Jeremy Dennis is a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton , New York . In One Nation Under God , he considers the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 , which granted citizenship to Indigenous peoples born within the United States . Although they are the nation ’ s first peoples , at the time the law was passed , they were the last to receive the “ gift ” of American citizenship . While some Tribal Nations welcomed the Act , as it meant they were now recognized by the state and given the rights , protections , and freedom of mobility of an American passport , others perceived it as weaponized assimilation , another tool to erase Native sovereignty .
In her book Mohawk Interruptus , political anthropologist Audra Simpson asks , “ What does it mean to refuse a passport — what some consider to be a gift or a right , the freedom of mobility and residency ?” In One Nation Under God , Dennis works through this question by calling attention to how the Citizenship Act was both “ an emblem of assimilation and erasure of many Native nations .” He burns his own expired passport , laying it to rest on a map of the United States . It ’ s a carefully chosen map featuring the names and geographic locations of the 574 Federally Recognized Native Nations in the contiguous forty-eight states . Dennis allows for the passport ’ s melted remnants and detritus to damage the map and obscure the names of many of the Nations . This artistic gesture essentially blacks out and therefore erases these sovereign nations . Poetic in its destruction and violence , One Nation Under God functions as what Simpson might call a “ cartography of refusal .”
Dennis ’ burning of his American passport is a form of protest . Looking underneath , he leaves the burned passport propped open on the important “ Signature of Bearer ” page . It is also the page featuring the preamble to the U . S . Constitution , which declares “ We the People . . . in order to form a more perfect union . . .” In contrast , One Nation Under God troubles this very question : Is this a perfect union under God ?
— Olivia Hackney Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies , Art History
21