Treaty Girl
Courtney Skye, Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan

This exhibition is a love letter to Haudenosaunee girlhood. It is for the Haudenosaunee girls who carry on our ways of being and knowing. Girls who inherit the responsibility to carry on the centuries old governance, land stewardship, and material culture. Girls who will become parents, teachers, healers, storytellers. Girls who are paying attention to the legacies we leave, the tools we hand to them, and the burdens colonialism has placed on their shoulders.

 Rooted in Y2K and femme aesthetics, Treaty Girl reflects the nostalgia of my own girlhood and explores Haudenosaunee worldview and the influences of western pop culture on our lives.

 Our Creation Story catalyzes a multi-generational concept of collective ownership. We view ourselves as children who have inherited not just our connections to culture, land and water, but a connection between the generations before us and the generations of children who will come after us.

Today, Haudenosaunee girlhood experiences modernity and pop culture through the lens of resistance and rebellion, forming our own distinct counter-culture which celebrates our survival. Our aunties and uncles' resistance to our experience of genocide shapes the way we carry out our responsibilities and the relationships of solidarity and struggle we take on through the lens of Treaty relationships.

 Haudenosaunee girlhood weaves together the knowledge of matriarchs with pop cultural influences, pushing back against settler colonial narratives of what young Indigenous lives look like, defining adaptation to modernity for ourselves. Treaty Girl aims to make visible the many generations of girls who are embodying Treaty, survival, and joy.

 Curated by Alex Jacobs-Blum, Cayuga Nation, Wolf Clan

The artist would like to thank Matthew Walker for their support in exploring concepts, artworks and development of texts for the exhibition.

documentation by: Alex Jacobs-Blum