A Nation Is a Massacre at King Street Station
photos by Sofia Lee
About the Project
When: August 4, 2018
Where: King Street Station Plaza, 303 South Jackson Street Seattle, WA 98104
Connect: burymyart.tumblr.com / yehawshow.com/artists/demian-dineyazhi
A Nation is a Massacre creates awareness about ongoing settler-induced violence against Indigenous bodies. A new iteration of the project was presented in August 2018, adapted for King Street Station by artist/activist initiative R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment and its founder Demian DinéYazhi’, in collaboration with yəhaw̓.
Text and image-based posters from A Nation is a Massacre were screen-printed on site and distributed for free to the public. Visitors were invited to bring their own shirts, totes, patches, flags, or other memorabilia to have printed. The Indigenous Vote booth was also present for new voter registrations.
On the occasion of the fourth annual Seattle Art Fair, with the influx of visitors it brought onto Coast Salish land, Demian DinéYazhi´ and yəhaw̓ hope that this installation of A Nation Is a Massacre created cross-cultural connections and broader social engagement with Indigenous activism and our shared rights to life.
This project was supported by the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture.
Death and grieving for Indigenous Peoples is like a war zone—a space unlike any other far removed from the ‘stars and stripes.’ We are expected to die without news headlines or revolution, and in this way we expect nothing; we accept death. It’s a slow death, but with the same urgency as endangerment or extinction or invasion, or an asteroid the size of england or complete and inevitable economic collapse. Even in our survival and resilience, we come to the table ready to protect the most sacred of human rights.
- Demian DinéYazhi´ (Diné)
About the Artist
Demian DinéYazhi´’s artwork materializes as art production, site-specific installation, poetic expression, social engagement, and curatorial inquiry. The undercurrents of DinéYazhi´s work include a reverence toward traditional Diné practices, storytelling, traditional ceremonies, and acknowledging the criticality and sacredness of land, while simultaneously challenging contemporary Western archetypes of authenticity. DinéYazhi´ was raised in a matrilineal household and their maternal grandfather served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Navajo Code Talker. They earned the BFA in Intermedia Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2014. DinéYazhi´ founded the artist/activist initiative R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment and co-edits Locusts: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. They are a recipient of a 2015 Art Matters Foundation grant, the Henry Art Museum’s 2017 Brink Award, and a 2018 Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts. Currently, DinéYazhi’ has a solo exhibition at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery, and is publishing AN INFECTED SUNSET on Pur Dubois Press.
