There is a simple brilliance to Rory Wakemup’s Smart Wars: Many Shields exhibit at All My Relations Arts, in that if you have been anywhere near American popular culture over the past 50 years, the symbols being subverted are immediately familiar. Smart Wars is populated with Darth Vaders, Stormtroopers, Wookiees, and Yodas, all transformed with feathers, quillwork, paint, and shell casings — recast and reimagined as Native American warriors, with a biting sense of history and humor.

“I got sick of giving everyone Indian 101, I got sick of going all the way back to papal bulls. I used to go back to papal bulls and Manifest Destiny, and this is a more subversive way to teach,” said Wakemup in the opening artist talk. “It’s nice to flip the script, take pop culture and take our narratives back.”

The power of Wakemup’s subversion, his flipping of the script, is that he has transformed entertainment through culture. And Star Wars, for all of its Campbellian myth-making roots and broad fan base, is entertainment, especially in its new, Disney-franchised maximalist iterations. Which is not to say that it cannot still be powerful on a human level — Andy Serkis’ jailbreak speech and look of pathos when he says he can’t swim from Season 1 of Andor is worth your attention — but it is still an imagined story.