TAHLEQUAH – The longest-running Native American juried art show and competition in Oklahoma announced its top honors during a special reception on April 7 at the gallery in Cherokee Springs Plaza.

The 52^nd annual Trail of Tears Art Show and Sale opens to the public April 8 through May 6 and features a variety of authentic Native art, including 137 works from 92 artists representing 19 tribal nations. 

Cherokee Nation artist Roy Boney Jr. earned this year’s top recognition for “ᏚᏙᎠ ᏥᏍᏚ ᎤᏂᎩᏍᏗ (Her Name is Wild Rose).” The watercolor, pencil and ink piece depicts Deer Woman as a student at the Cherokee Female Seminary, blending Cherokee history and legend in a stunning array of rich hues with a supernatural feel. 

“Cherokee Nation’s support of the Native art community is at an all-time high,” said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. “We are working every day to support the arts across the Cherokee Nation Reservation and beyond through historic investments like the Cherokee Artist Recovery Act and by calling on Congress to amend the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act to better protect the rights of Indian artists. From authentic art shows and new venues for art and cultural demonstrations to historic investments, the best days are certainly ahead of us.”

Through the juried show, artists compete for more than $16,000 in various categories. The following summary highlights the grand prize, first-place and special award winners:

• Grand Prize: Roy Boney, Jr. – Cherokee Nation – “ᏚᏙᎠ ᏥᏍᏚ ᎤᏂᎩᏍᏗ (Her Name is Wild Rose)”
• Painting First Place: Norma Howard – Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation – “Picking Wild Onions”
• Sculpture First Place: Jon Williams – Cherokee Nation –  “Moses Bearpaw”
• Basketry First Place: Vivian Cottrell – Cherokee National Treasure – “Basket of Berries”
• Pottery First Place: Crystal Hanna – Cherokee Nation – “Oklahoma Alligator”
• Jewelry First Place: Tiffany Reiter – Cherokee Nation – “Wanderlust”
• Miniature First Place: Norma Howard – Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation – “Choctaw Camp”
• Diverse Art Forms First Place: Julie Burk – Cherokee Nation – “Lost and Found”
• Photography/Digital Art First Place: Jeff Edwards – Cherokee Nation – “Cherokee DNA Tree of Life”
• Trail of Tears Award: Jeremy Thompson – Seminole Nation – “Simanó-li: Far From Home”
• Emerging Artists First Place: Laney Cully – Cherokee Nation – “Walnut in Stages”
• Jennie Ross Cobb Photography Award: Robin Stockton – Cherokee Nation – “Strength Revealed”
• Betty Scraper Garner Elder Award: Tama Roberts – Cherokee Nation – “Taking Flight”
• Bill Rabbit Legacy Award: Tonia Hogner-Weavel – Cherokee National Treasure – “Turkey Glow”

The 52^nd annual Trail of Tears Art Show and Sale is on display at the gallery in Cherokee Springs Plaza. Artwork featured in the show is available to purchase online and in-person. For more information, please visit https://www.visitcherokeenation.com/trail-of-tears-art-show.

The Wyoming Arts Council is now accepting applications for the Native Art Fellowship. The Native Art Fellowship is a $3,000 unrestricted award of merit, based on the artist’s portfolio, honoring the work of Native artists based within Wyoming. Artists working across any artistic discipline or medium (visual, literary, performing, folk & traditional, etc.) may apply. This fellowship is designed to raise the profiles of the highly talented Native artists in Wyoming and celebrate their artistry. Fellowships are open to Wyoming residents, and are merit-based awards.

Applications are juried by noted Native artists outside the state. This fellowship is designed to raise the profiles of the highly talented Native artists in Wyoming and celebrate their artistry. Up tp two fellowships will be awarded this year and applications must be submitted online through Submittable. This year’s jurors are Karen Ann Hoffman, a Haudenosaunee Raised Beadwork artist and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and artist Daniel McCoy, of the The Muscogee Nation, who resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his family. 

Recipients of the Native Art Fellowship will also be given support to find a venue to showcase their work.

Additional information can be found on the Arts Council website wyomingartscouncil.org. 

Photo: Jacqueline WayneGuite

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Artadia (Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco), 134
Featuring the three Chicago recipients of the 2022 Artadia Award—Selva Aparicio, Azadeh Gholizadeh and Maryam Taghavi—Artadia’s booth is my top pick for Expo Chicago. The work of these artists is elegantly curated and installed. On a wood pedestal under a glass vitrine sits a teddy bear Aparicio found in a cemetery and meticulously covered in dandelion seeds. This work and two others featuring flower stems—also recovered from cemeteries and covered in dandelion seeds—will inspire curiosity and awe. Three tapestries by Gholizadeh depict the abstracted landscapes of Wisconsin and Michigan in monochromatic color palettes. Grounded on canvas mesh, two of these tapestries cleverly break free from their square orientation. And Taghavi’s work is based on sigils, spells that use an arrangement of Arabic letters and numbers. Working in wood sculpture and laser-cut cardstock, she employs a sense of magic in her work.

Photo: Jacqueline WayneGuite

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Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami), 248
Mindy Solomon Gallery’s booth is a riot of multi-disciplinary work by artists with diasporic backgrounds. The back wall is covered by tufted cherubs and glitter-bombed oil portraits by Chicago-based artist Moises Salazar Tlatenchi. For a moment, you’ll think you’ve stepped into a shrine. Both Natalia Arbelaez and Sydnie Jimenez present small figures of red clay and ceramic, respectively. There are felted portraits by Melissa Joseph and fiber works by Basil Kincaid, Malaika Temba and Anya Paintsil. The mix of work is lively and a delight. A real feast for the eyes.

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moniquemeloche (Chicago), 313
With arguably the best roster of artists in Chicago, it’s hard to overlook Monique Meloche Gallery. Every time I visited this booth, it was packed with people, even when security tried to shepherd people to the exits. Ebony G. Patterson’s vivid installation gets a starring role as the booth’s centerpiece.The works by eighteen artists are true gems and showcase the strength of the gallery’s program. You’ll see two Cheryl Pope needle-punched pieces, a Sanford Biggers antique quilt wall sculpture, a delicate hand-cut paper piece by Antonius-Tín Bui, two playful portraits by Jake Troyli, an enigmatic painting of a person and a snow leopard by Lavar Munroe and a mixed-media work by Nate Young featuring a graphite drawing and the hologram of a horse bone. I could go on. This booth deserves a long visit because there’s so much to see and, most likely, a lot of people to navigate around.

Photo: Debra Yepa-Pappan. Courtesy the Center for Native Futures

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Center for Native Futures (Chicago), 419
Anchoring the left side of the Center for Native Futures’ booth, John Hitchcock’s polychromatic installation is a joy to behold. This colorful explosion mixes paper, paint and ribbons to reference his Kaku’s Comanche grandmother) beadwork and regalia. Next to it is a portrait series by Tom Jones exploring Ho-Chunk identity. Jones created floral and geometric beadwork designs on the surface of the photographs referencing the ancestral spirits that are always watching over the Ho-Chunk. Dakota Mace’s works draw from her Diné heritage and center on themes of family lineage, community and identity. And Holly Wilson’s bronze figurative sculptures are based on the artist’s lived experience and family history.

Photo courtesy Kornfeld Galerie

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KORNFELD Galerie (Berlin), 402
Kornfeld Galerie features a solo presentation of paintings by Colombian Italian artist Giorgio Celin. The works are bold, beautiful and touching, based on relationships between a diverse set of lovers and friends. There’s a sense of melancholy about them, though, as the artist works through issues around the intersections of queerness, immigration and marginalization. He captures a tension between the desire for intimacy and questions of belonging. Celin’s portraits also depict how queer identity is signaled through adornment and dress practices today.

Bucknell’s downtown Samek Art Gallery is presenting the exhibit “What You Think You Know” from March 14 to June 4.

The title of the exhibit is a nod to stereotypes surrounding Native Americans, and the art within the exhibit works to dismantle them. The exhibit was curated by Museum Fellow Sarah N. Hixson, Mass. and Sierra Nizhonii (Diné). It contains art from Cara Romero, Cannupa Hanska Luger and the 1491s. All artists’ plaques also contain their Native names. 

Above the gallery’s permanent fireplace is the title of the exhibit and a brief commentary on why this exhibition was curated and its relevance. It explains the recognizable names of Pennsylvania locations–Shamokin, Susquehanna, Pocono, etc.–come from the Algonquin language family spoken by Indigenous people. These names belonged to Native tribes and still do to this day. 

The wall reads: “To reduce a culture or group of people to consumable and profitable products is commodification; obsessing over singular elements of someone’s identity transforms fascination into fetishization.”

To the left of the wall, Luger’s art is displayed. Luger was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and is a Bucknell graduate. A glass display case contains “artifacts”: ceramic pieces, some made to look like broken bottles. Above the display case is the word “artifact” in dictionary entry style. In contrast with their definitions, the words are used in example sentences that act as commentary on Indigenous artifacts being kept in institutional collections.

One line reads: “Institutional control of narrative has produced several technical artifacts in relation to Indigenous people.” Luger’s work continues to the left, with brightly-painted arrows and more commentary on the Indigenous property that has been deemed as artifacts. 

On the adjacent wall hangs Romero’s works from her “First American Girl” series. Two large, bright, archival pigment photographs show two native women, one entitled Julia and the other Naomi. Each stands within a black-and-white patterned outline, imitating a doll in a box. They are dressed in traditionally Native clothing, and surrounded by culturally important “accessories.”

Romero’s pieces work to combat the commercialized image of Indigenous women, such as through the marketable dolls that these images imitate. 

Perpendicular to her exhibit is the standard land acknowledgement that Bucknell uses in academic contexts and at events.

In a room towards the back of the exhibit, a television plays works from the 1491s, a sketch comedy troupe composed of five Native men: Migzi Pensoneau, Bobby Wilson, Dallas Goldtooth, Ryan RedCorn and Sterlin Harjo. The group began in 2009 on YouTube, but after going viral have grown to performing sold-out shows, giving TEDxTalks and being a part of major projects such as FX’s Reservation Dogs. Their humor and satire helps to combat Native stereotypes in a more lighthearted way, but also in a way that is more digestible and accessible to the general public.

“I really appreciated Chase Gregory bringing our class to the Samek downtown on Wednesday afternoon, otherwise I would not have gotten a chance to see such a wonderful exhibit,” Isabelle Levesque-Du Bose ’23 said. “Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibition at the Samek downtown and encourage everybody to learn more about indigenous communities, not only near us, but across the country.”

The exhibit will be open until June 4 during the gallery’s operating hours of 12–5 p.m. on Tuesdays through Sundays. It is free and open to the public, located on Market St. across from the Campus Theatre.

(Visited 2 times, 2 visits today)

Annie and Abel Van Meter State Park is hosting an exhibit titles ‘Savages and Princess: The Persistence of Native American Stereotypes’ beginning Saturday, April 15. It will be open during normal business hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Missouri’s American Indian Cultural Center at Annie and Abel Van Meter State Park is excited to host this exhibit, which brings together 12 contemporary Native American visual artists who reclaim their right to represent their identities as Native Americans. Whether using humor, subtlety or irony, the telling is always fiercely honest and dead-on accurate. Images and styles are created from traditional, contemporary and mass culture forms.

Annie and Abel Van Meter State Park is located 12 miles north of Marshall on Highway 122. For more information about the event, call the park office at 660-886-7537.

An exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) surveying the work of 90-year-old First Nations film-maker, artist, musician and activist Alanis Obomsawin features new archival material that illuminates the work of one of Canada’s national treasures.

According to the VAG, The Children Have to Hear Another Story (until 7 August)—the first exhibition to survey the work of the iconic Abenaki film-maker—includes many materials that have never been publicly displayed before, or not since they were first shown. The exhibition, curated by Richard William Hill and Hila Peleg, spans five decades of Obomsawin’s trail-blazing career. It also offers ephemera, rare works and scripts from both Canada’s National Film Board (NFB), where she’s been a producer for decades, and Obomsawin’s personal archive. The exhibition was on view last year at the Haus der Kulturen del Welt in Berlin and this is its first Canadian iteration (it will travel to the Art Museum at the University of Toronto later this year).

At the VAG, the show includes a new 24-minute film that Obomsawin made about the life and work of Bill Reid, the renowned Haida artist, during the pandemic. Obomsawin was one of the first Indigenous filmmakers to insist on allowing Native subjects to speak for themselves—rather than being mere objects of the colonial “voice of God” narrative. Fittingly, the film juxtaposes Reid’s deep, rich baritone—who worked for years as a radio announcer—with photos from his childhood in Victoria, British Columbia (where he attended a kindergarten run by Emily Carr’s sister), footage of 1970s protests and images from his career as a master carver, goldsmith and sculptor.

During an event at the VAG last week, Obomsawin said it was “very moving” for her to rediscover audio of a conversation she had with Reid in the 1980s during her audit of her archive. The exhibition also features a portrait mask of Obomsawin that Reid fashioned in the 1970s, on loan from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The two were close friends and Reid often referred to Obomsawin as the “Montreal lady”. Both artists negotiated two worlds amid heightened North American awareness of its First Peoples and their cultures; the film, like the exhibition, not only documents indigeneity in art but also a key half-century in Canadian history.

Born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, in 1932, Obomsawin spent some of her childhood on the Abenaki First Nations reserve in Odanak, Québec and much of it in Trois-Rivieres, where she avoided residential school but endured racist bullying from her fellow students. The young Obomsawin sought solace in her dream world, where magical animals appeared to her as talismanic companion and protectors. The exhibition opens with a selection of her paintings of these fantastical creatures from the 1990s as well as an autobiographical film, When All the Leaves Are Gone (2010), evoking the era when a 12-year-old Obomsawin, already steeped in Indigenous lore, had an epiphany that shaped her life and career.

“I thought that if the children could hear the stories I hear, maybe they would be behaving differently,” Obomsawin is quoted saying in the exhibition catalogue. This idea became a driving force in a career that married art, activism and education. It began with teaching boy scouts about Indigenous culture and included a stint as a model, time as a recording artist singing traditional songs and decades of making films about First Nations issues. Her best-known work, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), which she shot from behind the barbed wire during the Oka Crisis of 1990—a 78-day standoff between Mohawks protesting appropriation of their territory and the police and Canadian army—plays in the section of the exhibition devoted to the 1990s alongside extensive television footage of her own struggle to survive the gruelling siege with a skeleton crew and copies of letters demanding that police return her mobile phone.

An earlier work. Incident at Restigouche (1984), chronicles police violence against Mi’kmaq fishermen in 1981 and is shown alongside correspondence from the NFB initially instructing her not to interview any government ministers—only First Nations individuals. In the end, her interview with the Minister of Fisheries became one of the film’s most powerful moments. In the same section, the film Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child (1986), about the suicide of a teenager in foster care that galvanised the fight for Indigenous autonomy over social services, plays next to related ephemera. Around the corner, powerful etchings by Obomsawin of First Nations women and their children read like Indigenous pietas.

The exhibition is invaluable both as a survey of Obomsawin’s oeuvre and as a chronicle of the shifting public image of First Nations peoples in Canada. Richard Hill, the show’s co-curator, said its Berlin iteration had addressed certain German “romanticisations of Indigenous people”, but that “here in Canada, we have different problems”. Looking onto the steps of the VAG—where a makeshift shrine to Indigenous children who died at residential schools has been in place since 2021—he added, “We’re still in the middle of the conversations Alanis has been having for decades.”

• The Children Have to Hear Another Story, until 7 August, Vancouver Art Gallery

It’s simply a fact—the name Bosco Sodi draws crowds. To no one’s surprise, his new studio in the industrial neighborhood of Atlampa, was the place to be during Mexico City Art Week. It’s not success or fame, however, that drives the artist. Sodi has no expectations or preconceived notions when viewers come into his spaces, or that they’ll come to them at all. Rather, he hopes that if and when they do, they draw their own interpretations of his richly textured, vividly colored large-scale paintings, which have debuted in notable institutions like the Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Belgium and the Harvard Art Museum in Cambridge throughout his 30-year career.

His latest feat—an urban extension of the world-famous Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido—transformed a former Mexico City warehouse into a four-floor Brutalist building. In a quest to bring the arts community to Atlampa, the studio features an exhibition space for young Mexican artists, terraces for sculptures, and selected works from Sodi himself. The studio will host weekly tours for students from nearby public schools and universities, and exhibitions will be open to the public by appointment. Here, Sodi shares the importance of community, his admiration for architecture, and his hopes for his native Mexico.

Natalie Stoclet: Your new studio in Mexico City opened just in time for Art Week. Tell us a little bit about the project.

Bosco Sodi: I have been thinking about this studio for a long time—we have been constructing it for three years. The architecture was done by Alberto Kalach and the curation was done by Dakin Hart, someone I have worked closely with on many projects, including my exhibition at the Venice Biennale and the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City. I wanted to have a place where I could revisit my work instead of having it all in a storage room in boxes. I also wanted to have a more significant presence in Mexico and be able to return at any given time to live and have a space to work in.

NS: What was it like collaborating with Alberto Kalach?

BS: I have known Alberto for a long time; we are good friends and have collaborated on various other projects. At Casa Wabi, he created the garden and chimney, and he also helped me design Assembly in Upstate New York. I greatly admire his work, which is in line with mine. It is very simple and unpretentious but simultaneously very beautiful. Alberto understands simplicity very well. There was a lot of dialogue and feedback between us. We wanted to create a space where architecture and art would exist in harmony.

NS: How do you hope people feel when they enter this space?

BS: We tried to make a welcoming, humble space so that people would not feel overwhelmed—where visitors could see the art calmly, without any imposition. A place that became almost monastic, that had a good dialogue with my work. It was not about making a perfect white box where the work stands out above all; it was about creating a space that would adapt to the art and be part of the architecture. I believe that so far, people have liked it, and it is easier to read the work in a place where it belongs.

NS: What do you believe is the relationship between art and architecture?

BS: I have always been very interested in the relationship between art and architecture; I believe that architecture is a necessity and art is a pleasure. I am also a great admirer of architecture. At Casa Wabi, we have worked with Tadao Ando, Álvaro Siza, Kengo Kuma, Solano Benítez, Ambrosi Echtegaray, and Alberto Kalach as well. They are all architects I admire; I like the materials they use and how they handle space. Art and architecture have always coexisted. They have always been present in the same space and at the same time, since the caves of Altamira. They are two things that add to each other and that always go hand in hand. I believe that architecture has to be respectful of art, and art has to be respectful of architecture.

NS: How do you want audiences to interact with your art?

BS: I like for people to arrive without prejudice or preconceived ideas. When they see the art, they can draw their own conclusions. I try to avoid intellectuality as much as possible in my work. I like it to feel organic and natural or as similar to nature as possible. People can arrive and make their interpretations as they would while watching a sunset, a starry night, or a fire. It is very important that people do not feel overwhelmed in front of the work and do not face it with fear. Art should be reached, enjoyed, and felt. I don’t want people to feel belittled when they see art. On the contrary, people have to feel better; they have to feel stronger, and they have to come out feeling enhanced after seeing the work.

NS: How do you feel that a stronger sense of community can benefit the art world?

BS: We need more social commitment in the art world. That is the philosophy I have followed both in Casa Wabi and in my various projects. Artists who have reached a certain level of success, are obligated to give back a great part of our fortune. We are in an era that needs community. The more human beings unite and collaborate, the better results we will have—both in our relationship with nature and in our relationship with ourselves. I believe that Casa Wabi allows for an exchange of knowledge and energy between artists and communities, and both parties generally benefit.

NS: How has the success of Casa Wabi informed your career?

BS: It is not about being successful or not. More than anything, it has taught me to realize the power of art to change things and benefit communities. Casa Wabi has been a great sacrifice of time, energy, and money for my family and me, but it has given us many rewards. Casa Wabi has become an icon in residencies and art, which has made me very happy and grateful to the team that has worked toward this. It is essential to highlight that while I may have had the idea and put in some energy and money, this is the effort of a great team, the local communities, and the artists.

NS: How has the landscape for art in Mexico City changed?

BS: I think that it has changed for the better. Between art fairs like ZONA Maco, galleries, museums like Jumex, and projects like Casa Wabi, Mexico has become a focal point for artists, collectors, and curators. There hasn’t been a better moment for art in Mexico. There are considerable great young artists, many of whom have been residents at Casa Wabi. There is an older generation of artists who are all doing very well and working in galleries worldwide. It is impressive—the number of people who go to Art Week, the number of artists, curators, and collectors, and the scene that has developed has been a collective effort. But I think that we have to be careful; we have to make sure that Mexico doesn’t see the same gentrification of art found in Berlin, which I believe ruined it.

NS: Your art is exhibited across continents. How do you create pieces that fit into different environments?

BS: This is accomplished because my work tries to flee from intellectuality. It turns away from its roots or from belonging. It tries to be universal art—that speaks of nature, of accident, of no control, of the unique, of the unrepeatable. They are pieces that try to reach a universal sense that all human beings have, the soul. It doesn’t matter where you are from, what religion you are, or what gender you are because it’s something we all share.

NS: What are your hopes for the future of art in Mexico?

BS: The future of art in Mexico looks very promising. We must make an effort to support new generations so that the art scene can keep improving and growing. We can’t keep thinking that past generations, or even that my generation, are the ones who made it and are the ones who will maintain it. The current panorama has been achieved by all of us, by a series of artists, institutions, movements, and curators. For it to continue to improve, we have to support younger generations.

Fort Lewis College prides itself on its support for Native American students. The college offers tuition waivers to students of Native descent, and more than 150 tribes are represented in the student body. But Fort Lewis is still reckoning with its past as an Indian boarding school and has recently taken some small but essential steps toward healing.

Last week, an art exhibit called As Seeds, We Grow closed after 12 months. The exhibit presented Native perspectives on the colonial history of Fort Lewis, especially boarding school atrocities.

The college presented As Seeds, We Grow in an on-campus gallery space at the Center of Southwest Studies. Dozens of art pieces from Native American students and Fort Lewis alums blended contemporary ideas with Native American tradition: handmade pottery, small paintings, colorful woven cloths, and a jingle dress.

“College president Tom Stritikus invited me to create an exhibit with students about their perspectives on intergenerational trauma related to the boarding school era,” said Elise Boulanger, the exhibit curator and a recent graduate of Fort Lewis College.

The exhibit also featured a poem written by Kirbie Bennett*, a Fort Lewis College alum, which was printed on a large sheaf of paper:

“… it’s heartbreaking to realize those children in those boarding schools in those unmarked graves are my ancestors & their prayers are still circulating in the air & some days I see them as sunbathed birds reaching for the sky & I cherish being an alumnus, but I know the same cannot be said for those children for my ancestors because what’s another word for having your tongue cut out having your hair ripped off having your heart stomped out….”
* Editor’s note: As a point of disclosure, Bennett is an independently-contracted news reporter for KSUT.

For Boulanger, a member of the Osage Tribe, curating the exhibit meant working closely with students while they created art from trauma.

“I had to focus on healing with the students and about their own personal stories with the boarding school days and intergenerational trauma in their family,” she said. “By focusing on cultural resilience, we could show that we’re still here and we’re going to school here. We’re a very important part of the culture on campus.”

Controversial clock tower panels

The exhibit came on the heels of another very public effort by the college to address its complicated history with Native people. A prominent clock tower on campus displayed panels depicting college history. But the panels depicting the college’s boarding school history were offensive.

“They weren’t entirely truthful,” said Boulanger. “They were whitewashed; they said things about the Native students but didn’t fully confront why the boarding school was operating and what they did to bring the Native students there.”
In September 2021, Fort Lewis College held a ceremony to remove the controversial panels from the clock tower. According to the Durango Herald, the ceremony was attended by students, tribal leaders, and university officials. A drum group played grieving and victory songs while the panels were removed.

“Every institution needs to take a look at its own racialized history and how that history impacts where it’s going,” said college president Tom Stritikus. “In Fort Lewis’s case, that clock tower panel presented a disingenuous, in some ways disrespectful, inaccurate view of the boarding schools that didn’t acknowledge the trauma that was created by the boarding school movement.”
The Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School operated from 1891 to 1910. Dr. Majel Boxer, Chair of Native American & Indigenous Studies at Fort Lewis, has researched primary documents from the early 1900s to document conditions at the boarding school.

“Fort Lewis Indian School had a school day that was highly regimented, and a curriculum that was meant to instill patriotism into the students, and so that children would start to see themselves as Americans. The school curriculum then included speaking, reading, and writing in English,” said Boxer in an online presentation she recorded for the Center of Southwest Studies.

From her research, Boxer learned about the living conditions of the Fort Lewis Boarding School.

“There were many moments where illnesses spread amongst the students, illnesses that even led to student deaths – which is why later on in the school history, Chief Ignacio prohibited or forbade their children from attending Fort Lewis,” said Boxer.
Ignacio was the Chief of the Weeminuche band of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in the late-1800s.

Closing ceremony

At the closing ceremony for As Seeds, We Grow, more than 75 community members gathered in respectful appreciation of the art. From around a drum, four Native American singers, all students, shared prayer songs. These same singers commemorated the opening of the exhibit in April 2022.

One of the drummers, Qoots Denipah-Cook, was there to help raise awareness about Indian boarding schools, which separated Native children from their families in a deliberate effort to erase the cultural identity of young people.

“We are oppressed people,” he said during an interview. “Native Americans did go through oppression, and we went through assimilation. Many families had their children stripped away from them. And when that happened, they were assimilated into Western culture. They lost language. They lost culture. They lost their practices. They lost the connection to the land.”
Following a short presentation on the exhibit from curator Elise Boulanger, one of the artists presented her work. Shenay Atene is currently a psychology major at Fort Lewis College, and though she is young, she attended an Indian boarding school. While Atene acknowledged that her experience may not have been as traumatic as it had been for Native Americans decades ago, she is still working through painful memories.

“I went to boarding school when I was six,” Atene said, gesturing to the purple jingle dress she’d contributed to the exhibit. “I brought [my jingle dress] here because I used to dance. As indigenous peoples, we are taught that our instruments of healing are alive. I needed to bring these out because they were with me during that time.”
As Atene spoke, the people in attendance were quiet, somber, listening closely. It was a fitting moment for an exhibit meant to educate those who don’t know about the traumatic history of Indian boarding schools. For those who know that history, and those living with its pain, the exhibit was a step along a path of recognition and healing.

“If you guys don’t know what (a) jingle dress is, it’s a healing dance,” she said. “I need this part of me to heal as well.”