Scaffold
In May 2017, I stood behind a chain link fence that was covered with protest notices.
“Shame on you”
“Take it down”
“There is no art in genocide”
“Not art, not a game, not experience, not your story, not your family”
Behind the fence, in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, workers were putting the finishing touches to a huge wooden structure. Once the fence was taken down, I could imagine the happy cries of children as they clambered up steps, and ran along a platform.
The monstrous sculpture was called “Scaffold.” Among other executions, it references the public hangings of 38 Dakota Indians in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862. This shameful event, the largest mass execution in US history, was quite the entertainment for the European settlers. Souvenir sellers were doing a brisk trade.
The protests were successful. The structure was dismantled then buried according to Dakota traditions.
Coldwater Spring
July 2018. I started from our home overlooking the Mississippi and St. Anthony Falls, a sacred spot for the Dakota. I then cycled down the Mississippi towards Fort Snelling, a European outpost established in 1819.
The fort’s Web landing page shows that we are starting to get beyond a Eurocentric view of our history:
This National Historic Landmark resides on Dakota homeland, known as Bdote, with history spanning 10,000 years. Learn stories of the military fort and its surrounding area, home to a wide history that includes Native peoples, trade, soldiers and veterans, enslaved people, immigrants, and the changing landscape.
On this cycle ride, I was not going to the actual fort. Instead, I wanted to visit the fort’s water supply, Coldwater Spring. Without clean water, it would be impossible to maintain a large military force to assure a European takeover.
The establishment of the fort’s water supply put the Judeo-Christian and the Dakota worldviews on a collision course. A sacred spring became a resource to be exploited.
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Genesis 1:28.
American Indian Cultural Corridor
Minneapolis has one of the largest urban American Indian communities in the country. Much of this tribally diverse community is clustered around several blocks of Franklin Avenue.
I visit this part of Franklin Avenue once a week to work a volunteer gig, but I had never explored the Native-owned businesses and institutions that line the blocks known as the American Indian Cultural Corridor.
Recently I started to understand the area better. I’ve enjoyed coffees at Powwow Grounds, and lunches at Gatherings Cafe at the American Indian Center.
At All My Relations and Two Rivers galleries I’ve viewed a collaboration with the Minneapolis Institute of Art, “Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ.” The exhibition explores how horses have shaped the culture of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people, collectively known as Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires).
There are no Lakota words for “art” or “artist” or “animal.” Everyone is an artist; animals and people are part of the same whole. Rather than fighting and conquering nature as is often the case in the Judeo-Christian world, the American Indian worldview integrates people, animals, and the natural world.
Honoring the Horse Nation – West Direction
I set myself the task of learning from one piece at All My Relations Gallery, “Honoring the Horse Nation – West Direction” by Jim Yellowhawk.
My eyes are pleased by the lines, colors, and juxtaposition of bold shapes. To me it feels like a modern piece, evolved from so-called Native art; rather than traditional materials, it’s acrylic on canvas. It seems to build on tradition with a forward, positive momentum. Riders and horses are stylized in ways I’ve seen in other Native art, and seem to be part of a tradition going back to prehistoric petroglyphs depicting people and bison. While it may honor the past, it does not feel trapped by the past.
The piece reminds me that American Indian culture is not static. Horses disappeared from North America about 10,000 years BCE. They were reintroduced to North America, starting in the 1500’s. Subsequently, horses became strongly linked with the identity of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota Nations.
I felt out of my depth assigning meaning to the symbols, so I reached out to Ashley Pourier, Curator of The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, and one of the organizers of the exhibition. By email he wrote:
When Lakota pray, we address the cardinal directions, Above, Below, and Center. We start in the West; the west is represented by the color black, also known as the Wakinyan Oyate, Thunder Beings Nation. The Thunder Beings hold the highest seat of honor in our prayers. I believe Jim is putting the Horse on that same seat of the highest honor. His color palette uses the four sacred colors; Black (west), Red (North), Yellow (East), White (South). That’s some of the Lakota symbolism I can I read into this painting.
Ashley’s response motivated me to start Googling for more information. From an online discussion I learned there isn’t one ultimate definition of American Indian Symbolism:
…There are many different tribal traditions involving the four directions and four colors associated with them. There is no one tradition that is more right than any other. It is all “symbolic.” … Sometimes blue is used to represent the above direction and green is used to represent the below direction.
Native American Wisdom discussion.
I learned horses belong to their own nation, the Horse Nation, just as eagles belong to the Eagle Nation, and the Lakota belong to the Lakota Nation. Every living thing belongs to a nation. American Indians refer to members of a nation as “relatives.” Consequently, horses are relatives of the Lakota people.
My knowledge is superficial, but I now have a starting point to understand the worldview of my American Indian relatives.
More Native Voices
Documentary: “We Are a Horse Nation”
While I was digging deeper with Google, I came across a documentary, “We Are a Horse Nation.”
A long version is available here for download or streaming, or on DVD from Amazon.
The opening statement sets the scene.
…In our belief system, every being has a mind, has a language, and is in fact it’s those beings, those relatives, that taught us how to live, how to survive, provide medicine to us.
Several individuals tell their stories. One harrowing story describes how soldiers took the best horses, then started shooting the rest while Lakota stood by. Suddenly, the Lakota jumped on the horses to escape to a great distance from the soldiers. The Lakota survived, the horses died from exhaustion.
In other stories, young people who have had difficult lives, find a special, healing connection with horses.
The movie shows American Indian art, including pieces by Jim Yellowhawk, the artist whose work caught my attention at the All My Relations Gallery.
Novel: There There
Many American Indians have suffered disconnects from their culture, a theme explored in “There There,” the debut novel of American Indian writer, Tommy Orange.
The novel’s setting is very urban: Oakland, California. It presents the viewpoints and lives of twelve characters, individually. Their lives are not brought to the same place until the final chapters.
Identity, or lack of identity, are recurring themes.
Learning about your heritage is a privilege. A privilege we don’t have. And anyway, anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian. More or less a real Indian. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it is precious. You’re Indian because you’re Indian because you’re Indian,”
Opal to Orvil
Tommy Orange does not shy away from difficult subjects, including fetal alcohol syndrome, domestic violence, alienation, drugs, guns, and teenage pregnancy. At every point I feel I am seeing the humanity of his characters, although they make bad choices, and perpetuate intergenerational poverty. These are real people, with many good aspirations, but disconnected from their culture: good intentions, bad execution.
When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone different. People want to say things like “sore losers” and “move on already,” “quit playing the blame game.” But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say “Get over it.”
The novel brought me inside the heads of urban American Indians in ways that are only possible in fiction writing. Clearly it hit a note: it came out in June 2018 and climbed up the New York Times fiction bestseller list where it is today.