Edgar Heap of Birds | Don’t Want Indians. 1982
Edgar Heap of Bird’s ‘Don’t Want Indians’ is a conceptual piece dealing with concepts of land sovereignty and Indigenous agency in the contemporary sphere.
Heap of Bird’s work is a truthful statement on the placement of Indigenous peoples. The fetishization from the Colonial Gaze and the interest in the idea of ‘the Indian’ and not the actual experience. The final statement ‘LIVING PEOPLE’ demands a recognition that not only are Indigenous people and cultures being appropriated and mistreated, but that they are in fact REAL and ALIVE, two truths that are often ignored.