Chanelle Gallagher
mikinaak’s back: unmapping settler time, 2026
Wood-fired, pit-fired, and soda-fired clay and soil
Seven mounds ranging from 16”x 16” x 6” to 44” x 36” x 12”
Copyright Chanelle Gallagher
Further images
CHANELLE GALLAGHER (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) mikinaak’s back: unmapping settler time II, 2026 7 mounds of wood-fired, pit-fired, and soda-fired ceramics; soil In Anishinaabe cosmology, Aki (earth) forms with...
CHANELLE GALLAGHER (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe)
mikinaak’s back: unmapping settler time II, 2026
7 mounds of wood-fired, pit-fired, and soda-fired ceramics; soil
In Anishinaabe cosmology, Aki (earth) forms with mud placed on the back of Mikinaak (turtle) by Gizhiigokwe (Sky Woman), emerging through cooperation between non-human relatives, water, and sky. Turtle Island is not separate from water but carried by it. Our creation story begins at the shoreline where matter gathers through relation. The turtle shell holds this cosmological structure of 28 concentric scutes around 13 central scutes that map the cycles of the moon—a system of time not abstract, but felt through the body. As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Anishinaabe) writes, these cycles are felt and known through the lived experience of the alignment of human bodies with lunar rhythms. Time, in this framework, is cyclical, relational, and embodied.
This installation materializes these teachings through hundreds of hand-formed waabigan (clay) scutes assembled into a constellation of seven mounds. The waabigan is harvested from multiple sites: Misi-ziibi (the Mississippi River), Gichigami (Lake Superior), and from southwestern Mni Sota Makoce on occupied Dakota land, alongside various commercial clays. The scutes were formed and transformed through wood-firing, pit-firing, and soda-firing processes over the course of the past year, carrying the marks of fire, atmosphere, and time.These forms reference Anishinaabe architectures and land-based practices including wigwams, sweat lodges, burial mounds, and pit-firing sites. Each carries relationships to shelter, ceremony, and transformation. Drawing on Candice Hopkins’s concept of Indigenous geometries, the installation builds through repetition, placement, and care, forming a living pattern that moves with the thirteen moons. Each scute exists as its own entity while forming a larger body, echoing the turtle shell as a structure of protection, dwelling, and return. Together, these forms unsettle linear, extractive notions of time imposed through settler frameworks. They offer a counter-mapping grounded in Anishinaabe epistemologies related to cycles, relations, and continual becoming.
—Chanelle Gallagher
mikinaak’s back: unmapping settler time II, 2026
7 mounds of wood-fired, pit-fired, and soda-fired ceramics; soil
In Anishinaabe cosmology, Aki (earth) forms with mud placed on the back of Mikinaak (turtle) by Gizhiigokwe (Sky Woman), emerging through cooperation between non-human relatives, water, and sky. Turtle Island is not separate from water but carried by it. Our creation story begins at the shoreline where matter gathers through relation. The turtle shell holds this cosmological structure of 28 concentric scutes around 13 central scutes that map the cycles of the moon—a system of time not abstract, but felt through the body. As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Anishinaabe) writes, these cycles are felt and known through the lived experience of the alignment of human bodies with lunar rhythms. Time, in this framework, is cyclical, relational, and embodied.
This installation materializes these teachings through hundreds of hand-formed waabigan (clay) scutes assembled into a constellation of seven mounds. The waabigan is harvested from multiple sites: Misi-ziibi (the Mississippi River), Gichigami (Lake Superior), and from southwestern Mni Sota Makoce on occupied Dakota land, alongside various commercial clays. The scutes were formed and transformed through wood-firing, pit-firing, and soda-firing processes over the course of the past year, carrying the marks of fire, atmosphere, and time.These forms reference Anishinaabe architectures and land-based practices including wigwams, sweat lodges, burial mounds, and pit-firing sites. Each carries relationships to shelter, ceremony, and transformation. Drawing on Candice Hopkins’s concept of Indigenous geometries, the installation builds through repetition, placement, and care, forming a living pattern that moves with the thirteen moons. Each scute exists as its own entity while forming a larger body, echoing the turtle shell as a structure of protection, dwelling, and return. Together, these forms unsettle linear, extractive notions of time imposed through settler frameworks. They offer a counter-mapping grounded in Anishinaabe epistemologies related to cycles, relations, and continual becoming.
—Chanelle Gallagher
