This Native American Heritage Month, a Nashville gallery is celebrating with a photography exhibit that indigenizes colonized spaces

In a small room at the COOP Curatorial Collective hangs ten brightly colored photographs.

In each, women stand in traditional regalia in front of a “colonized space” — Trump Tower, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History or Bozeman’s Lewis and Clark Motel.

Cindy Abrams WPLN News

Adam Sings in the Timber’s photograph of Florence Doyle, Apsáalooke (Crow), shot in Bozeman, Mont.

The “Reclaim: Indigenizing Colonized Spaces” exhibit comes from Adam Sings in the Timber, an Apsáalooke (Crow) photographer seeking to uplift and celebrate the Native American community through art. In “Reclaim,” Sings in the Timber has situated Native women wearing their traditional or modern powwow dress in the cities that now occupy the lands their people once called home.

Sings in the Timber says that, first and foremost, this exhibit is for the Native community.

Courtesy Adam Sings in the Timber via singsinthetimber.com

Adam Sings in the Timber, Apsáalooke (Crow) photographer

“I definitely want them to walk away with a sense of pride in who we are as a people — that I know that we need to have to not only exist but to have this thriving culture and tradition,” he says.

For Sings in the Timber, this intention has shaped the way he approaches his work. Rather than viewing the women he photographs as subjects or models, he says he sees them as artistic collaborators who are working with him to create this piece of art.

He also hopes that, for non-Native viewers, “Reclaim” can serve as an educational opportunity to “reset their thinking of Native people as relics of the past or people from the past.”

“You know, whether they think we’re extinct or assimilated into society, that’s just not the case,” Sings in the Timber says. “We have this strong, thriving culture that I hope my photos convey the idea of. With that … sense of: ‘We are here, and we’re always going to be here. And we’re strong, resilient people.’”

Cindy Abrams WPLN News

COOP Curatorial Collective’s gallery began exhibiting Adam Sings in the Timber’s “Reclaim” project on Nov. 6.

The COOP Gallery, where “Reclaim” is being displayed, was created as a non-commercial space where artists are free to explore their work without considering the market value, and COOP says, it seeks to display artists of diverse content, media and backgrounds. The exhibits are largely curated by COOP members, who pointed the gallery in the direction of Adam Sings in the Timber’s work. The curatorial committee felt that this was the right project at the right time to display on the gallery walls in November, as a celebration of National Native American Heritage Month and in the lead up to Thanksgiving.

“The intention was very much that this is the proper exhibition for Thanksgiving,” says Sara Lederach, the vice president of COOP. “Because the cultural story is such a lie about what Thanksgiving is, and I think that, nationally, we are only beginning the conversations about the story and colonialism.”

Cindy Abrams WPLN News

COOP Vice President Sara Lederach stands in front of “Reclaim” in the gallery the day before the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Reclaim: Indigenizing Colonized Spaces” will remain on display through Monday, Nov. 29 at COOP gallery, and Adam Sings in the Timber’s continuing photo series indigenizing colonized spaces can be followed along online on his Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.