05/29/2026
“I think it goes like this (memory and interference), ” Artist, Nicholas Galanin (Lingít and Unangax̂, born 1979), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
This monumental bronze sculpture is cast from the pieces remaining after Nicholas Galanin split imitation totems into firewood-sized sections resembling logs. He then had the bronze logs welded together to construct a disorganized figure: a reflection of colonization’s decimation of Indigenous culture.
The work acknowledges Indigenous people’s efforts to rebuild with the materials and memories that remain and the difficulty of this task due to generations of interference by settlers. A collection of material translations, this sculpture is made from bronze - a material long associated in the West with monuments and permanence. Galanin uses those associations here to insist on the self-determination and self-representation of Indigenous peoples.
