Niro is a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, near Brantford, Ontario, and a multidisciplinary artist. In the 1980s she explored identity and cultural memory through a series of joyful portraits of her mother and sisters. The Rebel, 1982, takes its title from the American Motors car of the same name and features her mother, June Chiquita Doxtater, playfully lying across the trunk. The light-hearted tone of the work was both a purposeful contrast with the negative stereotypes of Indigenous people circulating in mainstream culture and a reference to the matriarchal structure of Haudenosaunee culture. Niro was the winner of the 2017 Scotiabank Photography Award.

Image: Shelley Niro, The Rebel, 1987, hand-tinted photograph, 35 x 41.5 cm, courtesy of the artist.

For further reading, see:

Lennon, Madeline. Shelley Niro: Seeing through Memory. London: Blue Medium Press, 2014, 9–18.

Morel, Gaëlle, Wanda Nanibush, and Ryan Rice. Shelley Niro. Göttingen: Steidl, 2018.