Tannis Nielsen

arts/academic interests

As an Indigenous artist/academic, I have fifteen years of experience in the arts, cultural and community sectors and eight years teaching practice at the post secondary level. My arts/academic practice embodies a fourth world, First voice, ecologically based consciousness. Areas of academic interest include; anti-colonial theory, decolonization methodologies, Indigenous governance, natural law, self determination, Indigenous feminism, Indigenous pedagogies, and social/environmental justice. Areas of visual arts/studio expertise include the genres of; sculptural installation, video art / new media installation, drawing, painting and performance.

My thesis titled “Not forgotten!” employed a critical means of inquiry into the subjugation of Indigenous knowledge and deconstructed certain Eurocentric theories that have served as attempted justifications for the imperial domination over the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. “Not forgotten” articulated an Indigenous form of resistance. against a particular strategy of “cognitive imperialism” My thesis deconstructed/decolonized the structures of an English literacy, by applying an anti-colonial “first-voice” Indigenous perspective; which was further emphasized through my repudiating the need to employ punctuation and capitalization. I chose sovereignty in writing, with the recognition that “language carries culture and the language of the colonizer became the means by which the mental universe of the colonized was dominated.” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o) My thesis contributed toward the fields of anti-colonial theory and decolonization methodologies, by exposing the mechanisms that enforced the subjugation of Indigenous Peoples/ ideologies /territories and by illustrating the negative effect of colonial trauma, on culture, land/language, familial relationships and memory.