The Indigenous Artist’s Survival Guide to Art School is an “auto-zine” created by Sahtu Délı̨nę artist and printmaker Laura Grier. The guide presents resources, poetry, lists, encouragement, and reflections from Grier’s personal experience as an academic and artist within a colonial institutional setting. This accessible zine is aimed at an Indigenous readership looking for tangible information about navigating art school, while not homogenizing Indigenous lived experience and perspectives.
Laura Grier is a Sahtu Délı̨nę First Nations artist and printmaker, born in Somba ké (Yellowknife), and based out of Alberta. Through the use of traditional print mediums, they instrumentalize the power of the handmade to reflect Indigeneity, language, relational ontologies, and lived experiences of urban displacement and inherent Dene spirituality. Laura’s work is inspired by the dynamism of Indigenous art practices and uses printmaking as a tool for resistance, refusal, and reflexivity.