Does the land remember? // Memories in the veins of the earth // Kehtaqsuwihkuk

My series of photographs seek to show the energetic footprints left on the earth by acts of colonization. I want to show Wabanaki territory through the lens of a Wabanaki person. I am creating photographs of specific place names across Wabanaki territory. In order to make this series, I traveled to places that have significance in the Wabanaki language or history. My photographs are visually dense black and white film landscape images created using a large format field camera. The scars of intergenerational trauma are present in the landscape and my work highlights these energetic footprints. I want my work to get people to think about the land and the questions of occupation and ownership; to ask questions of what lingers from colonization. These memories flow through the veins of the earth. The land remembers.

Bio

Maya Tihtiyas Attean (b. 1994) is a Wabanaki artist living and working in Portland, Maine. She grew up on Alnabe Menahan, or the Penobscot Reservation. She began photographing as a way to document her identity and physical and mental health struggles. Her work has evolved to use photography as a way of creating art that reflects her ancestry, resiliency, and culture. Her experience growing up on a reservation then migrating to being a “city Indian” has given her a unique perspective of two worlds that merge together through marrying techniques of multiple cultures within her work.