Reclaiming Place, Reasserting Indigenous Contemporaneities and Futures:
Andrea Carlson's Projection of the Indigenous Presence in The Uncompromising Hand
In order to open St. Anthony Falls for larger-scale shipping operations in 1937, the Army Corps of Engineers would need to create a navigational channel between the St. Anthony Falls Upper and Lower Locks in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area; doing so required the full demolition of Spirit Island, a Dakota sacred site (“Changing” 18). Andrea Carlson’s 2017 visual installation The Uncompromising Hand re-creates Spirit Island, projecting it onto the present-day lock wall in order to culturally reverse the colonial process of Indigenous erasure.
Carlson is Grand Portage Ojibwe, not Dakota, but she reflects that the tradition of Dakota-Anishinaabe relations has created “a historic bond that continues as solidarity, co-resistance and mutual respect” ("An Interview"). Her artistic endeavor stems from a recognition of the way that acts of colonial imagination seek to erase historic, continued, and future Indigenous inhabitation of the valley. Her work also highlights the disruptive nature of colonization within the longer timeline of Indigenous lifeways in the valley. Carlson’s The Uncompromising Hand projects Spirit Island to draw attention to and subvert the colonial forces that reimagined and reshaped the Upper Mississippi River valley landscape in order to reassert Indigenous contemporaneities and futures.
In general, the Indigenous histories of places are obscured by the colonial constructions—both concrete and cultural—prevalent today. Carlson's The Uncompromising Hand, however, is not an attempt to solely commemorate the pre-contact era of Indigenous histories. Instead, she contributes to the cultural movement to re-establish the contemporary Indigenous presence and, in doing so, helps create more promising Indigenous futures. She uses art to revive Spirit Island in the public imagination, drawing attention to the Indigenous peoples who were, are, and will continue to be culturally connected with the land.