Artist Statement

Through taking photos I am able to better process and understand more about the relationships I hold with the world. I explore these relationships through a mix of self-portraits, still lives, and landscapes. Creativity for me feels playful, it brings out a light heartedness I can sometimes lack that is all about seeing new angles and experimenting with ways to arrange the world around me.

This body of work mainly centers around my Native American identity as a mixed Athabascan person. My photos aim to capture the observations I am making and learning about how Native Americans are treated and represented in different landscapes and throughout different times in history.  Of course, these photos are also heavily influenced by my own emotional reactions as well as feelings and doubts about what it means to me to be Native. 

I know the importance of representation and often find myself face-to-face with harmful portrayals and stereotypes of Native Americans that still run rapid today. These stereotypes live on in your local thrift stores through caricatures of the "American Indian" to more contemporary representations like the Kansas City "Chiefs" that won this year's Super Bowl.