"The organisers gathered on the shoulder of the Tamiami Trail, a thin, paved road that cuts through Big Cypress National Preserve, within view of Alligator Alcatraz, around 57 miles west of the Miami Beach Convention Center. On that day and in collective actions since, Miccosukee and Seminole artists, culture-bearers and youth organisers are using ceremony, performance and archiving to confront what they describe as a new chapter of colonial violence unfolding on ancestral lands."
""When we heard about the detention centre, people didn't believe it could be real. The [site of Alligator Alcatraz] was always open-you could drive in, some of us swam in the man-made lakes. Suddenly there were trucks, fences. The land that protected us is being dug up for something backwards. Documenting how our community is standing up-elders and youth together-is now part of our responsibility.""
Miccosukee and Seminole artists, culture-bearers and youth organisers staged communal demonstrations near a newly erected migrant-detention facility nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz on land within Big Cypress National Preserve. Organisers coordinated hydration and medic teams, volunteers for safety and de-escalation, and distributed sunblock, insect repellent, food and art supplies for sign-making. The site, previously open to community access and recreation, was fenced and trenched with trucks and infrastructure. Tribal members framed ceremony, performance and archiving as forms of resistance and responsibility, documenting elders and youth standing together to confront what they describe as a new chapter of colonial violence on ancestral lands.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
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