Nicholas Galanin’s installation begins with an Indonesian-made replica of a Northwest Coast totem pole, a tourist commodity stripped of ceremonial and cultural meaning. Painted bright yellow and chainsawed into pieces, the pole is reduced to firewood, symbolizing the emptiness of commercialized Indigenous objects. The fragments are then reassembled into a precarious, Jenga-like form, conceptually “re-indigenizing” the work through transformation.

Titled I Think It Goes Like This, the name is a wry, humorous nod to the confusion and absurdity – the “joke” – surrounding cultural misunderstanding. Galanin’s piece confronts cultural appropriation, questions authenticity, and reclaims Indigenous authority to define its own meaning and integrity.