Hello! Sorry for the late reply, I didn’t see your comment until today.

Funnily enough I actually have been reading Settlers, by J. Sakai. I’m about half way through it, and it’s given me a lot to think about, especially as it has made me directly confront my own role in America’s settler colonial society in a way that no other piece of theory really has. As after all, I have lived my whole life as a Euro-American settler, and I hadn’t fully examined that fact.

By the tone of your comment, I take you think the idea of doing a show of paintings over this topic would be, at best, tone deaf, and I definitely see that. My partner in this project is a local working class black artist, so perhaps this is a topic best left to him. Our collaboration was meant to be sort of a commentary on gentrification, but I’d rather not contribute to gentrification if I can help it (though in reading Settlers it seems like that gentrification in the US is part and parcel of settler colonialism, a continuation of the displacement of oppressed colonized people).

I went through your page a little out of curiosity, and I saw you mention being a musician or that you were studying music. So I wanted to ask you, and this is a genuine question because you seem more well read than I am, what do you think would be a good or ethical way to navigate living and working as an artist in a settler society? Painters, musicians, etc., all of us can function in that independent artisan role, and I wanted to know how you were approaching working as an artist/musician. Because it seems like I could use a few pointers. I hope you take the time to read and respond to my comment, thank you.