The Chicago and Milwaukee-based artist Jesse Malmed curates a public art piece in Chicago called Western Pole, where he exhibits works of art by various artists on a light post on Western Avenue in Chicago. In the summer of 2023 Jesse embarked on a trip that took him from Chicago to the West Coast and back and he solicited submissions for art that he could display on poles throughout his trip, sort of like a Western Pole roadshow. My submission was a sheet of paper with a Western “Poll”. It included the following text by the Anishinaabe scholar and writer Gerald Vizenor:
“Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name.
Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.”1
Although it is labeled as a poll, there are only affirmational choices (yes) for an affirmational statement that felt like it deserved to be seen out in the world. I was fortunate that Jesse chose to present this work in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, during his trip. The above photos are documentation images that he shared of the piece.
The decision to make a Western Pole submission about Indigenous culture was tied to the common association between the “Indian” and “The West”, ingrained in people from a young age in the Western genre, but we must not lose sight that this piece could be displayed anywhere throughout the States and be relevant. It is all Indigenous land.
Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (1999, University of Nebraska Press), VII.