CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/12/2026

In celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, ‘Designed to Be Red’

Featured image is reproduced from new release Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Graphic Works, published to accompany the exhibition on view now at Poster House, NYC. Credited to Designer Once Known, Indian Power (1971) features Leroy Keams (Diné), a prominent member of the American Indian Movement, “raising a rifle in defiance during protests against strip mining on Black Mesa,” according to author Brian Johnson. “Behind him looms Peabody Energy’s mining operation—the result of agreements made in 1964 and 1966 with Navajo Nation and Hopi tribal leaders that were later revealed to be corrupt; the attorney representing one of the tribes had been paid by Peabody, undermining Tribal sovereignty. The company’s strip mining ravaged the landscape, drained the Navajo aquifer, and forced the relocation of 12,000 to 16,000 Diné—the most significant Indigenous displacement since the Trail of Tears. The poster itself was a tool of resistance: all profits from its sale went to the Black Mesa Defense Fund.”