7/20/22
O’nigöëi:yo:h Thinking in Indian is an exhibition of Hodinöhsö:ni’ artists celebrating 2022 as the 50th year of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo.
At a time when the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies and Indigenous activism has blossomed, we look back and forward to the seeding of intellectual traditions, seizing of territorial imaginings through meaningful actions, and the threading of our grounded relationality as we come together with a good mind. Works by almost 50 artists from the Hodinöhsö:ni’ Confederacy – Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora–will be featured across both UB Art Galleries spaces. Visions of our artists will interconnect ideas through their imagery and highlighting of collective goals across generations and nations. The exhibition will include works created from a wide rangevof media – digital data, black ash, moose hair, glass beads, paint, and more. Each artwork is a demonstration of intergenerational knowledge with a 21st-century perspective.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by one of the founders of Native American Studies at the University at Buffalo, Dr. John Mohawk “Sotsisowah” (Seneca). Thinking in Indian A John Mohawk Reader is an Indigenous analysis of modern existence touching upon issues ranging from sovereignty to the coalescence of human wisdom. O’nigöëi:yo:h Thinking in Indian presents a multi-generational perspective, centering the artist’s voices around questions of land and gender, visual language and action, and imagining Hodinöhsö:ni’ futures.
O’nigöëi:yo:h Thinking in Indian speaks of Hodinöhsö:ni’ foundations of seeding, seizing territorial imaginings, and threading our relationships between the human and non-human in the first person with the intention to provoke and inspire as it reframes present discourses.