“The Word for World and the Word for History Are the Same”: Jimmie Durham, the American Indian Movement, and Spatial Thinking

This chapter considers the impact of Jimmie Durham’s tenure as the director of the International Indian Treaty Council of the American Indian Movement on his subsequent artistic practice in New York City during the 1980s. It lays the ground for remaining chapters by examining the philosophical dimensions of the spatial politics that motivated a generation of activists and artists. Horton dispels the assumption that Durham pursued a linear trajectory from identity politics inside the United States to a postidentity condition abroad. Instead, Durham sought to reposition indigenous knowledge and practice at the center of an ongoing story of modernity. On leaving the United States in 1987, Durham described a scenario of total colonization extending from lost lands to the very terms of indigenous representation. The chapter concludes with his 1988 installation Pocahontas and the Little Carpenter in London, an expansive conception of history-as-world, anchored in Cherokee language and carpentry.