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Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun does not use email or text. In the Coastal Salish communities from which he hails, he has been known as a painter and a dancer since the 1980s. Yet, he has been exploring the 鈥渧irtual reality renaissance鈥濃�攖he technology that allows you to figuratively step into a computer-generated 3D world鈥攕ince it made its soft debut in the 鈥�90s.

In 2019, Yuxweluptun fell in with Paisley Smith, a filmmaker and virtual reality director who, like Yuxweluptun, comes from the unceded territories of the First Nations, in what is today known as British Columbia.

Together, they created , an immersive and provocative virtual reality experience that drops the viewer into a world designed in Yuxweluptun鈥檚 style. Surrounded by his 鈥�80s-style visuals, you are then encouraged to design the world as you want by throwing oil paint onto the screen with abandon. Only once you鈥檝e reached the end of the virtual adventure do you realize the running oil has left a trail of destruction in its wake, and that there is no turning back from this changed environment.

By combining Smith鈥檚 virtual reality filmmaking with the 鈥�80s-style visuals of Yuxweluptun鈥檚 paintings, Unceded Territories explores the intersection of environmentalism and Indigenous rights. It is just one example of the many ways Indigenous artists across the Americas are engaging technology and other works to draw attention to their culture and the environmental challenges confronting their communities, which are on the front line of climate change.

鈥淗ow do I teach people to love the land?鈥� asks Yuxweluptun, whose paintings tell stories about Indigenous human rights and climate change. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 use my story and blame me for that. You can鈥檛 blame me for global warming.鈥�

In the past, establishments outside of Indigenous communities rarely took note. Now, with social media, awareness is no longer limited to those directly affected, he says.

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Virtual reality, Yuxweluptun says, is another medium for someone like him to express his ideas in more ways than just on a one-dimensional canvas. 鈥淣ot everybody can do it, because you have to be able to think in a certain way,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a different way, other than painting or making a sculpture.鈥�

Here are the stories of four other groups of Indigenous artists using technology and art to tell their communities鈥� stories.

The Condor and The Eagle

Bryan Parras has been working in radio in the Houston market since the early 2000s and, as time passed, saw how social media made storytelling more accessible to everyone鈥攊ncluding those in marginalized communities.

In 2014, Parras met a European couple, Sophie and Cl茅ment Guerra, who had come to the United States to support the climate movement and who quickly became entangled in the Indigenous movement as well. Eventually, they began work on an independent documentary about four Indigenous leaders on a transcontinental adventure. Journeying from the Canadian plains, through the U.S and deep into the heart of the Amazonian jungle, they battled Big Energy while working to unite the peoples of North and South America and deepen the meaning of 鈥淐limate Justice.鈥� 

Parras, himself of mixed Indigenous descent, is no stranger to filmmakers and reporters who come into Indigenous communities to observe, but without getting their actual input. 鈥淚t鈥檚 another form of extraction, right? Cultural extraction,鈥� he says.

It鈥檚 why Parras, was the documentary鈥檚 campaign producer, acted as a bridge between the filmmakers and his community, so that Indigenous communities portrayed in the film would be included in the editing process as well. 鈥淲hat may not be written in the history books are now archived in this story,鈥� he said.

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Since its premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2019, The Condor and the Eagle has been selected by more than . The most notable one is Best Environmental Documentary at the 2019 Red Nation International Film Festival in Beverly Hills, California.

Wenaz矛i K’egoke; See Visions

Casey Koyczan is Tlicho Dene from the Northwest Territories of Canada. When he collaborates on virtual reality exhibits, he brings what he calls a 鈥淣orthern aesthetic鈥濃�攙isuals of the remote landscape of the Northwest Territories of Canada. His latest project is , a three-chapter virtual reality experience that takes you into a dreamlike interpretation of encounters with animal spirits of the North.

See Visions uses stark colors to evoke the feeling of walking through the snow under an aurora borealis. Koyczan considers the animals depicted in this atmosphere-heavy video to be its most important features. 鈥淚t鈥檚 all about being involved in the North,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t reinforces the subtle notion that we are on their territory.鈥�

See Visions debuted in a prototype version in 2019 at the annual ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, a global hub for Indigenous-made media art. Koyczan and his partner on the project, Travis Mercredi, are now developing it for length and interactivity.

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It鈥檚 the kind of work ImagineNATIVE envisioned when it began featuring virtual reality projects in 2017, with the idea of depicting the world for Indigenous communities 150 years into the future. The idea, Koyczan says, is that although their current reality is not ideal, Indigenous communities will survive. 鈥淭hriving in this society hasn鈥檛 been laid out yet,鈥� Koyczan said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really cool to depict these things. How things could be.鈥�

Although he studied fine arts in college, Koyczan decided he preferred shaping things with his hands. He often builds installations that allow him to project each of his projects from his laptop鈥攃reating a physical aspect for further immersion. He also creates the music and audio-scapes for his projects as a multi-instrumentalist and sound designer.

About his and Mercredi鈥檚 work, Koyczan says, 鈥淲e feel it鈥檚 providing accessibility and insight into a portion of our landscape and aesthetic as new media artists.鈥�

Three Sisters

In 2019, the Dundas West Art Museum in Toronto hosted an art exchange that allowed one Canadian artist to travel to Chile to paint a mural, while Chilean artist, Paula Tikay, went to paint in Canada.

鈥淎t the end of [painting] a mural, one leaves and leaves [their] work for the people who transit those places,鈥� says Tikay, who is Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in Chile. 鈥淭hey are like small messages that can identify and rescue stories from places. They are like gifts that appear for the inhabitants of that space.鈥�

Dundas West Art Museum is Toronto鈥檚 . The neighborhood of Dundas West has long been connected with Chile since Chileans began moving there as refugees of Augusto Pinochet鈥檚 dictatorship in the 1970s.

Tikay鈥檚 contribution to the museum is a Three Sisters mural, depicting three Indigenous women who represent the three main agricultural crops of Indigenous groups in the Americas.

Three Sisters is the name given to climbing beans, maize, and squash that are/were grown together in an agricultural strategy called companion planting. It鈥檚 a historical reminder that European settlers learned to plant crops on American soil from its Indigenous people.

Tikay calls it an honor to use her art to remind people of that, especially because it was also practiced in her ancestral southern Chile.    

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My Louisiana Love

The Houma Nation sits on the Mississippi Delta; the wetlands there were struck by both Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the BP oil spill five years later. These disasters, both natural and manmade, slowly chip away at the way of life of the Houma people, making them less able to hunt, trap, and fish.

In 2015, Monique Verdin co-produced the documentary, which traces her journey back to her home in the Houma nation and focuses on her community鈥檚 struggle with decades of environmental degradation.

It has recently been made available on PBS again.

Verdin herself expressed surprise at its rerelease. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 think it would be relevant at the time,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 even more relevant now.鈥�

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In telling this larger social and economic story, Verdin makes the film semi-autobiographical by displaying her and her family鈥檚 struggles, which include the death of her father. 鈥淲ith my father gone,鈥� she says in the narration, 鈥淚 had lost another piece of my Louisiana.鈥�

She is working to address some of the issues highlighted in the documentary. She is part of , a grassroots collaborative, led by women of color, that is doing resistance work against corporations searching for oil in the region while reviving Indigenous methods of living off the land sustainably.