‘Paper Trails’ at IAIA MoCNA: Indigenous Art as Decolonial Archive of Land, Memory and Structural Erasure
Original framing: “IN REVIEW: To be felt, not read — ‘Paper Trails: Unfolding Indigenous Narratives’ at IAIA MoCNA” — bing news
The original framing omits the historical context of paper as a colonial tool (e.g., treaties, land surveys, and boarding school records used to erase Indigenous land claims and identities). It also neglects the role of Indigenous knowledge systems in land stewardship and memory, as well as the contemporary struggles of Indigenous artists against cultural appropriation and underfunding of Native institutions. Marginalized perspectives from non-Native settlers who benefit from these systems are entirely absent, as are the voices of Indigenous artists critiquing the very institutions hosting their work.
Critical structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The narrative is produced by the Albuquerque Journal, a mainstream outlet that typically centers settler-colonial institutions like IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) and MoCNA (Museum of Contemporary Native Arts), framing Indigenous art within Western art-world hierarchies. The framing serves to legitimize Indigenous cultural production while obscuring the structural violence of colonial land tenure systems and the complicity of art institutions in perpetuating these systems. The narrative’s focus on ‘feeling over reading’ risks depoliticizing the work by reducing it to aesthetic experience rather than interrogating its role in resistance and restitution.
The exhibition foregrounds Indigenous epistemologies by treating paper not as a neutral surface but as a contested site of colonial violence and Indigenous resilience. Indigenous artists like those in ‘Paper Trails’ use paper to reclaim agency over narratives erased by settler-colonial archives, such as land deeds and census records. This work aligns with global Indigenous archival movements, like the Māori Te Tiriti o Waitangi settlements or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which challenge the state’s monopoly on historical truth. The score reflects the exhibition’s strong centering of Indigenous knowledge, though it could deepen its critique of institutional complicity.
‘Paper Trails’ at IAIA MoCNA is a decolonial intervention that exposes the violence of settler-colonial archival systems while asserting Indigenous futurities through art.