American and Indigenous Studies Program, Center for Indigenous Studies, and Montgomery Place Present

Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition

Register for Timed Entry

Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.

Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.

All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.

Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th, 2:00-3:30pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)

Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.

Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, e-mail [email protected],
or visit https://rethinkingplace.bard.edu/returning-home/.

Time: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Montgomery Place Estate