ABSTRACT
The automobiles in The Big Four ultimately reframe the idea of transit as both spatial and conceptual movement against the structures limiting Indigenous peoples’ self-realization on the most basic and fundamental of levels. The cars in The Big Four not only transport their drivers across “NTRTRBL” circuits that defy settler politico-administrative mappings , but they also point to a geo-cosmological reordering of the world into spatiotemporal-ecological coordinates of the Four Directions. The bikes in Dylan Miner’s Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag, like the automobiles in Kent Monkman The Big Four, acquire a power and presence beyond their mere instrumentalization. The automobiles in Monkman’s installation become windows into a very different world of struggle for livability under the crushing conditions of settler colonialism. Tomson Highway Rez Sisters also makes a clear case for the need to consider mobility in terms of gendered experiences of colonialism.
