Our "Is This Land" magnet takes inspiration from Woody Guthrie's original lyrics of "This Land Is Your Land" and reframes them from an Indigenous American perspective. Featuring the original lyric "Is this land made for you and me?", Cherokee artist Keli Gonzales has created a circular design that juxtaposes Oklahoma's beautiful natural landscape with industralization and pollution.
About The Design:
Keli Gonzales is a Cherokee artist from Welling, Ok. She is a language and culture advocate. As someone who came to her culture later in life, she wants to inspire other folks with the pride she’s found in her cultural identity. Cherokee iconography and Cherokee syllabary are prominent figures in her work. The work interprets symbols and culture to communicate ideas in a modern way. Painting, digital drawing, printmaking, and sculpting are some of the mediums she works in.
"My inspiration for the designs came from a need to confront the phrase that a lot of Native people have an issue with in Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land. This phrase is always taken out of context, as the song is meant to help us question the systems and institutions around us. For Native people though, owning land is not a concept so the title of the song is jarring really. It made me think very literally about land. There is a line in the song that says “Is this land made for you and me?” and I wanted to focus in on that in a very simple way. Oklahoma has beautiful landscapes and resources but those things are being damaged by big oil, chicken houses and other Capitalist endeavors. I wanted to show the contrast between the nice, ideal landscape that people think of when they think of Oklahoma and then show what Native folks have been seeing and fighting against for a long time. If there is pollution in our water and in the ground, will this land continue to be for you and me? As a fan of Woody’s music, I also wanted to do something that I feel he would have been onboard with."
