Drawing for Witnesses (Are they dead? No, they’re just frozen)

Drawing for Witnesses is a response to the disturbing display of Indigenous cultures at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Looking at the dioramas filled with plaster casts of Indigenous people, a child asked their mother “Are they dead?” and the mother responded “No, they’re just frozen.” We turn our white gaze back onto ourselves and onto our own imperialistic and genocidal history. Let us be sure that the white man’s ethnological displays of Indigenous people say more about white people than Indigenous people.

Photos by Andrea Thal

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