Marianne Nicolson’s Land-Based Knowledgescape Cliff Painting

Abstract

Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies are connected to tribal lands, resilience, and claims for sovereignty. These ways of knowing offer an indispensable resource for Indigenous communities in surviving and resisting assimilationist policies. Modes of Indigenous knowledge are not only discussed in academia and practiced in local spaces but are also integrated into artworks that promote public access to First Nations political agendas within settler nation states. Knowledgescapes can be created as conversive artscapes. They can be placed translocally but also re-integrated into First Nations lands. A reworking of the land as a tribally marked space can be traced in artworks that attack bio- and geopolitical manners of settler societies. The land-marker, place-maker, and artscape Cliff Painting (1998) by Marianne Nicolson shall serve as an exemplification of a specific knowledgescape – created for Indigenous audiences to support their claims, and for non-Indigenous audiences to open up a dialogue on colonial issues within a step-by-step decolonizing discourse.