Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Ben Altman: I Own This Stolen Land
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

In 2021, photographer Ben Altman and his wife bought 38 acres of land next to their home in rural Danby, NY, to prevent logging and development. He recognized that the title to this beautiful land originated in genocide. More than 200 years ago the Cayuga, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, were violently and fraudulently dispersed from the homelands they had occupied and nurtured for over 10,000 years. Despite two centuries of genocidal repression and cultural suppression, they remain resilient, but live almost entirely in diaspora, in Oklahoma, Ontario, and scattered across North America.

"I Own This Stolen Land" is a multidisciplinary project that seeks to acknowledge and take responsibility for the theft of the land; understand the natural systems, economic pressures, ecological stresses, and options for stewardship of the site; invite Cayuga people to visit and to undertake traditional and arts activities, building trust between them and communities in Tompkins County; and develop scalable models for cooperative access to ancestral land.