American Indian Culture and Research Journal

"We, the Colonized Ones" is a series of clay sculptures, made by Kukuli Velarde Barrionuevo in New York City from 1990 to 1992. Each of the pieces either symbolizes or represents the emotional consequences of European colonization among Native Americans, Africans, and their descendants in the Americas. Some of the works relate specifically to Kukuli's experience in her native Peru. The goal of these sculptures is to show the point of view of the defeated, those who saw their cultures and societies disrupted by the imposition of another culture. The sculptures embody a communication between the American past and the American present, and the Western and non-Western cultures that cohabit on this continent. These works are used by Kukuli in performance with song, dance, and candlelight to evoke the spirits of colonized ancestors, the spirits of the unborn (whose parents were killed), and the spirit of affirmation and resistance among the living. The following text is based on taped interviews with Kukuli conducted in Central Park and the South Bronx in New York City. I am a Westernized individual. I don't say I'm a Western individual because I didn't create this culture; I am a product of colonization, and in this moment I am trying to define things as accurately and clearly for myself as I can. If I say that I am Western, I could imply that this world that developed in Europe and now in the Americas belongs to me as it does to you. And I don't think that this is true. If there were no discrimination, maybe this relationship to Western culture would be much more successful, and I could consider myself "Western." But I'm coming from what "they" call a "Third World," and I think that we are Third World because we are colonized. We have to face that reality. To face it I must acknowledge my mixed race, to acknowledge that I'm not Indian and that I'm not white; I have both heritages. I feel hurt when I see what colonization has made of the people I come from. That doesn't mean I have an ambiguity, but that I have a new identity: the identity of a colonized individual.