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Modern Desert Markings:
Forts, Flags, Fences, Bombs, Bulldozers, Reservations, and Preservation in Nuwu lands
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The land is not the setting for the work but a part of the work…
The invisible is real…
Isolation is the essence of Land Art.
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Walter De Maria
Isolation is the essence of Land Art.
The isolation, vast space, and cheap land that called Land Artists and the U.S. Military to the so-called American West also called my ancestors––as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons––to settle here. A little more than 100 years later I was born and raised in that same West in Nuwu (Southern Paiute) lands. But this sense of isolation is not endemic to these deserts, it was, like the Land Art works that depend on it, created through colonization.
The invisible is real.
"History and a sense of time are at the core" of my and Walter De Maria's work. Commonly thought to be an element only of the past, "history," James Baldwin writes, "is the present....We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals." History is present in our cultures, languages, stories, bodies, and lands. History is present etched into million-and-billion-year-old stone as petroglyphs and monuments, paved into our roads, extracted from the land, and layered onto our cities. And as De Maria was well aware, history is also present even when it is buried or otherwise invisibilized. And remaining ignorant of that history and how it lives in our present and is perpetuated into our futures is criminal.
The land is not the setting for the work but a part of the work.
The land is not the setting for Nuwu history but the source of their history. Nuwu creation stories are held by mountains, histories are etched into stone, and land-based memories are remembered through ancestral songs. The history and futurity of Nuwu People is rooted in the history and futurity of their lands, and the Indigenous plant and animal lives who evolved with them. For this reason Nuwu continue to fight to protect their lands, even as they are cast “as an invisible people whose voices are drowned out by the winds from the many bombs that blast through where our umbilical cords lay.”
The isolation, vast space, and cheap land that called Land Artists and the U.S. Military to the so-called American West also called my ancestors––as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons––to settle here. A little more than 100 years later I was born and raised in that same West in Nuwu (Southern Paiute) lands. But this sense of isolation is not endemic to these deserts, it was, like the Land Art works that depend on it, created through colonization.
The invisible is real.
"History and a sense of time are at the core" of my and Walter De Maria's work. Commonly thought to be an element only of the past, "history," James Baldwin writes, "is the present....We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals." History is present in our cultures, languages, stories, bodies, and lands. History is present etched into million-and-billion-year-old stone as petroglyphs and monuments, paved into our roads, extracted from the land, and layered onto our cities. And as De Maria was well aware, history is also present even when it is buried or otherwise invisibilized. And remaining ignorant of that history and how it lives in our present and is perpetuated into our futures is criminal.
The land is not the setting for the work but a part of the work.
The land is not the setting for Nuwu history but the source of their history. Nuwu creation stories are held by mountains, histories are etched into stone, and land-based memories are remembered through ancestral songs. The history and futurity of Nuwu People is rooted in the history and futurity of their lands, and the Indigenous plant and animal lives who evolved with them. For this reason Nuwu continue to fight to protect their lands, even as they are cast “as an invisible people whose voices are drowned out by the winds from the many bombs that blast through where our umbilical cords lay.”
"history is present...We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals."
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James Baldwin
"History and a sense of time are at the core of my work."
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Walter De Maria
This kind of land ethic is not unique to Nuwu. Indigenous lifeways are nearly always enmeshed with their lands. And these deep-time relationships are mutually beneficial for the People and their Indigenous plant and animal relatives. Amidst the sixth extinction and biological annihilation crises Indigenous Peoples globally caretake 80% of the planet's remaining biodiversity as only 5% of the human population. Whereas through colonial land-based lifeways, humans and the few animals we raise for food occupy 96% of the planet's mammalian biomass. Only 4% of mammalian biodiversity remains––including whales, bison, elephants, lions, tigers, and bears––oh my!
In a time of global existential crises––prophesied and self-fulfilled by Christians, capitalists, and colonialists––learning, acknowledging, and reckoning with our settler-colonial past, extractive capitalist, imperialist present, and it's world-ending futures by supporting Indigenous movements for sovereignty and LandBack is in the best interest of all life.
In a time of global existential crises––prophesied and self-fulfilled by Christians, capitalists, and colonialists––learning, acknowledging, and reckoning with our settler-colonial past, extractive capitalist, imperialist present, and it's world-ending futures by supporting Indigenous movements for sovereignty and LandBack is in the best interest of all life.
"In dealing with the ambivalence of white America, we must not overlook...the physical extermination of the American Indian…the poisoning of the American mind was accomplished not only by acts of discrimination and exploitation but by the exaltation of murder as an expression of the courage and initiative of the pioneer."
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Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" (1967)
Chapter 1 - Las Vegas Mormon Fort
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Chapter 2 - Mormon Mountains Wilderness
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Chapter 3 - Mormon Well Road
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The End: Coming Soon
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>>> tap the images to view the sections <<<
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Pioneering Terra Nulliparous
Stone from Walter De Maria’s Las Vegas Piece site (Nuwu land), stone from just outside of the border of Desert National Wildlife Refuge (Nuwu land), replica adobe brick from Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park (Nuwu land), stone from the St. George Mormon temple quarry (Nuwu land), souvenir ceramic bricks from Mormon Nauvoo temple, cotton stripes from U.S. flag, plastic white roses, barbed wire, white doily, mirror pieces, Latter-day Designs’ toy figures, Book of Mormon pages, Salt Lake Mormon temple decoration, toy bulldozers, toy tanks, covered wagon centerpiece, nativity scene decoration, white bust of Apollo Belvedere, desert tortoise toy, toy cows, desert bighorn sheep toy, toy sheep, army guys, pages from the Book of Mormon, frames, white paints samples, mirror, and plastic turf rug. 6’ x 4’ x 2'. (2023)
