Art Is Homeless, Endless, and Edgeless—That’s Why It Can Change the World

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ 1990: A conversation with Australian artist Fiona Foley in 1990 drew my attention to history I did not learn in school: “If people knew more about their own history there would not be the naivete that seems to be perpetuated today. … There is a myth that the land was easily colonized. People are not aware of the immense struggles that we fought, not only on the east coast but all over Australia. They don’t know about the guerilla warfare that Aboriginal people took part in when trying to stop white colonization” (Foley, as cited in Sullivan, 1994, p. 127).

² 2001: Diane Caracciolo (2009), quoting Fiona Foley: “‘You’re very interested in learning about Australian Aboriginal art, but do you know anything about your own Indigenous peoples?’ Sitting in a circle during a small breakout session, these words spoken by Badtjala artist Fiona Foley, one of the conference presenters, stayed with me long after that midwinter weekend at Teachers College.… That one disquieting question, spoken gently but with power by a contemporary artist, worked its way through my system demanding to be answered.… I left that weekend with Fiona’s admonition toward our ignorance of Indigenous peoples reverberating in my Long Island ears. Filled with unexamined assumption regarding Indigenous people and research, I chose this question as the focus of my dissertation journey” (pp. 104–105). The title of Diane Caracciolo’s (2006) dissertation study with members of the Shinnecock Nation is telling: By Their Very Presence: Rethinking Research and Partnering for Change With Artists and Educators From Long Island’s Shinnecock Nation.

³ 2003: A paper coauthored by Martin and Mirraboopa (2003) described the framework Martin used in her doctoral research, and the rationale can be discerned from the preamble: “The myth of terra nullius implied that this country was uninhabited and terra nullius social policy supported by research enabled for the dispossession of knowledges of Indigenous peoples. It must be remembered that university curriculum, teaching methodologies and research endeavors have a history of development that contributed to this dispossession. Has the time come for change?” (p. 203).

In the same year, I was teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. During a weekend visit to a colleague, Rose Viggiano, at her upper New York State residence, I was intrigued by boxes of late 19th-century newspapers stored in the attic and her family collection of old books. One cloth-bound book grabbed my attention: Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Paley, 1838). William Paley was a theologian and philosopher who became an influential moral authority often quoted in debates in British Parliament in the early decades of the 19th century. This text was a standard reference at the time for classes in philosophy and civic debates. I was intrigued by the way philosophy was defined as a science based on logical reasoning, yet the principles of ethical human behavior Paley advocated were based on religious doctrines that served as the basis for laws guiding moral sanction and political action. Of specific interest to me was Paley’s rationalization regarding the status of “real” property, given the European invasion of Australia in the 18th century. Paley argued that those regions without documented details of land ownership could be freely acquired because, “as God has provided the ground for all, he has given leave to any to take what he pleases, (if not previously possessed,) without any kind of consent from others” (Paley, 1838, p. 73). This had ruinous consequences for the Indigenous nations of Australia because, according to Paley (1838), “there [were] no traces of property in land… amongst the savages of America or of Australia” (p. 71). Here was irrefutable evidence from at least as early as 1838 that claimed moral authority over the law of the land, which enabled the lie and devastation of terra nullius (“no one’s land”) to be enacted (Sullivan, 2010, p. 9, Note p. 4, 28).

⁴ 2016: Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in New York. He completed his MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts, The Pennsylvania State University, in 2016. During his graduation year, on the encouragement of his adviser, Lonnie Graham, Jeremy applied for the 2016 Dreamstarter grant from the national nonprofit organization, Running Strong for American Indian Youth. I was intrigued by his proposal, On This Site, which involved developing an interactive photographic map of culturally important Native American sites of the Shinnecock Nation, a topic very significant to him because he was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation (Dennis, 2014–Present). When we talked about his project, I asked Jeremy if he was involved in any way with Diane Caracciolo’s doctoral research with the Shinnecock community, even though he would have only been about 10 or 11 years old when she wrote it. He had no recollection of this and had not seen any documentation. I was able to show him a copy of Diane’s dissertation, particularly a section that featured an extensive interview with a participating Shinnecock partner, Denise Dennis—his mother. He was stunned. I was pleased to give Diane’s dissertation to him. Incidentally, Jeremy was one of 10 national award winners of the 2016 Dreamstarter Grant. He currently lives and works in Southampton, New York, on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation (https://www.jeremynative.com/about).

⁵ 2019: An exhibition of Fiona Foley’s artwork held at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia, January 8–February 8, 2019, featured a partial record of her art practice and a series of projects that were part of her PhD exegesis. In visiting her show, I was able a get a fuller picture of the multiple narratives I had observed over the years about Fiona’s ongoing studio research into her Indigenous history, the political threads inherent in her art practice, and the educational impact of her public art projects. The following year, in 2020, Fiona’s doctoral study was published: Biting the Clouds: A Badtjala Perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897.

⁶ 2020: The theoretical framework of Fiona Foley’s doctoral research was adapted from the Indigenist research model of Karen Martin and Mirraboopa (2003) and Martin (2006). Foley paraphrased Martin’s methodology: “In the West, as Martin writes, knowledges are framed through ontology (worldview), epistemology (a system of knowledges), and axiology (a value system of practices and processes). The central concept of Martin’s work for an Indigenist research paradigm, though, is relatedness. The ontology of Aboriginal people’s existence, Martin writes, ‘anchors all experience to relatedness, no matter what the contexts.’ This is unpacked further by Martin when she applies it to the three knowledge bands: ontology, epistemology and axiology. She explains them as ‘Ways of Being,’ ‘Ways of Knowing,’ and ‘Ways of Doing’” (Martin, as cited in Foley, 2020, p. 18).

Martin’s theorizing advocates working alongside and beyond Western paradigms while holding fast to “Indigenous worldviews and honoring social mores, as well as emphasizing socio-historical and political contexts, while still privileging the voices, experiences and lives of Aboriginal people” (Singh & Major, 2017, p. 11). Another Indigenous scholar who was influential in helping Foley frame her doctoral studies, Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2020), offered a different perspective, advocating a critical Indigenous research position. Moreton-Robinson (2015) is a proponent of shifting the argument from a binary one of cultural difference where Indigenous peoples will always be othered, to a critique of Whiteness and settler colonialism whereby Australia was viewed as a country for White possession based on the “legal fiction of terra nullius” (p. 66), which denied any acknowledgment of Aboriginal sovereignty.

⁷ 2021: On September 9, The Guardian newspaper reported, “Fiona Foley wins Premier’s literary award for ‘significant truth-telling account’ of Queensland’s history… for her book Biting the Clouds… which explores the use of opium [ash] to coerce labour from Indigenous people at the turn of the 20th century, told in dialogue between Foley’s art and text” (Convery, 2021, para. 2). The provenance of Fiona Foley’s “truth-telling” through art and text follows a trajectory that features intersecting modes of practice-based research that culminated in her doctoral exhibition, Horror Has a Face (2017), and her in-depth historical interrogation, which became Biting the Clouds (2020).