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631 Main Street (4)
Location Map
'Black Snake Defeated'
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Location: SE corner Main & Logan; East Face (high)
Occupant: Red Road Lodge
District: City Centre
Neighbourhood: Civic Centre
Artist(s): beyon wren moor
Year: 2021
Sponsors: Wall to Wall Mural & Culture Festival, Synonym Art Consultation, Graffiti Art Programming, Downtown Winnipeg BIZ, Signex Manufacturing
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beyond wren moor Artist Statement: "This painting is called 'black snake
defeated' and depicts the fields of war I stood on in 2016, when pipeline security deployed
attack dogs on peaceful Indigenous water protectors at Oceti Sakowin in the early days of
Standing Rock. The painting represents the full story arc of how colonization has turned us
against each other: the figures holding the dogs, and those being attacked by them, are one and
the same. Yet at its center, we are all gathered around the head of the snake as it is finally
beheaded. It's a vision of a victorious future that does not yet exist, but the belief in it continues to
unite living generations of Indigenous people around what our ancestors fought for and enables
sightlines into decolonial futures. It's the vision that brought these thousands of people together at
Standing Rock, and that's currently bringing thousands of people together just a hundred
kilometers south of here to Stop Line 3."
"The great removal, Residential School, Gustafson Lake, Kanehsatake, Wet'suwet'en Raids,
Fairy Creek,Standing Rock -- every collision between capitalism and Indigenous livelihood is
taking place all over again at Line 3, as Enbridge Inc. works to carry tar sands across
Ojibwe/Chippewa/Anishinaabe traditional rice fields, reservation lands, and the Red River I grew
up on. With wildfire smoke hanging overhead in the sky, water protectors are being beaten, shot
with rubber bullets and hauled to jail so that new and unnecessary fossil fuel infrastructure can be
created -- while the original Line 3 disintegrates, another environmental catastrophe waiting to
happen. Though Enbridge has characterized this new initiative as a Line 3 extension, it is in fact a
brand new pipeline being built, and the company plans to completely abandon the original Line 3.
When that original pipeline breaks -- and it is already beginning to -- its poisons will wash
downstream to Winnipeg within a day. The water protectors on the ground at Line 3 need
support, urgently, to stop this from happening. Our moment is now, right now. We might not have
another one. It is time to listen to Indigenous peoples on our land." (Source: Wall-to-Wall Mural
and Culture Festival notes)
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