On Indian Ground

On Indian Ground examines the relationship between natural resource extraction, economic survival, Indigenous sovereignty, and responsibility to the Land. Through photographs of free-roaming Ute Bison and Wild Horses, I consider what it means to live within a homeland that carries cultural memory while also bearing the physical marks of oil and gas development.

The Bison and Wild Horse move across Ute homelands as living witnesses. Their presence speaks to survival, freedom, cultural continuity, and the enduring relationships among Indigenous peoples, animals, water, plants, and Land. Gregory Cajete describes Indigenous knowledge as grounded in interdependence, where human beings exist within ecological relationships rather than outside them (Cajete, 2000). From this perspective, environmental responsibility grows from relationship, reciprocity, and an awareness that the health of one part of the living world affects the whole.

These animals also move through landscapes shaped by extraction. Their presence raises a difficult question within my work: what are we willing to sacrifice when the minerals and energy beneath our homelands become economically valuable?

For many Tribal Nations, oil, gas, and other natural resources have become tied to employment, governmental revenue, infrastructure, and economic sovereignty. I approach this tension without reducing it to a choice between development and environmental protection. Instead, I approach it as a Ute artist asking what sovereignty means when economic survival becomes dependent upon extracting from the same Land our ancestors relied upon, respected, and carried responsibility toward.

Indigenous peoples already live with histories of forced removal, treaty violations, dispossession, and disruption of relationships with ancestral territories. Contemporary extraction creates further ecological pressures through disturbance of culturally significant places, water systems, wildlife habitat, plant communities, air, and soil. Environmental change also becomes cultural change because Land holds knowledge, language, memory, identity, and relationships. Simpson (2014) describes Land as pedagogy, a living source of Indigenous intelligence, knowledge, and nationhood. When relationships with Land are disrupted, pathways for transmitting cultural knowledge are also placed under pressure.

On Indian Ground therefore questions the language of “natural resources.” The term often frames water, minerals, animals, plants, and energy according to their economic usefulness. Indigenous ecological thought offers another relationship. Kimmerer (2013) writes from an ethic of reciprocity, where the living world is understood through responsibility, gratitude, and exchange rather than endless taking. Cajete (2000) similarly explains that Indigenous science recognizes the natural world through relationships of interdependence. These teachings ask us to reconsider what happens when Land becomes valued primarily through what lies beneath it.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s work further connects Indigenous resurgence to relationships with homeland, arguing that the continuation of Indigenous political and cultural life depends upon strong relationships with Land, language, spirituality, and community (Simpson, 2014, 2017). From this perspective, environmental stewardship is inseparable from Indigenous sovereignty. Sovereignty concerns the authority to make decisions for our people, while also carrying responsibilities toward the lands, waters, animals, and future generations affected by those decisions.

Through On Indian Ground, I ask viewers to consider another measure of wealth. Clean water is wealth. Living ecosystems are wealth. Bison and Wild Horses moving across open homelands are wealth. Cultural continuity, healthy communities, and lands capable of sustaining future generations are forms of wealth whose value reaches beyond economic measurement.

The Bison and Wild Horse remind me that our responsibility extends beyond the present. We inherited these homelands through the survival and sacrifices of those who came before us. The ecological choices we make today will become part of the story our descendants inherit.

The Land remembers what we take from it.

It will also remember what we choose to protect.

References

Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1–25.

Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.