“As artists, we live on the periphery. But we are the mirrors. We are the reflective points that break through a barrier.” — Cannupa Hanska Luger, L.A. Times

Inspired by Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 exhibiting artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, SITE SANTA FE and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) are collaborating to host a hands-on Mirror Shield workshop and public activation.

In the workshop, participants are invited to make a mirror shield, reflect on themes of Indigenous sovereignty and self determination, and collectively decide — and enact — an activation of the mirror shields in Santa Fe.

As part of an iterative resistance movement, participants may at the conclusion of the workshop add their shields to Luger’s exhibition room at MoCNA — an action that collectively signals solidarity for the themes in which the shields are made.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA)
108 Cathedral Place, Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 983-8900

This event is sold out.

About the Mirror Shield Project

For artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), the Mirror Shield Project began out of urgency when in the summer of 2016 he learned that the water of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation, his father’s homelands and where he grew up, was under threat. The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a $3.87 billion underground petroleum transport pipeline that connects fracking grounds of the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota (Fort Berthold Reservation of the MHA Nation, where Luger is an enrolled member) through four states, ending at refineries in Illinois.

The pipeline was originally planned to cross the Missouri River north of Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital, but the city protested for fear that it would contaminate their water supply. The pipeline was instead rerouted just upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation. In addition to the threat to the water, this new path of the DAPL would desecrate several marked ancestral burial sites of both the Mandan and Lakota peoples.

Over the course of nearly a year, an estimated 15,000 people from around the world traveled to the Water Protector camp areas just outside of Cannonball, ND to stand in solidarity with the protection of the water and in support of the Indigenous-led actions in opposition to the DAPL.

“Art can be an incredible tool when you’re fighting aggression since it’s a language that transcends barriers.” — Cannupa Hanska Luger