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Starting with one of the Northernmost nations on the Pan American highway, The Pan American Identity Project, Part I explores the work of Adrian Stimson, a two-spirit member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation from Alberta, Canada.

Stimson’s work parodies stereotypes about Native Americans and cowboys that were perpetuated by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which traveled the globe in the late 1880s. By mashing up the trope of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman, and the buffalo, Stimson created Buffalo Boy, what he calls, a “gender-bending colonial-busting persona that tackled both historical and contemporary issues of colonialism.” Shot during the Burning Man Festival, his performances vary from humorous to solemn and draw, performatively, on the same spectacle of Buffalo Bill.

The work also makes reference to the decimation of buffalo populations due to European settlers, as a way to illustrate a cultural, spiritual, and metaphoric connection between the buffalo and Native Americans.