I created this series of photographic artworks and paintings as a homage to my Cherokee heritage. Through forced removal by the U.S. Government intended to implement cultural genocide, my great-grandmother was taken from her mother on a reservation. She was six, placed into involuntary servitude, laboring in cotton fields. My grandmother and mother grew up silenced by shame, and because of the way First Nation people were and continue to be treated, our identities were concealed and connections severed.
These self-portraits carry symbolic details that speak to both personal and ancestral history. The choice to be naked reflects no more shame. The recurring presence of the horse that survived the Trail of Tears and the horse skull, the handprint, the eagle feather, the oyster, and the pearl each act as markers of survival, memory, and honoring the memories of my family that are in me too. My family can be found in The Cherokees by Grace Steel Woodward.
