Border Breaker glass wampum beads, deer hide, bolt cutters, life size 2020

The customary Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) use of wampum includes communication of invitation intent, agreement, documentation, knowledge and ceremony. Border Breaker is a sculpture made from glass wampum beads to make functional bolt cutters wearable. The work is both a physical and symbolic tool, targeting action against settler-state borders, specifically the current border enforced with fences and prison camps between the U.S. and Mexico. The pattern is the inverse of the Two Row Wampum agreement between the Haudensaunee and the Dutch, the white dashed lines stand in for the two borders cutting across North America in place of two paths of life. The lines are broken insisting on the breaking of borders that cut apart land and Indigenous life by capitalist settler-states, that has disregarded the agreement on the flow of two different ways of life moving smoothly side by side