powerful voices like those of the panelists is to find direction and points of action.
The idea of Indigenous communities communicating with each other and, through traditional ways (or new creations), achieving sovereignty outside the rigged systems imposed by colonial constructs feels actionable and like it’s progressing.
These goals are why I believe in, and why I have worked with, Native Organizers Alliance and Illuminative on the Indigenous Futures Survey 2.0.
Here in Omaha, NE, where I live in 2022, we’re still at square one.
[KB]...We work so hard just teaching people who we are and educating people about the fact that we're human beings and that we're still alive today and we have consistently been trying to get past that that moment of recognition, of acknowledgement, to get to where there's actually recourse, reparations, and a direct action. That's where I think these conversations around returning land, and the LANDBACK movement, can be really helpful. I’m interested in the illegality of how some of these lands were taken, the fact that they're not being purposed how they were meant to be purposed, the legal recourse of that, and what you can do as a response.
This job of making Indigenous people seen, heard, and accepted as human beings after years of fighting still feels like a battle. It is where my city, and most of the nation, are stuck in the mud.
My city, where three of the four officers involved in the brutal killing of Zachary Bear Heels still patrol our streets with zero accountability or justice, doesn’t see us as human. In Fact it is actively working to dehumanize us, to kill us, continuing the long and ongoing history of American genocide.
The current state of things can have the burdensome effect of making “LANDBACK wins,” like the several mentioned during the panel, feel far off for most. But in fighting this fight together, Indigenous communities find allies, which strengthens the people, the causes, and the hope for a better world.
Finishing work on this post, I’m listening to the panelists discuss European systems of governance and the ways in which the LANDBACK movement often gets bogged down in settler imposed legalities that forestall real progress. They open their hearts and discuss the generational trauma tied to this work. As I listen, I look out at my back yard.
It’s a new home for my family, and I wasn't aware that the bare winter tree in the back would bud such a deep red. Cardinals come get the special seeds from the feeder, and those red feathered bodies mix in with the buds of the trees and they both look home.
My Grandmother loved cardinals. When the clock in her kitchen would strike 12, it sang a cardinal’s song. The kitchen smelled like an herb garden. It was decked with my grandfather’s artwork on the walls. I remember my grandma’s long earlobes pulled down by time and beaded earrings.
This kitchen was in Chadron, NE. And the thought of this geographical location on the land, drifted into a vague memory of a field trip or family visit as a child to Fort Robinson.
I remember going around the fort, all the kids playing calvary and cowboys. We bought stale hardtack in the gift shop. I remember touring around as a group and, at some point, seeing a 3ft-ish marker made of piled stones a little further ahead in the grass. I remember asking the grown up in charge what that marker was. They passively answered, “Oh that’s where they killed Crazy Horse.”
And this half remembered memory makes me cry. So, I Iook back out at my yard. My tiny piece of LANDBACK in a fucked system. I look at the cardinals in their red tree. And I know I’m home.
[KB]...What he was saying is, “Now we can heal,” not just as a people, but for the land. That land had so much healing to do. Atrocities happened there that have impacted us for generations. There are people with stories to share that have never been shared. There is a lot of connection there that needs to happen between us, our lands, and how we protect and care for the lands. We get stuck because of all these barriers and the legalities of how to work through these things when all we want to do is heal and take care of one another and take care of the land and help the land take care of us.
A polaroid shot of trees in Spearfish Canyon.
Nathaniel Ruleaux (he/him) is an artist and culture worker currently located on unceded land of the Umónhon & Očhéthi Šakówiŋ in Nebraska. A partner, father, and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, his work combines modern art with traditional indigenous imagery. He is a founding member of Unceded Artist Collective, and sits on the board of the Omaha Area Youth Orchestras. Recently, he created work for the national Indigenous Futures Survey 2.0 campaign. In addition to creating visual art, he is a classically-trained actor and educator. He received his MFA in Theatre from the University of Houston’s School of Theatre and Dance after receiving a BA in Theatre Performance at the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.