Interviewed by Prudence Hayes

Winter 2012

 

Social justice activist with anarcho-punk twist, artist and professor, Dylan Miner knows what he’s doing when it comes to making art with a message.  All aspects of his work, from conceptual design to carefully selected sustainable printing materials, reinforce his anti-colonial and anti-capitalist messages. Miners’ artistic mediums range from sculptural to his iconic relief prints and zine style work, all with stylized radical Métis and Latino influence. With multiple solo exhibits, involvement in artist collectives, alternative galleries and bookstores, and over 40 published literary works, Miners’ connection to the messages behind his art is apparent, as it expands far beyond the individual art pieces, and into the community itself.

 

Prudence Hayes: You have a relatively diverse family history, and your art strongly conveys stylized Chicano/Latino influence. Did your childhood’s rural upbringing and varied family roots have a significant impact on the development of your personal style, or was this something you developed at an older age as you began to explore your own interests?

Dylan AT Miner: I was raised in the woods in rural Michigan, an area called the Thumb due to Michigan’s geography being shaped like a mitten. The small parcel of land my parents owned backed up onto an 8,000 acre parcel of state recreation land. This land was meant for hunting, hiking, and other such activities. This intimate relationship with the woods gave me a profound relationship with the local geography, thoroughly getting to know the land, its season, and its spirit.

As a Métis person, that is someone of mixed Aboriginal and European descent with roots in the North American fur trade, we do not have Indigenous status in the US. Even though there are historic Métis communities in the US (particularly Michigan, Minnesota, Montana), we do not have the same sovereignty rights as our relations across the US-Canada Border. My family has historic connections to Aboriginal communities in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Michigan.  Following the War of 1812, there was a group of Métis and Anishinaabeg who left what is today Michigan and moved north to the Georgian Bay, not wanting to be living in the United States. The shifting border became an impetus for my family’s migration. Subsequently, my grandfather’s family moved to Detroit in the early twentieth-century, a process of urbanization not unlike the experience of many Native peoples. As an older child my grandfather would share Métis family stories, a strong connection that I had with my grandfather. 

The village in which I was raised was primarily white, but did have a significant number of Chicano and Mexican farmworker families who settled in the area over the course of the past two decades. As a Métis person, I saw similarities between the colonial legacy of mestizaje (miscegenation) in the Chicano community and métissage in Canada and the Great Lakes. For instance, my wife’s family is descended from detribalized Indigenous communities in New Mexico and Texas, known as genízaros. These were Spanish-speaking communities of Comanches, Apaches, Tewa, Tiwa, Tano, and sometimes Diné. So even if I didn’t verbalize it as such when I was a teenager, I saw that my indigeneity as a Métis person was shared by my Chicano peers.

At a young age, I began speaking Spanish, building lowrider bikes, and many other things associated with chicanismo. I never saw it as anything other than a part of who I was. In this way, I became active in radical Native and Chicano politics, married into a Chicano family, and artistically have been greatly influenced by Chicano and Mexican printmaking traditions. While the aesthetic influence remains, one can think specifically about my ongoing Native lowrider project (Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag), much of my more recent work has begun integrating less obvious aesthetic influences and is engaged more heavily in conceptual ideas that play with Indigenous languages and knowledge epistemologies.

Dylan AT Miner, Prints

PH: It’s obvious to the viewer that most of your art is politically motivated, correct? What were some of your early political influences? Did your indigenous/ Métis roots affect or influence this in any way?  

DM: I come to my work as an artist from my position as an activist. For me, the two are not disconnected projects or identities, but seamlessly merged into one contiguous project of dismantling all that is wrong in this world. Thus, my art intentionally confronts systems of power and structures of inequality. The two main systems that I take issue with are capitalism, a system of making profit from another’s labor, and colonialism, the process of disavowing Indigenous peoples’ their (that is our) ability to be fully human. These systems are inherently interconnected. So when I make work, be it visual or intellectual, I see my critique of one system as being fully embedded in an appraisal of the other. 

It all begins in my own narrative with the fur trade. This system of trapping and trading animal pelts was integral to the emergence in North America of early-capitalism (what some would call mercantilism), as well as in the colonization of the upper half of North America. Most of this system of exploitation and ecological destruction was precipitated by the European desires for beaver felt hats. In my artwork, the continuous employment of felt as a material is a comment on this process. I frequently employ felt in my work as a direct comment on the legacy of the fur trade.

Getting back to the question, there is a connection between my radical political orientation and my understanding of indigeneity. That is to be Indigenous is to embody a certain radical politcs. On the plains and prairies, our Cree relations used to refer to the Métis as the Otepaymisiwak, meaning ‘the people without bosses or leaders.’ In many ways this had to do with egalitarian Métis social structures, particularly the buffalo hunt, but I also take this identity to heart. As an Otepaymisiwak person, it is my ancestral responsibility to challenge systems of power that create networks of oppression.

As a teenager, I was heavily involved in DIY punk and hardcore, particularly interested in making zines and mini-comics. Through underground publishing, I was introduced to radical politics, primarily anarchist in orientation. Although they pre-date me, I am heavily influenced by the Red and Brown Power movements; the Black Panthers and Young Lords, the student movements in 1968, particularly Mexico City and Paris; the Third World struggles of the 1950s and 1960s; and the labor movement, especially the Industrial Workers of the World.  Intellectually, Frantz Fanon, Howard Adams, and Taiaiake Alfred have influenced me beyond recognition.

Dylan AT Miner, Trabajando Cover

PH: Was there a defining moment when you realized that you wanted to meld art with focus on politics/indigenous/anti-colonization issues?

DM: In one interview I did with a Norwegian publication, I mentioned this time I was a child and came across the corpse of a poached animal. As I recalled in that interview, that incident was the moment when I realized what humans can do to fuck up things. As another human being, I could possibly prevent these sorts of senseless acts. To me, this moment was more metaphorical and poetic than any actual turning point. 

I have always been interested in challenging dominant ideas and structures. In high school I was nearly expelled for publishing a zine that criticized the racist logic of the local school’s administration. The County Sheriff called my parents, who thankfully supported my critical endeavors. I look back and see the perspectives in this publication as quite naïve, but they nonetheless lay the foundation for my present practice.

PH: Do you have any apprehensions about continually including indigenous themes in your art?

DM: As an artist and intellectual, I have a body of work that revolves around issues that need to be addressed. As an indigenist, someone who takes Indigenous issues as the most important, these issues continuously work their way into my work. I think that we should flip the question and ask why Indigenous artists, as well as other artists of color, are cautioned against working in certain subjects (or simultaneously asked to work in naïve and stereotypical ways). As artists, we work with certain ideas and themes. Mine frequently engages with Indigenous politics.

One of the strategies that I hope to employ is connecting Indigenous issues with other contemporary struggles. In my recent solo exhibition in Norway, I brought together Sámi issues with Aboriginal Australian struggles and those in North America. To me, this was about drawing connections and opening up ideas, as opposed to being a negative thing.

As a member of the collective Justseeds, we did an installation in Slovenia at the 29^th Biennial of Graphic Arts in 2011. The project was about various forms of migration and the structures that either impede or provoke them. The show wasn’t about Indigenous themes, but what I brought to the installation was an interest in the way that capitalist systems negatively and disproportionately impact Indigenous communities. The project, which is an indictment on capitalism and its impact on human and non-human ecologies, includes a book that looks at migrant labor in Slovenia, as well as the dehumanizing impacts of the US-Mexico border. Since it was a project I was involved in, indigeneity is an issue, but only one among many. 

PH: With your art focusing on consumerism and daily life, how do you use the tangible mediums (paper bags, etc.) you print your work on to reinforce your overall message? Do you feel that the material you choose has just as much significance as the art you display on it?

DM: I am interested in taking quotidian items and transforming them into the extra-ordinary. A significant component of this has to do with working with everyday materials. Inexpensive felt fabric, baseball bats, hockey sticks, piñatas, bicycles, paper bags, etc. By themselves these objects have a purpose, but what happens when we retool them? How does this manipulation change our relationship with them? 

In this way, I began using grocery bags during a period when I had no money to buy paper. As someone who used to dumpster-dive food and magazines, I was drawn to integrating these everyday activities into my artmaking practice. Of course, I began doing this when grocery bags were commonly made of paper and neither plastic nor re-useable cotton. So it was timely in its application.  Today, with the advent of plastic and cotton bags, it seems that it the use of grocery bags is an aesthetic remnant from the last decade.

Even so, I am interested in materiality and the relationship between a work’s aesthetic impact and its function.  To me, materiality, process, and the object are all implicated in my practice. 

Dylan AT Miner, Prints

Dylan AT Miner, Prints

Dylan AT Miner, Prints

PH: How does your own political activism relate to your art? Does one feed off the other or do you consider your personal artistic projects more of a separate entity?

DM: I believe that they are the same project. In fact, my quotidian existence as a father/partner/human, my role as a professor, my intellectual writing and labor, and my work as an artist are all one seamless project of creating a new world in the shell of the old, to borrow a saying from the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World). This realization took me some time to reconcile, but once I began seeing that my activist projects are the same as my artistic projects everything seemed much clearer. In fact, neither are distinct from my everyday existence as a human being. By and large, all the activities in which I engage are connected to the ways in which we become more human. In a society bent on dehumanizing, it is a radical move to declare oneself human. Indigenous and other anti-colonial struggles are an ancient declaration of one’s one humanity. Capitalism, as a system tied to colonial domination, is built on the process of dehumanization. If nothing else, my work is a simple declaration of my own humanity that recognizes the humanity of all my relations, whether human or non-human. This particular ontological stance can be seen in everything I do, whether it is art or activism.

Dylan AT Miner, Illustrations

Dylan AT Miner, Eastern Washington University

PH: In regard to political activism, do you have any goal messages that you wish to convey to the general public?  

DM: I don’t think that I have one unitary message. Rather, my work has two simultaneous motives. Initially, it is about challenging colonial and capitalist structures of exploitation and alienation. There are quite a few Indigenous and non-Native thinkers who articulate similar perspectives. Additionally, I hope to illuminate marginalized and forgotten histories, particularly as they relate to Indigenous sovereignty and the stories of everyday folk.

PH: What motivated you to become a professor? What kind of insight do you try to instill in your students?

DM: Since I am adamant about leaving the world in a better position than I inherited it, I see teaching as an appropriate venue to transform an entire generation of thinkers. Of course, the day-to-day realities of being a professor aren’t quite as revolutionary as this. In my own family, both of my parents are public schools teachers, my grandmother taught, as well. So I come from a line of teachers and teaching is a natural aspect of my identity. My sister teaches, as well. With this family history, teaching is, in many ways, a crucial component of my practice as an artist.

To this end, my partner Estrella Torrez is a scholar of critical pedagogy, which has fundamentally transformed how I see my teaching. Critical pedagogy, especially with its origins in Paolo Freire, proposes that education has the potential to transform the world.  It may be naïve, but I believe this whole-heartedly. As such, I imagine that by teaching I create a space in the classroom where students can challenge themselves, their peers, and the dominant modality of being in the world. While I include heavy Indigenous perspectives in my teaching, most of my students are non-Native. This, in and of itself, can transform how these students see themselves and their place within the world. 

PH: Do you have any current or upcoming projects, plans, or artistic aspirations you’d like to shine a light upon?

DM: I have some interesting projects currently going on, both as an individual and as a member of the collective Justseeds. As a member of Justseeds, I just published an artists’ guidebook to Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. The book deals with migration and is an extension of an earlier installation in Europe. That book is available for purchase on the Justseeds website (justseeds.org).  Additionally, two other members of the collective, Favianna Rodríguez and Roger Peet, are organizing an immigrant rights poster campaign, which will be completed later this spring. I am contributing one on Indigenous issues related to immigration. As a collective, we also have an exhibition at Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin. This past winter, Justseeds member Nicolas Lampert organized a print portfolio with IVAW (Iraqi Veterans Against the War) and Combat Papers. The portfolio addresses the theme of veteran’s resistance to military ventures. While I cannot think of all of them at this moment, I am sure that Justseeds has some other projects in development, as well.

Personally, I have a bunch of projects that I am excited about. That is one of my biggest dilemmas: developing too many projects simultaneously. Two big ones are my ongoing project Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag (Native Kids Ride Bikes) and a recent installation and collaboration in Sápmi, traditional Sami reindeer herding territory (Indigenous Northern Norway). Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag consists of a series of workshops in which I collaborate with Indigenous youth and/or artists to build Indigenous bicycles. To date I have done this workshop four times, twice with Native youth in Michigan; once with Indigenous and non-Native students at Fort Lewis College, a former residential school that offers Native students a tuition waiver; and most recently in Vancouver with urban Native artists. In these collaborations, I have produced fourteen bikes in total, with future workshops pending. The first seven bikes are presently traveling around to tribal museums, while the four newest ones are part of Beat Nation, an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Dylan AT Miner, Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag (Native Kids Ride Bikes)

Dylan AT Miner, Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag (Native Kids Ride Bikes)

So in collaboration with Sámi artist Sara Margethe Oskal, I produced a series of 72 signs with 12 different Sámi and English text that audiences removed from the gallery and placed around Tromsø. The project also included a youth screen printing workshop which was attended by Indigenous, Norwegian, and international youth. From this project, I have also begun developing even more projects, including an exhibition of contemporary Sámi art in the United States.

I am also doing lots of writing. I have two books that are under contract, which need to be revised in the near future. One looks at contemporary Indigenous aesthetics, the other at Chicano art. 

PH: Do you think of yourself as a “Contemporary North American Indigenous Artist?” Do you think terms like that one are useful or not? Do you feel like there is a separation between contemporary indigenous artists and the rest of the art world as represented by mainstream art magazines, biennials, art fairs, etc.?

DM: This is a complex question, one without a simple answer. I do identify as a contemporary Indigenous artist, but I do not position myself as either a Native American or an American Indian artist. As a Métis person, I am indigenous to this continent, but in the United States Native American and American Indian are categories that denote a particular relationship to the federal government. As Métis people, we have a unique history of colonization, one tied to that of our treaty Indian relations. 

As a political artist, my work is already on the margins of the contemporary biennial and art fair world. Likewise, Indigenous artists working in non-stereotypical ways face a dilemma of not fitting into the space created for ‘Indian arts’ or seen as derivative by the contemporary art world. I am interested in the way that as Indigenous artists we both create space within dominant institutions, while also establishing parallel structures. Ryan Rice is curating some interesting shows at MoCNA (Museum of Contemporary Native Arts) in Santa Fe, while Nancy Mithlo is bringing Indigenous artists to Venice. Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg has historically had important shows, as well. Each of these spaces are challenging how we think about contemporary Indigenous art. I am excited to see how Indigenous artists continue to transform what we think about as Indigenous art. So I think these terms are useful.

PH: Can you recommend another artist that we should interview for this blog in the future?

DM: I was just in Australia and find the work of Bianca Beetson and Fiona Foley, both Aboriginal artists, interesting. Likewise, there are some interesting Sámi artists working in the north of Norway. I spent an interesting afternoon with Hans Ragnar Matthisen. I also like Joar Nango. In the US, I like the print work of Dignidad Rebelde (Xicano), while Métis artist David Garneau is doing some interesting work.

 

Artist Biography

DYLAN A.T. MINER (MÉTIS) is a border-crossing artist, activist, historian, and curator. In 2010, he was awarded an Artist Leadership Fellowship from the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian). In 2011, he will hang five solo exhibitions in the US and Canada. As a member of Justseeds, he was awarded the Grand Prix at the 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Slovenia, and installed a solo Justseeds exhibition at the 29th Biennial. Next year, he will host a solo exhibition in Norway, as well as install a show at Columbia College Chicago immediately prior to the G8 and NATO summits in that city. Miner holds a PhD in the history of art from The University of New Mexico. He has published and lectured extensively, with two forthcoming books from University of Arizona Press and IB Tauris. To date, he has published more than forty journal articles, book chapters, review essays, and encyclopedia entries. Currently, Miner teaches in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, coordinates the Michigan Native Arts Initiative, and curates at the MSU Museum (www.dylanminer.com).

Resources:

www.dylanminer.com

http://www.justseeds.org/artists/dylan_miner/

http://rcah.msu.edu/profile/dminer

http://.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Miner