Shelley Niro: Battlefields of my Ancestors

Shelley Niro

For more than 30 years, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Shelley Niro (Mohawk, turtle clan) has chronicled the land of the Mohawks—part of the confederacy of Six Nations called the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois. While best known for figurative imagery that boldly challenges stereotypical interpretations of Indigenous women, identity, and culture, Niro’s quiet focus on landscape has been unwavering. She has repeatedly followed the Six Nations’ migration route from Upstate New York, where she was born, to southern Ontario, where she currently lives. She has visited the sites of ancestral villages destroyed during the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783) and documented the historic battlefields that hold significance for her people. Niro’s quest began with the oral history passed down by her father, who recalled his grandmother’s narrative to describe the beauty and majesty of the Mohawk’s traditional land—a place he had never seen. As Niro explored the seemingly boundless regions of the Adirondacks and Finger Lakes, she questioned: “Why aren’t there more Mohawks living in the Mohawk Valley, and why didn’t we move back after the American Revolution?”