WE ARE NOT CONQUERED

Field Notes: Looking at History Through the Scope of Federal Indian Law

On July 1, "History on Every Corner" presented We Are Not Conquered: Looking at History Through the Scope of Federal Indian Law, a talk and art event at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie.

The evening featured speaker Taneha Watts, a WhiteEarth Nation tribal member and Muckleshoot descendant, originally from the Colville Nation in Washington. A UW graduate with a B.A. in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Watts is currently pursuing her masters in the Indigenous Peoples Law program at the University of Oklahoma. Her talk invited attendees to look at history not as a settled record but through the living framework of Federal Indian Law—a body of law that continues to shape sovereignty, land, and belonging across this region and the country.

The event was held in conversation with Dana Claxton's Hip Hop NDN (2022), an inkjet print in the UW Art Museum's collection, acquired through the Robert M. and Judith Redd Knight Endowment for Collection Conservation and Acquisition. Claxton's work, with its bold assertion of contemporary Indigenous presence, offered a fitting visual anchor for a conversation about persistence, jurisdiction, and the stories our histories leave out.

ALCES Community Works was proud to support this event with organizational support and community outreach, alongside our partners at "History on Every Corner" and the University of Wyoming Art Museum. Programs like this one sit at the heart of what we do: making space for the histories that live on every corner, and for the people who carry them forward.

Partners include: History on Every Corner, University of Wyoming Art Museum