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May 10, 2006
“NATIVE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST” EXHIBITION COVERS 500 YEARS OF INJUSTICE AND PAIN
Long before the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria sailed the Caribbean’s azure waters, North America’s Indigenous societies were thriving. Trading routes, transportation methods, urban centers and exchangeable currency had been developed by the continent’s inhabitants.
European explorers, first financed by Spain’s treasuries and later by England’s and France’s, introduced slavery, mass murder and smallpox to North America’s Natives. Within a short time, those Indigenous cultures experienced the first shock wave of an era many Native American people refer to in terms of the greatest of human tragedies, a Holocaust.
An upcoming exhibition at the Primitive Edge Gallery on IAIA’s campus on the outskirts of Santa Fe takes a largely text-based approach to shedding light on the methods and mechanisms used by European invaders to enslave and murder the continent’s Indigenous people.
“Native American Holocaust” is an exhibition more than a decade in the making, says Chuck Dailey, IAIA’s most senior faculty member. “For over 500 years Native Americans have been used, lied to, pushed out, relocated and promised things that could not come true. Just in the past century Indian people in California were hunted like they were wildlife,” he says.
Richard Hill, former director of IAIA Museum and originator of the exhibition’s concept, will attend its August 28, 4 – 6 pm Closing Reception.
Click here to download full press release in PDF format.
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