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Nicholas Galanin
Art as a Weapon Against Colonialism

The first in a series of hide paintings for guiding the escape of Indigenous remains and objects in non-Indigenous Institutions to return to their home communities, Architecture of return, escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art) is a mapped escape plan for objects held in the Met in New York City.
The work is a plan for wayfinding during decolonization; requiring return, building new structures for good ways of being. Of the few objects held in display cases, many more (including human remains, and ceremonial objects not intended for public view) are held in museum archives. The cost and processes required to travel and visit these archives limits access to cultural knowledge and inheritance for Indigenous communities, and continues the removal of the objects from their land and people. While institutions control the air temperature, humidity, uv exposure and dust, they are unable to adequately care for these objects in cultural or spiritual ways.
Painting information on hides to remember, and instruct has a long history in many Indigenous communities, particularly for recording significant events or feats of bravery. In this series of work, the hide paintings depict a floor plan referencing a visitors guide and architecture blueprints for building. The objects themselves are unwilling visitors to the museum, and the painting builds a route for escape and vision for reunification of cultural inheritance with community. In the painting, the galleries of the museum containing Indigenous American objects (along with elevators and stairs coming from the archives) are marked with a red dashed line leading to the exit. The exit from the museum is also an entrance for our cultural at.óow (ceremonial objects) imprisoned in these spaces, an entrance for return to land, community and culture. The work serves as a reminder of the past, and as a plan for a good way forward; where stolen objects, human remains and works sold under duress can return home for their own health, for the health of the communities that created them, and for the health of the communities that took them.
EIP: Your art speaks volumes, and is often deliberately “provocative”; tell us first about your life outside of the art you do, the person from which the expression comes?
NICHOLAS: My life is deeply shaped by my connection to the Land, water, community, and family. Beyond my art practice, I navigate my days with a sense of responsibility to these relationships, recognizing that they ground both my work and my existence.
A typical day begins early with children going to school, I often try to get outside—whether walking, running or simply being present with the Land, I love witnessing the seasons and nature’s clock. Living in Alaska, the Land is powerful, a teacher and provider. The weather and its natural rhythms influence so much of my practice and understanding. Summers are busy harvesting. Winters provide time for creating with less distraction.
Family is at the heart of my life. I prioritize being present for my children, supporting them in their education and growth, and sharing the values and knowledge passed down to me through continuum. This extends to my community, where mentorship and collaboration are part of daily experience—through conversations, shared meals, or working alongside others.
Much of my time is spent engaging with creative disciplines— researching, reading, listening and exploring ideas. Music is an integral part of this exploration, providing both a creative outlet and a meditative practice. Some days are dedicated to carving, others to the music studio, or working on projects that require research and concept. The throughline remains the same: honoring Indigenous knowledge, challenging structures that seek to erase it, and creating space for future generations.
Resistance is also present in my daily life—whether through showing up for movements that support Indigenous sovereignty, engaging in conversations about Land and imagined futures. I move forward with gratitude and a commitment to my people, my culture, and the responsibilities that come with both.

EIP: How would your children & family describe you as an artist?
NICHOLAS: Not that I would speak for my children on this, but I can lead with what knowledge they have access to. My children have understood that this practice is not separated from our life, our connection to Land, to sustenance, culture and continuum, how it is connected to language, to our survival and to time generationally, how it contributes to health and well being. My children have been raised to understand that the studio is free and alive, shifting with objects and projects that hold story. Often the work has generative dialogue that reaches into silenced history that is not taught in school systems. They are allowed to explore in the studio with the tools and material, some of my children continue their own creative practice in their own time and space. Music, Lingit formline, carving, jewelry etc. I am so grateful for them to have access to something that has been so enriching and meaningful to my life experience.
EIP: In all your years of work, what would be your favorite piece you have ever worked on?
NICHOLAS: I don’t spend enough time looking back to celebrate works or favorites. The process of creating and exploration includes growth and new thought, new perspective and experiment. I am so grateful for opportunities to travel and meet with other cultures and communities, any work that allows for this is thought of as a blessing and form of higher learning.
EIP: Your work often explores themes of Indigenous identity and culture. How has your heritage shaped your perspective as an artist, and what role does storytelling play in your art?
NICHOLAS: All of my work is rooted in my cultural understanding and connection to place. I was speaking with my friend Jeffrey Gibson who had invited me to present to his students and Jeffrey mentioned something I never really noticed about my practice. Jeffrey said I was a storyteller. I know that creative practice can change the world. I know that creative practice can provide clarity, focus and vision. This is transmission of thought, this is survival, this is responsibility and necessity. Culturally speaking our community had no word for art, yet the visual form and language was everywhere. It is part of existence and life.
EIP: Can you speak about the importance of reclaiming traditional art forms and narratives in contemporary Indigenous art?
NICHOLAS: The receipts of time (or the gaps) are well documented and represented in art collections, in museums, in language, in books and media. Indians and dinosaur bones are often experienced together by public school visits to the museum. Anthropology and romanticism is something we still navigate. My grandfather created work in an era where customary education had been purposefully broken, where our clan houses had been dismantled and our language forcefully removed. Our ceremonies were banned, our knowledge and Land extracted. To continue to relearn language and song, to provide and share harvests from the Land with elders, to teach the youth is care. Creating in continuum and building is power, consumption is colonial. This is a living community and the work we do exists because of those whose shoulders we stand on.
EIP: Much of your work touches on the resistance against colonialism and cultural erasure. How do you view the role of art as a form of protest or political expression?
NICHOLAS: Its voice in a space where our voices have been silenced, in a timeline where the media seeks to control and profit from our humanity at the expense of Land and life. Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan and Land Back. I am listening and learning. I have so much respect for those that voice and work towards collective liberation. We have seen so much backlash and it is clear that economic power is a tool with a means to oppress. Art is an opportunity.
EIP: What have been some of the most challenging or rewarding moments you’ve faced when addressing difficult historical and political subjects through your work?
NICHOLAS: Everything comes with challenges, whether it is fighting censorship or seeking funding to realize projects. I have fought for projects,I have fought for words to remain in text and for language and intention of work to be clearly stated. Words are a battlefield and the pushback can be proof of impact. Early on it felt great to have access and participation, through time I’ve seen that we are also being consumed. Understanding spiritual connection to place grounds me, knowing that the Land provides and cares is a powerfully humbling understanding. The challenge I look forward to most is growth.
EIP: If you could reflect into your youth and childhood, what moments have been deeply ingrained in you that have now become or affected a part of your artistic practice?
NICHOLAS: Growing up around the cultural art form was very inspiring and powerful, my fondest memories include the smell of red cedar in my uncle’s shop, the tools, the knives and all of my fathers jewelry making equipment. Music played a roll in this as well, instruments and song were always shared and loved in my family. In grade school I was practicing Lingit formline and drawing as often as possible, building and trying to understand this visual language with guidance from my father and uncle. We moved around often and the imagery connected me back to home in a meaningful way, it instilled pride in my culture and carried many other life teachings beyond the creative process. It is life work, it connects us with the community, to ceremony, to song, to Land and water, to past present and future. I wanted to understand more and this cultural art form had provided that insight, it still continues to provide more understanding. Through this work I learned that all is possible and for me that is incredibly powerful.

EIP: Do you feel like your art makes political statements? If this is so, have you always approached your work this way?
NICHOLAS: Yes. Indigenous existence is political. Land is political, water is political, air is political when the systems that consume and extract, damage, remove or forcefully seek to control it/us continue to exist. My initial training in the creative world began with customary apprenticeships carving wood and metals. I think the most continual aspect in my practice was something I still try to maintain to this day, which is to keep the mind open.
EIP: In light of growing global inequality, what do you believe are the most pressing issues that world governments need to prioritize?
NICHOLAS: Collective liberation, human rights for all, climate crisis, access to healthcare, affordable housing, and clean water. We can envision a better future.
EIP: Was there a specific moment or experience that made you realize the political potential of your work?
NICHOLAS: In order to access my culture I had to navigate institutions, museums and academia. So much of our culture had been intentionally removed through genocide. Learning about my history is highly political. My grandparents in an internment camp, my Unangax family forcefully removed from their villages. Boarding schools, forced assimilation, language removal. Erasure. The impacts still surface through living generations, we are still fighting to protect herring, salmon, waterways and for sovereignty and Land rights. My survival is political in a homeland that sought to remove us. There is a necessity and responsibility to bring voice to these conversations.
EIP: Can you talk about your connection to the youth, whether it’s your children or children you might work with. How do they respond to your work and what has been your focus if any when educating them using creativity?
NICHOLAS: Our culture lives through shared knowledge and continuum, I have and continue to take on apprentices and understand this as a form of living knowledge. Some were taught that if it had not been for museums who “care” for our at.óow (sacred objects) then we would not have them. This is myth created by settler supremacists, the same kind of mythology that calls any non-Eurocentric spiritual belief primitive, this is the same mythology that still continues to disregard Indigenous science. I like to speak about kooteeya (totem poles) when talking about this. In our communities the kooteeya is carved raised and returns back to the forest in its life. In colonial society these have been removed, preserved with arsenic and placed into collection. The preservation is in the knowledge and understanding of how to create the kooteeya, in the preservation and protection, care of the forests that provide the cedar to create the totem. The preservation and care has to be literal care for the community that stewards this knowledge, not just the fetishized object. I am starting a 2 year apprenticeship where I will train and work with younger artists, starting with tool making, design, cultural protocol and carving. The students will work with me over the course of this time and upon completion will have carved and raised a 25ft totem. This is knowledge transmission.

Keep reading:
Global Echoes of Resistance:
Artists Harnessing Art, Culture, and Ancestry
HaveCooth
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"title" : "Nicholas Galanin: Art as a Weapon Against Colonialism",
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"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/nicholas-galanin-art-as-a-weapon-against-colonialism",
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"content" : "The first in a series of hide paintings for guiding the escape of Indigenous remains and objects in non-Indigenous Institutions to return to their home communities, Architecture of return, escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art) is a mapped escape plan for objects held in the Met in New York City.The work is a plan for wayfinding during decolonization; requiring return, building new structures for good ways of being. Of the few objects held in display cases, many more (including human remains, and ceremonial objects not intended for public view) are held in museum archives. The cost and processes required to travel and visit these archives limits access to cultural knowledge and inheritance for Indigenous communities, and continues the removal of the objects from their land and people. While institutions control the air temperature, humidity, uv exposure and dust, they are unable to adequately care for these objects in cultural or spiritual ways.Painting information on hides to remember, and instruct has a long history in many Indigenous communities, particularly for recording significant events or feats of bravery. In this series of work, the hide paintings depict a floor plan referencing a visitors guide and architecture blueprints for building. The objects themselves are unwilling visitors to the museum, and the painting builds a route for escape and vision for reunification of cultural inheritance with community. In the painting, the galleries of the museum containing Indigenous American objects (along with elevators and stairs coming from the archives) are marked with a red dashed line leading to the exit. The exit from the museum is also an entrance for our cultural at.óow (ceremonial objects) imprisoned in these spaces, an entrance for return to land, community and culture. The work serves as a reminder of the past, and as a plan for a good way forward; where stolen objects, human remains and works sold under duress can return home for their own health, for the health of the communities that created them, and for the health of the communities that took them.EIP: Your art speaks volumes, and is often deliberately “provocative”; tell us first about your life outside of the art you do, the person from which the expression comes?NICHOLAS: My life is deeply shaped by my connection to the Land, water, community, and family. Beyond my art practice, I navigate my days with a sense of responsibility to these relationships, recognizing that they ground both my work and my existence.A typical day begins early with children going to school, I often try to get outside—whether walking, running or simply being present with the Land, I love witnessing the seasons and nature’s clock. Living in Alaska, the Land is powerful, a teacher and provider. The weather and its natural rhythms influence so much of my practice and understanding. Summers are busy harvesting. Winters provide time for creating with less distraction.Family is at the heart of my life. I prioritize being present for my children, supporting them in their education and growth, and sharing the values and knowledge passed down to me through continuum. This extends to my community, where mentorship and collaboration are part of daily experience—through conversations, shared meals, or working alongside others.Much of my time is spent engaging with creative disciplines— researching, reading, listening and exploring ideas. Music is an integral part of this exploration, providing both a creative outlet and a meditative practice. Some days are dedicated to carving, others to the music studio, or working on projects that require research and concept. The throughline remains the same: honoring Indigenous knowledge, challenging structures that seek to erase it, and creating space for future generations.Resistance is also present in my daily life—whether through showing up for movements that support Indigenous sovereignty, engaging in conversations about Land and imagined futures. I move forward with gratitude and a commitment to my people, my culture, and the responsibilities that come with both.EIP: How would your children & family describe you as an artist?NICHOLAS: Not that I would speak for my children on this, but I can lead with what knowledge they have access to. My children have understood that this practice is not separated from our life, our connection to Land, to sustenance, culture and continuum, how it is connected to language, to our survival and to time generationally, how it contributes to health and well being. My children have been raised to understand that the studio is free and alive, shifting with objects and projects that hold story. Often the work has generative dialogue that reaches into silenced history that is not taught in school systems. They are allowed to explore in the studio with the tools and material, some of my children continue their own creative practice in their own time and space. Music, Lingit formline, carving, jewelry etc. I am so grateful for them to have access to something that has been so enriching and meaningful to my life experience.EIP: In all your years of work, what would be your favorite piece you have ever worked on?NICHOLAS: I don’t spend enough time looking back to celebrate works or favorites. The process of creating and exploration includes growth and new thought, new perspective and experiment. I am so grateful for opportunities to travel and meet with other cultures and communities, any work that allows for this is thought of as a blessing and form of higher learning.EIP: Your work often explores themes of Indigenous identity and culture. How has your heritage shaped your perspective as an artist, and what role does storytelling play in your art?NICHOLAS: All of my work is rooted in my cultural understanding and connection to place. I was speaking with my friend Jeffrey Gibson who had invited me to present to his students and Jeffrey mentioned something I never really noticed about my practice. Jeffrey said I was a storyteller. I know that creative practice can change the world. I know that creative practice can provide clarity, focus and vision. This is transmission of thought, this is survival, this is responsibility and necessity. Culturally speaking our community had no word for art, yet the visual form and language was everywhere. It is part of existence and life.EIP: Can you speak about the importance of reclaiming traditional art forms and narratives in contemporary Indigenous art?NICHOLAS: The receipts of time (or the gaps) are well documented and represented in art collections, in museums, in language, in books and media. Indians and dinosaur bones are often experienced together by public school visits to the museum. Anthropology and romanticism is something we still navigate. My grandfather created work in an era where customary education had been purposefully broken, where our clan houses had been dismantled and our language forcefully removed. Our ceremonies were banned, our knowledge and Land extracted. To continue to relearn language and song, to provide and share harvests from the Land with elders, to teach the youth is care. Creating in continuum and building is power, consumption is colonial. This is a living community and the work we do exists because of those whose shoulders we stand on.EIP: Much of your work touches on the resistance against colonialism and cultural erasure. How do you view the role of art as a form of protest or political expression?NICHOLAS: Its voice in a space where our voices have been silenced, in a timeline where the media seeks to control and profit from our humanity at the expense of Land and life. Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan and Land Back. I am listening and learning. I have so much respect for those that voice and work towards collective liberation. We have seen so much backlash and it is clear that economic power is a tool with a means to oppress. Art is an opportunity.EIP: What have been some of the most challenging or rewarding moments you’ve faced when addressing difficult historical and political subjects through your work?NICHOLAS: Everything comes with challenges, whether it is fighting censorship or seeking funding to realize projects. I have fought for projects,I have fought for words to remain in text and for language and intention of work to be clearly stated. Words are a battlefield and the pushback can be proof of impact. Early on it felt great to have access and participation, through time I’ve seen that we are also being consumed. Understanding spiritual connection to place grounds me, knowing that the Land provides and cares is a powerfully humbling understanding. The challenge I look forward to most is growth.EIP: If you could reflect into your youth and childhood, what moments have been deeply ingrained in you that have now become or affected a part of your artistic practice?NICHOLAS: Growing up around the cultural art form was very inspiring and powerful, my fondest memories include the smell of red cedar in my uncle’s shop, the tools, the knives and all of my fathers jewelry making equipment. Music played a roll in this as well, instruments and song were always shared and loved in my family. In grade school I was practicing Lingit formline and drawing as often as possible, building and trying to understand this visual language with guidance from my father and uncle. We moved around often and the imagery connected me back to home in a meaningful way, it instilled pride in my culture and carried many other life teachings beyond the creative process. It is life work, it connects us with the community, to ceremony, to song, to Land and water, to past present and future. I wanted to understand more and this cultural art form had provided that insight, it still continues to provide more understanding. Through this work I learned that all is possible and for me that is incredibly powerful.EIP: Do you feel like your art makes political statements? If this is so, have you always approached your work this way?NICHOLAS: Yes. Indigenous existence is political. Land is political, water is political, air is political when the systems that consume and extract, damage, remove or forcefully seek to control it/us continue to exist. My initial training in the creative world began with customary apprenticeships carving wood and metals. I think the most continual aspect in my practice was something I still try to maintain to this day, which is to keep the mind open.EIP: In light of growing global inequality, what do you believe are the most pressing issues that world governments need to prioritize?NICHOLAS: Collective liberation, human rights for all, climate crisis, access to healthcare, affordable housing, and clean water. We can envision a better future.EIP: Was there a specific moment or experience that made you realize the political potential of your work?NICHOLAS: In order to access my culture I had to navigate institutions, museums and academia. So much of our culture had been intentionally removed through genocide. Learning about my history is highly political. My grandparents in an internment camp, my Unangax family forcefully removed from their villages. Boarding schools, forced assimilation, language removal. Erasure. The impacts still surface through living generations, we are still fighting to protect herring, salmon, waterways and for sovereignty and Land rights. My survival is political in a homeland that sought to remove us. There is a necessity and responsibility to bring voice to these conversations.EIP: Can you talk about your connection to the youth, whether it’s your children or children you might work with. How do they respond to your work and what has been your focus if any when educating them using creativity?NICHOLAS: Our culture lives through shared knowledge and continuum, I have and continue to take on apprentices and understand this as a form of living knowledge. Some were taught that if it had not been for museums who “care” for our at.óow (sacred objects) then we would not have them. This is myth created by settler supremacists, the same kind of mythology that calls any non-Eurocentric spiritual belief primitive, this is the same mythology that still continues to disregard Indigenous science. I like to speak about kooteeya (totem poles) when talking about this. In our communities the kooteeya is carved raised and returns back to the forest in its life. In colonial society these have been removed, preserved with arsenic and placed into collection. The preservation is in the knowledge and understanding of how to create the kooteeya, in the preservation and protection, care of the forests that provide the cedar to create the totem. The preservation and care has to be literal care for the community that stewards this knowledge, not just the fetishized object. I am starting a 2 year apprenticeship where I will train and work with younger artists, starting with tool making, design, cultural protocol and carving. The students will work with me over the course of this time and upon completion will have carved and raised a 25ft totem. This is knowledge transmission."
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{
"title" : "Culture Must Be the Moral Compass That Geopolitics and Economics Will Never Be",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
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"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/culture-must-be-the-moral-compass-that-geopolitics-and-economics-will-never-be",
"date" : "2025-07-15 16:14:00 -0400",
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"excerpt" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.",
"content" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.Rather, the transformation of Nazism from a nationalist ideology admired by many Western elites into the universal symbol of evil was a story of narrative engineering and the deliberate construction of collective memory. It is a story that reveals a larger truth: culture has always been the moral compass that geopolitics and economics cannot, and will not, provide on their own.And at this moment, it is crucial to understand and use the power of culture to shift geopolitics, and not the other way around.Understanding this history matters today more than ever. Because if it was possible to turn Nazism into the ultimate taboo, it is equally possible to reposition other violent ideologies and state projects—such as Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid and settler colonialism—as morally indefensible. But to do so requires acknowledging that cultural reckonings don’t simply arrive; they are made.Pre-War Ambivalence: When Fascism Was FashionableContrary to the comforting myth that the world naturally recoiled from Nazism, in the 1920s and 1930s many influential Americans and Europeans viewed Hitler’s Germany with admiration. American industrialists like Henry Ford openly praised Hitler’s economic management and fierce opposition to communism. Ford even funded antisemitic propaganda through his publication, The Dearborn Independent. British aristocrats, including the Duke of Windsor, flirted with Nazi sympathies, seeing Germany as a model of discipline and order.It was only when Hitler’s ambitions clashed with the strategic interests of other nations that fascism became intolerable. And even then, many major US and UK companies maintained their business interests with the Nazis, including Ford, IBM, GM (Opel), Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil), Chase Bank, and of course Coca-Cola, who famously created the brand Fanta so that it could break the boycott and do business with Nazi Germany.This distinction is critical: condemnation of Nazism began not as a moral imperative, but as a political necessity. Germany’s aggression threatened the European balance of power, British imperial security, and eventually, American economic and military interests. The moral narrative would only come later, after the fighting was over.It is important to learn from the past and see that only culture can shift perception, and to use culture to shift the economic realities that would otherwise wait to be shaped by politics.Wartime Shifts: From Enemy State to Symbol of EvilWorld War II did not instantly transform public opinion. For many Americans, the war in Europe remained remote until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Even then, the decision to fight Nazi Germany was entangled with power politics: Hitler declared war on the United States first, effectively forcing Roosevelt’s hand.Nevertheless, the war provided fertile ground for a reframing of Nazism. Wartime propaganda efforts by the Allies recast the Nazi regime as a brutal, alien threat to civilization itself. Hollywood joined in: The Great Dictator (1940) ridiculed Hitler’s delusions of grandeur, while Casablanca (1942) romanticized resistance. Images of goose-stepping soldiers, swastika flags, and shattered cities circulated widely.As the Allies advanced, they encountered the first concrete evidence of the Holocaust: ghettos, mass graves, and emaciated survivors. Yet even then, much of this evidence remained unknown to the general public. It was only after liberation that the full horror became impossible to ignore.Post-War Revelation: The Holocaust and the Cultural BreakThe turning point came in 1945, with the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trials. The images and testimonies from Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen revealed the industrial scale of genocide. Millions murdered with chilling efficiency. A systematic attempt to erase an entire people. For the first time, the abstract notion of “Nazi evil” was grounded in visceral, visual evidence.Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander describes this phenomenon as the cultural construction of trauma. Atrocities do not automatically generate collective memory; they must be narrated, documented, and ritualized until they become an inescapable moral reference point. The Nuremberg Trials played this role by broadcasting confessions and evidence to a global audience. Schools, museums, and the press reinforced the narrative: Nazism was not simply defeated; it was unmasked as pure, irredeemable evil.Cold War Myth-Making: The Free World Versus FascismThe Cold War further cemented this narrative. To build legitimacy against the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies positioned themselves as the moral victors of World War II, the saviors of Europe from fascism. In reality, many of the same powers—Britain, France, and the United States—continued their own brutal colonial projects and enforced systems of racial hierarchy at home.But the cultural story was powerful: the West stood for freedom; the Nazis had embodied totalitarian darkness. School textbooks, popular films, and Holocaust memorialization institutionalized this story, forging a shared moral identity that could be contrasted against communist “evil.”This process was neither accidental nor purely altruistic. It was a strategic use of culture to consolidate power, project moral authority, and deflect scrutiny of the West’s own violence. The lesson is clear: collective memory is not a neutral mirror of reality. It is built, contested, and leveraged.The Sociological Core: Why Public Opinion ShiftsTo understand how an ideology once admired by many became the universal emblem of inhumanity, we must look beyond military defeat. Several mechanisms combined:Symbolic Association: Nazism transformed from a nationalist experiment into a symbol of mechanized genocide and racial supremacy.Cultural Trauma: The Holocaust became a shared wound that redefined moral frameworks across the West.Visual Storytelling: Images and films, rather than mere text, anchored the horror in the public imagination.State Rebranding: The Allies used anti-Nazism to build a postwar myth of moral superiority, even as they pursued imperial ambitions elsewhere.These insights are not simply historical trivia. They are a roadmap for how cultural shifts happen—and how they can be deliberately engineered.Israel, Palestine, and the Next Cultural ReckoningToday, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—systematic dispossession, apartheid laws, and repeated military assaults—remains largely protected in Western discourse. Politicians insist on Israel’s right to defend itself. Media narratives default to framing the violence as a “conflict” rather than an occupation. Solidarity with Palestinians is often smeared as antisemitism.Yet history shows that moral consensus is not fixed. With enough sustained exposure, narrative work, and cultural pressure, the global imagination can be reshaped. Just as Nazism’s legitimacy eroded, so too can the idea of Israel as an unassailable “victim-state.”This is not a call to equate the Holocaust with the Nakba—each is historically distinct. It is, however, an argument that the techniques which made Nazism morally intolerable—trauma visualization, reframing language, relentless storytelling—are tools available to any liberation movement.Here is how such a transformation could unfold:1. Narrative InversionIsrael’s founding story must be contextualized: a state born from the trauma of European antisemitism that, in turn, created the dispossession of another people. Exposing this contradiction—survivors becoming occupiers—breaks the simplistic binary of oppressor and victim.2. Visual Culture and TestimonyJust as photographs of emaciated bodies in camps forced an awakening, so too can images of bombed Gazan neighborhoods, amputee children, and anguished families. Digital archives and survivor testimonies can anchor these experiences in collective memory.3. Linguistic ReframingTerms like “apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” and “ethnic cleansing” shift perception from tragic conflict to structural violence. Legal frameworks—UN reports, ICC filings—can fortify these terms with institutional legitimacy.4. Media SaturationBypassing corporate media gatekeepers requires a multi-platform strategy: TikTok clips, Substack essays, livestreamed trials of Israeli policy, viral documentaries. Saturation is what makes denial unsustainable.5. Global RealignmentPositioning Palestine within global struggles—Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-colonial movements—expands solidarity. When the Global South embraces Palestinian liberation as part of its own decolonization, moral isolation will deepen.6. Cultural Institutions and EducationJust as Holocaust education became standard in Western curricula, Nakba education can be mainstreamed. Museums, memorials, and fellowships can institutionalize remembrance and scholarship.7. Policy Pressure and Legal ActionPublic consensus is the soil in which policy change grows. Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, coupled with legal prosecutions of war crimes, transform moral clarity into material consequences.8. Making Occupation a LiabilityWhen supporting Israel becomes politically and financially risky—akin to defending apartheid South Africa—corporate and governmental alliances will fracture. Reputational risk can be a powerful motivator.Conclusion: Cultural Reckonings Are EngineeredIt was not “natural” for the West to reject Nazism. It took defeat, trauma exposure, and decades of cultural labor to enshrine anti-Nazism as a foundational moral principle. Similarly, it is not inevitable that the world will recognize Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as an urgent moral crisis. It will require strategic, sustained, and courageous cultural work.Culture—more than geopolitics or economics—sets the terms of what is morally acceptable. It is the compass that can point humanity toward justice. But only if we are willing to pick it up and use it."
}
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"title" : "Neptune Frost",
"author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman",
"category" : "screenings",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost",
"date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.",
"content" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends."
}
,
{
"title" : "Uranus & The Cycle of Liberation",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/uranus-and-the-cycle-of-liberation",
"date" : "2025-07-11 16:25:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Uranus.jpg",
"excerpt" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.",
"content" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.Even if you don’t care about astrology, the timing of these celestial movements provides us a way to examine macro trends that we can learn from. History may not exactly repeat itself, but it does echo.Uranus—the planet astrologers associated with upheaval, rebellion, and technological transformation—entered Aries in May 2010 and stayed there until 2018. That cycle coincided with a surge in political uprisings, many of which redefined our understanding of mass resistance in the 21st century.The Arab Spring began in late 2010, starting in Tunisia and erupting across the Middle East. It wasn’t just about corrupt regimes—it was about reclaiming voice, land, and dignity after decades of foreign interference, neoliberal decay, and post-colonial repression. From Tahrir Square to Pearl Roundabout, these movements were leaderless, fast, and media-savvy.Occupy Wall Street followed in 2011, challenging the violent inequality embedded in late capitalism. In 2013, Black Lives Matter emerged after the murder of Trayvon Martin, later exploding into a global uprising in 2014 and again in 2020. Standing Rock (2016) reminded the world that Indigenous resistance was not only alive but visionary. #MeToo (2017) became an international reckoning with patriarchy and sexual violence, a reminder that personal testimony is political terrain.Across these years, protests were decentralized, digitized, and visual. Social media moved from a personal tool to a frontline of collective witnessing. Livestreams replaced press conferences. Memes became political language. Design itself became a protest, and Slow Factory built the visual language for it.This was not coincidental but archetypal, because Uranus in Aries, even symbolically, tells the story of radical ignition, collective fire, visionary unrest.And yet, none of it was sustained. What followed was a backlash: fascist resurgence, climate denial, propaganda wars, and intensified state surveillance. We saw mass demobilization, media fatigue, and widespread disinformation. Many of the movements that sparked global hope were either crushed, co-opted, or burned out.So now, as Uranus moves through Taurus (2018–2026), the terrain has shifted. Taurus is about materiality, land, value, and stability. It demands we not only rise up, which is crucial, but to build. We are asked to not only critique systems, but replace them. Not just “burn it all down”, but radically imagine what’s next.This is the political and spiritual context I hold as I continue my work.At Slow Factory, we spent the past decade offering free education, cultural strategy, and ecological design rooted in climate justice and human rights. And with Everything is Political, we’re building an independent media platform not beholden to corporate donors or foundation filters—a place where movement memory, critical analysis, and cultural clarity live. If we don’t design the next phase of liberation, someone else will design it for us.This work isn’t about virality. It’s about continuity. We are here to hold political memory. To protect the intellectual commons. To ensure that the next generation doesn’t forget who stood for truth—and who profited from silence.The ask is to build the very systems we are all looking for, and for that we deserve the time, energy and support to imagine, design and co-create as a community. We can’t delegate our liberation to politicians, and we certainly won’t see startups capitalizing on the changes our society needs. Perhaps we will witness the hyper privatization of every single service our communities need, but we must strategize for during and after collapse. Funding structures will have to be challenged, as they are designed to sustain themselves and uphold status quo. However, we are witnessing the collapse of every industry: media, education, banking, all industries we rely on, will be challenged. We are going to need to rely on our creative skills and our ability to build true solidarity across our communities towards a common goal outside of dogma and division. It’s a cultural moment, and we are here for it.Resistance isn’t just about protest. It’s about imagination. And imagination requires discipline, community, and space.We are creating that space right here. And together we can co-create together if everybody puts in effort and care. For now, we are imagining what systems of mitigation amidst systems collapse will look like. Will we outsource our infrastructure to highly funded Silicon Valley funded platforms feeding off of public data feeding ads markets and Ai learning in real time from our work? Or are we truly invested in building sovereign media? I personally invest in the latter, and hope you all join us. Because we are the majority, and truly if we align we are unstoppable."
}
]
}