How do I hold a love that grew in a massacre site?
I am nicholas b jacobsen, an artist, researcher, historian, educator, and organizer. I am a trans-non binary Euro-settler raised in the Nuwu lands of so-called Utah. My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long as either of those concepts have existed. My ancestors sacrificed everything--their identities, homelands, jobs, health, & safety to become Mormon, Utahn, U.S. American, & white--to settler their Zion. I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled and to invite fellow settlers do the same through writing, art, and community building.
Through this page I work to highlight myths of innocence associated with Mormonism and the formation of the western United States, to bring attention to its notions of cultural and racial supremacy, and the resulting violence those myths attempt to conceal.
This project grew from the love I carry for the land I was raised by & with which I redeveloped my spirituality after leaving Mormonism. Through studying decolonization, settler colonialism, & Indigenous resistance from mostly Indigenous, Black, & Brown writers, professors, & friends I began to viscerally understand that the only reason I have access to this land, this love, my spirituality is because my ancestors committed genocide against the Peoples Indigenous to these lands. My body & my ancestors’ grew from stolen land, from the trauma of genocide, & the trauma of justifying, ignoring & gaslighting that truth. It is who my People are.
How do I hold a love that grew in a massacre site?
Through this page I work to highlight myths of innocence associated with Mormonism and the formation of the western United States, to bring attention to its notions of cultural and racial supremacy, and the resulting violence those myths attempt to conceal.
This project grew from the love I carry for the land I was raised by & with which I redeveloped my spirituality after leaving Mormonism. Through studying decolonization, settler colonialism, & Indigenous resistance from mostly Indigenous, Black, & Brown writers, professors, & friends I began to viscerally understand that the only reason I have access to this land, this love, my spirituality is because my ancestors committed genocide against the Peoples Indigenous to these lands. My body & my ancestors’ grew from stolen land, from the trauma of genocide, & the trauma of justifying, ignoring & gaslighting that truth. It is who my People are.
How do I hold a love that grew in a massacre site?
Publications & Podcasts
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Publications
“Lithic Record,” co-authored with Nina Elder Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art ed. by Jennie Hirsh and Isabelle Wallace London and New York: Routledge. Expected publication date: Fall 2022 The Roots of the LDS Church's Opposition to Same Sex Marriage CounterPunch.org June 2022 Mormon Mythistries: Richard Hansen in El Mirador (removed) CounterPunch.org March 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now Southwest Contemporary Magazine 2021 Unsettling Mormonism November 2020 - Current Land of my breath, people of my flesh Self-published March 2020 |
Podcasts
The Red Nation Podcast “Unsettling Mormonism w/ nic & Kobi” The Red Nation December 2021 Chatter Marks “Erratic Conversations: Pt.3, Futurism and Hope.” Anchorage Musuem May 2021 A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture “Family, Mormonism, and Whiteness” The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture July 2020. |